Homer’s Iliad
In English Rhymed Verse
By Charles Merivale
London 1869

[Sample from the Opening of Book I]

BOOK I

PELEÏADES ACHILLES his anger, Goddess, sing;

Fell anger, fated on the Greeks ten thousand woes to bring;

Which forth to Hades hurried full many valiant souls

Of heroes, but themselves she gave to dogs and carrion fowls

Of every wing for ravin: so wrought the rede of Jove,

Sine first contentious disaccord the chiefs asunder rove,

Then when Atrides, king of men, with great Achilles strove.

Which of the Gods impell’d them to wreak the dire despite?

Latona’s offspring, seed of Jove: for he, the lord of light,

Wroth with the king, bred sickness accurst the ranks along;

And died the people, for their chief had done his servant wrong.

Now Chryses, priest of Phœbus, to the Grecian ships had come,

To free his daughter dear, and gifts he brought, a boundless sum;

And in his hand he carried the chaplet of his God,

Apollo, Darter-from-afar, upon a golden rod.

And so to all the Grecians, and to the Atridæ most,

To both Atridæ most he pray’d, the leaders of the host:—

“Ye kings, and all ye other greave-arm’d Achaians, hail!

May the Gods, in bowers Olympian dwelling, grant yet to prevail,

And trample down king Priam’s town, and happily homeward sail!

Then take ye these for ransom, and loose the child I love,

Dreading the Darter-from-afar, Apollo, sprung from Jove.”

Then all the other princes approvingly outspake;—

To Apollo’s priest would reverence give, and the shining ransom take:

Atrides Agamemnon the prayer displeas’d alone;

He spurn’d the wretch, and bade him with commandment stern be gone:—

“Hence, fool! Nor let me find thee by the hollow ships again,

Nor tarrying now upon the road;

So staff and chaplet of the God shall shelter thee in vain!

For her I will not yield till old age shall o’er her come;

But she from kin and country led

Shall ply the loom, and serve my bed, far in my Argive home!

Be gone, nor tempt me farther, nor deem it safe to stay!”

He spake; the old man quaked with fear, nor dared he not obey.

Then turn’d and paced he softly by the billowy ocean’s shore:

And there apart the graybeard stray’d,

And much to king Apollo pray’d, whom fairhair’d Lato bore:—

“Hear thou that ever wendest round Chrysa, Silverbow!

Of holy Cilla and Tenedos imperious Warder thou,

Smintheus! If e’er to glad thee I wreathe thy shrine with leaves;

If e’er for thee with fire consume rich steak of goats and beeves;

Do thou this grace accord me, and crown my curse to-day:

May the Greeks beneath thy flaming shafts these tears to me repay!”

So spake that old man praying, and Apollo heard him pray.

REVIEW COMMENT

Merivale prefaces his translation of Homer’s Iliad with a brief and intriguingly cryptic quotation from Eustathius:

’Twere well, perhaps, to keep aloof from the Sirens of Homer altogether, either stopping one’s ears with wax, or turning haply some other way, to escape their fascination. But if a man keep not aloof, but give heed to that song of theirs, he will neither, methinks, easily pass them by, e’en though many a chain should hold him;—nor, if he do, will he be thankful for it.
Eustathius: Preface to the Commentary on Homer.

Merivale’s translation appeared about eight years after the publication of Matthew Arnold’s On Translating Homer and indicates clearly that Merivale paid little heed to Arnold’s advice. To the extent that Merivale’s translation displays some of the more deleterious tendencies of Victorian translators of Homer, reading a few of these lines helps us understand why Arnold felt an urgent need to address the issue of English versions of the greatest poems from our Classical past.

The most eloquent passage in Merivale’s book is the dedication to his wife, which, like the Eustathius passage above, suggests he did not find translating Homer an unambiguously exciting experience:

To thee, who bending o’er my table’s rim,
Hast mark’d these measures flow, these pages brim;
Who, link’d for ever to a letter’d life,
Hast drawn the dubious lot of student’s wife;
Kept hush around my desk, nor grudged me still
The long, dull, ceaseless rustling of my quill;
Content to guide the house, the child to teach,
And hail my fitful interludes of speech;
Or bid the bald disjointed tale rehearse;
Or drink harsh numbers mellowing into verse:
Who still ’mid cares sedate, in sorrows brave,
Hast for me borne the light, and with me shared the grave;
And grown from soft to strong, from fair to sage,
Flower of my youth, and jewel of my age:—
To thee these lays I bring with joy, with pride,—
Sure of thy suffrage, if of none beside.

Readers who would like to access the full text of Merivale’s Iliad should use the following link: Merivale Iliad.

For a contemporary review of Merivale’s translation, please use the following link: North British Review

[List of Published English Translations of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey]