The Iliad
A new rendering in heroic verse
James Muirden
Westfield Books
Rewe, 2012

 

BOOK I

The cause of the discord
between Agamemnon and Achilles

 

Sing of Achilles, Peleus’s son!
Sing, goddess, of his rage! Tell everyone
what sorrow the Achæans had to bear;
sing of the valiant men, the warriors there,
a feast for dogs and birds of every kind,
their countless souls to Hades’ depths consigned.
Zeus willed  it all, and so it had to be!
Goddess, here’s where to start your history—
lord Agamemnon, son of Atreus,                                                       
defies noble Achilles. Sing to us!                                            10                    

The god Apollo (Leto’s son by Zeus)                                    8
thought Agamemnon’s attitude obtuse,
and started shooting arrows from his bow
that laid a good part of the army low.
What started their disastrous dispute?
Chryses, Apollo’s priest, had brought his suit
to Atreus’ son: the king had seized
his daughter as a prize, and, most displeased,
he reached the swift Achæan ships. He’d brought
a ransom with him of a priceless sort                                    20
to buy her freedom, holding in his hand
long-armed Apollo’s brow-encircling band,
beribboned, set upon a staff of gold.
His tale the unhappy father told
to the Achæans; but really what he said
was meant for Atreus’s sons, who led
the marchalled armies. He addressed them thus.
“Well-greaved Achæans. Sons of Atreus!
May all the gods who on Olympus dwell
return you to your homeland safe and well                          30
when you’ve sacked Priam’s city! As for me,
I’ve come to plead to have my child set free.
Don’t scorn Apollo’s ransom, but obey—
he’s Zeus’s son, and strikes from far away.”

All the Achæans wanted her released:                                   22
accept the princely ransom, soothe the priest!
But Agamemnon, Atreus’s son,
would not be influenced by anyone.
“Away, old man! If you should dally here
beside the hollow ships, or reappear,                                    40
even the staff and ribbons that you’ve brought
won’t save your precious skin once you’ve been caught!
Your daughter’s mine, you’ve no parental rights;
in Argos she will weave, and cheer my nights
until time robs her of her beauteous state
at which point I shall choose another mate.
Be warned—it isn’t healthy for you here.
Don’t hang around the ships. Just disappear!”

The old man, paralysed with fright, obeyed.                        33
He wandered by the sounding sea, dismayed,                     50
and when he was alone, he started praying
to fair-haired Let’s son Apollo, saying:
“God of the silver bow, listen to me!
You rule Tenedos in the Trojan sea,
the towns of Cilla and of Chrysa too—
oh Smintheus, if ever I built for you
a well-roofed temple solely for your praise,
or set fat thighs of bulls or goats ablaze,
make these Danaans pay for how I feel.
I’ve had no luck at all with my appeal!”                                 60

Phœbus Apollo heard, and strode full pelt                           43
down from Olympus, on whose peaks he dwelt,
with bow and quiver. Night closed on his track,
his stock of arrows clattered on his back,
and sitting near the ships a shaft he loosed:
a dreadful twang the silver bow produced.
The mules and the swift dogs came off worst
to start with, since he set upon them first;
but then the men themselves began to die.
the smoke of burning corpses dimmed the sky.                  70
For nine long days the fires never ceased
as he repaid the insult to his priest.

 

REVIEW COMMENT

[For formatting reasons I have omitted the short descriptive headings the translation includes at the start of each “stanza.”]

To judge from his previous work, Muirden would seem to have something of an obsession with rhyme, so it is perhaps not surprising that his choice of verse form is the heroic couplet. He undertook the translation, he says, because it would make him read every word of the Iliad, at least in English (since does not read Greek, he worked from the A. T. Murray translation) and because the poem, “like Mount Everest” is “there” (reasons which I find perfectly acceptable and persuasive).

Well, it takes a brave translator to invite comparisons with Alexander Pope, whose heroic couplet translation of the Iliad is one of the masterpieces of English literature. So remarkable was Pope’s genius that he makes this very challenging metre seem natural and easy when it is anything but, as one quickly discovers in reading Muirden’s verse. Many of his couplets may be acceptable enough, but too often what he is prepared to sacrifice on the altar of Rhyme saps one’s imaginative contact with the poem. One gets the frequent feeling that a sentence has been unnecessarily padded (“a ransom with him of a priceless sort,” “robs her of her beauteous state,”) or that a rather strange word has been chosen (“obtuse,” “parental rights,”) to meet the demands of the rhyming couplet. One can readily admire Muirden’s skill at producing rhyming words, but the price seems unnecessarily high.

 

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