Homer
Iliad
Translated by
Ian Johnston
Vancouver Island University
Nanaimo, BC
Canada
Revised Edition 2010
This translation is dedicated to my son Geoffrey
(1974-1997) and to my grandson Fabian (b. 1992)
Generations of men are like the
leaves.
In winter, winds blow them down to earth,
but then, when spring season comes again,
budding wood grows more. And so with men--
one generation grows, another dies away.
(Iliad 6.181-5)
For information about copyright, use the following link: Copyright. This translation is available in the form of a published book from Richer Resources Publications. And a complete recording of this translation is available at Naxos Audiobooks. To download a Rich Text Format (Word) or PDF version of this translation, please use the following links: Iliad [RTF] and Iliad [PDF]
Note that an abridged text of this translation of the
Iliad, about one third the length of the original, is available through the
following link: Iliad
Abridged.
Book
1: The Quarrel by the Ships
Book 2:
Agamemnon's Dream and The Catalogue of Ships
Book
3: Paris, Menelaus, and Helen
Book 4: The
Armies Clash
Book 5:
Diomedes Goes to Battle
Book 6:
Hector and Andromache
Book 7: Hector and
Ajax
Book 8: The Trojans
Have Success
Book 9: Peace
Offerings to Achilles
Book 10: A Night
Raid
Book 11: The
Achaeans Face Disaster
Book 12: The Fight
at the Barricade
Book 13: The Trojans
Attack the Ships
Book 14: Zeus
Deceived
Book 15: Battle at
the Ships
Book 16: Patroclus
Fights and Dies
Book 17: The Fight
Over Patroclus
Book 18: The
Arms of Achilles
Book 19:
Achilles and Agamemnon
Book 20:
Achilles Returns to Battle
Book 21:
Achilles Fights the River
Book 22: The
Death of Hector
Book 23: The
Funeral Games for Patroclus
Book 24:
Achilles and Priam
TRANSLATOR'S NOTE
[August 11, 2000, Revised Text 2019]
This translation aims to
provide an accurate text of the Iliad in a modern English poetic idiom. It is
designed, first and foremost, for those who are reading Homer's poem for the
first time. I welcome any suggestions for improvements in the accuracy and
fluency.
This text uses the traditional Latinate spellings and
common English equivalents for the Greek names, e.g., Achilles, Clytaemnestra,
Achaeans, Menelaus, Hecuba, rather than modern renditions which strive to stay
more closely to the Greek: Akhilleus, Klytaimnestra, Akhaians, Menelaos, Hekabe,
and so on, with the exception of a very few names of gods—Cronos, Ouranos—and a
few others (e.g., Idaios). And where there is a common English rendition of the
name (e.g., Ajax, Troy, Teucer), I have used that. A dieresis over a vowel
indicates that it is pronounced by itself (e.g., Coön rhymes with “go on” not
with “goon,” Deïphobus is pronounced “Day-ee-phobus” not “Day-phobus” or
“Dee-phobus”).
In this English text, the
possessive of names ending in -s is usually indicated in the customary
way by adding
’s
(e.g., Zeus, Zeus’s;
Atreus, Atreus’s,
and so on). This convention has the effect of adding a syllable to the word (the
sound -iz). It also sometimes produces a rather odd-sounding result.
Thus, for metrical and euphonic reasons, the possessive of a name is in places
indicated by a simple apostophe, without the s (an alternative fairly
common in written English): e.g., Achilles’
anger instead of Achilles’s
anger. This latter procedure does not add an extra syllable to the
word. In the above example, Achilles’
has three syllables, unlike Achilles’s,
which has four.
If you would like the entire text of the Iliad sent
to you in a single Word file, please contact Ian
Johnston.
SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL
Full Glossary and
Index for the Iliad
List
of the Deaths in the Iliad
List of English Translations of the Iliad and Odyssey
Index of
Speeches in the Iliad
Essays on the Iliad
Homeric Similes in the Iliad and Odyssey (a Numbered List)
Life of Homer (attributed to Herodotus, trans. Mackenzie, PDF)
A NOTE ON THE TRANSLATOR
Ian Johnston is an Emeritus Professor at Vancouver Island University, Nanaimo,
British Columbia. He is the author of The Ironies of War: An Introduction to
Homer’s Iliad and of Essays and Arguments: A Handbook for Writing Student
Essays. He has also translated a number of works, including the following:
Aeschylus, Oresteia (Agamemnon, Libation Bearers,
Eumenides)
Aeschylus, Persians
Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound
Aeschylus, Seven Against Thebes
Aeschylus, Suppliant Women
Aristophanes, Birds
Aristophanes, Clouds
Aristophanes, Frogs
Aristophanes, Knights
Aristophanes, Lysistrata
Aristophanes, Peace
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics (Abridged)
Cuvier, Discourse on the Revolutionary Upheavals on the Surface of the Earth
Descartes, Discourse on Method
Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy
Diderot, A Conversation Between D’Alembert and Diderot
Diderot, D’Alembert’s Dream
Diderot, Rameau’s Nephew
Euripides, Bacchae
Euripides, Electra
Euripides, Hippolytus
Euripides, Medea
Euripides, Orestes
Homer, Iliad (Complete and Abridged)
Homer, Odyssey (Complete and Abridged)
Kafka, Metamorphosis
Kafka, Selected Shorter Writings
Kant, Universal History of Nature and Theory of Heaven
Kant, On Perpetual Peace
Lamarck, Zoological Philosophy, Volume I
Lucretius, On the Nature of Things
Nietzsche, Birth of Tragedy
Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals
Nietzsche, On the Uses and Abuses of History for Life
Ovid, Metamorphoses
Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality Among Men
Rousseau, Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts
Rousseau, Social Contract
Sophocles, Antigone
Sophocles, Ajax
Sophocles, Electra
Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus
Sophocles, Oedipus the King
Sophocles, Philoctetes
Wedekind, Castle Wetterstein
Wedekind, Marquis of Keith.
Most of these translations have been published as books or audiobooks (or both)
by Richer Resources Publications, Broadview Press, Naxos, Audible, and others.
Ian Johnston maintains a web site where texts of these translations are freely
available to students, teachers, artists, and the general public
(johnstoniatexts). The site includes a number of Johnston's lectures on these
and other words, all freely available.