The Iliad of Homer
Rendered in English Hexameters
Alexander Falconer Murison
London 1933

[Sample from the Opening of the Poem]

THE ILIAD OF HOMER

BOOK I

THE WRATH OF ACHILLEUS

Sing, O goddess, the Wrath of Achilleus, son of king Peleus—

Wrath accursèd, the source of unnumbered woes to the Achaioi,

Hurling to Hades the spirits of warriors many and stalwart,

Casting their bodies a prey to the carrion dogs and the vultures—

So was the counsel of Zeus working out to its destined fulfilment—

Down from the time when they quarrelled and held them apart from each other,

Atreus’ son, king of men, and the god-born warrior Achilleus.

Which of the gods was it, then, set the twain upon quarrel and conflict?

Zeus’s and Leto’s son.  For he at the king had been angered,

10    And he had smitten the host with a cruel plague, and the people

Perished and perished, by reason that Atreus’ son had dishonoured

Chryses his priest.  For Chryses had come to the ships of the Achaioi

Seeking release of his daughter and bringing a limitless ransom,

And in his hands he was bearing the wreath of far-darting Apollon

Set on a staff of the gold, and he prayed all the men of Achaiis

And, above all else, the twain sons of Atreus, chiefs of the army:

“O ye twain sons of Atreus, and all ye well-greaved Achaioi,
  May ye obtain from the gods that inhabit the halls of Olympos

Priamos’ city to raze to the ground and to fare home in safety,

20      But O release me my child and accept these gifts as her ransom,

Yielding respect to the son of high Zeus, far-darting Apollon.”

Thereon acclaimed their assent all the rest of the men of Achaiis,

Fain to respect the old priest and accept the magnificent ransom;

But this was highly displeasing to Atreus’ son Agamemnon.

Harshly he order the priest to be gone and severely enjoined him:

“Let me know find thee, old man, by these hollow ships, I advise thee,

Whether now loitering on or some time in the future returning,

Lest that the staff and the wreath of the god not avail to protect thee.

Her I will not release; nay, first shall old age overtake her

30    Dwelling in our house in Argos afar from the land of her fathers,

Plying the work of the loom and attending my couch as my partner.

Hence, then! Provoke not mine anger, so may’s thou depart all the safer.”

Thus spake he, and the old man was frightened and followed his bidding.

Silent he fared by the sands of the shore of the deep-voiced ocean.

Then when a far way apart he had gone, he addressed to Apollon,

Glorious son of the lovely-tressed Leto, an earnest petition:

“Hear me, god of the bow of the silver, protector of Chryse,

Guardian of Killa the sacred, of Tendos mighty preserver,

Mouse-god.  If e’er to thy pleasure I roofed o’er my temple with garlands,

40    Or if that e’er in thine honour, I offered in fire on thine altar

Rich thigh-pieces of bulls and of goats, fulfil my petition:

Launch thy shafts and avenge thou my tears on the Danaan army.”

Thus spake the priest in his prayer, and him heard Phoibos Apollon.

Down from the peaks of Olympos he sped, in his heart a hot anger,

Bearing his bow on his shoulders and with it his close-covered quiver,

And on his shoulders, in wrath as he sped him, his arrows kept clanking

E’en as his body kept moving; and like unto night he descended.

Then sate he down well apart from the ships and let fly a swift arrow.

Dreadful and fireful resounded the twang of the bow of the silver.

50    First ’twas the mules and the fleet-foot dogs that he smote with his arrows,

But thereafter the sharp-pointed shaft he let fly at the people,

Smiting and smiting; and thick were the pyres of dead ever burning.

REVIEW COMMENT

Murison’s text provides some of the longest and slowest “hexameters” of any translation I have encountered.  And his vocabulary is in places decidedly odd (e.g., “the gold,” “the silver,” “Achaiis”).  Reading these lines, one can understand a little better the desire some people felt that it might be better to return to more modern prose renditions of the Iliad, for the verse here seems to be drawing on an exhausted tradition of “poetical” translations in an “antique” style which has long ceased to be meaningfully connected to imaginatively alive contemporary poetry.

[Dr. Simon Corcoran, of University College, London, informs me that only one volume (Books I-XII) of Murison’s Iliad was ever published, for before he had finished Murison became too ill to continue (he died in 1934)]

Review of Murison’s Iliad: Classical Review, Vol. 48, Issue 4 (1934)

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