The Iliad

Translated Barry B. Powell

Oxford University Press, 2013

SAMPLE FROM BOOK I

The rage^◦ sing, O goddess, of Achilles, the son of Peleus,

the destructive anger that brought ten-thousand pains to the

Achaeans and sent many brave souls of fighting men to the house

of Hades and made their bodies a feast for dogs

and all kinds of birds. For such was the will of Zeus. 5

Sing the story from the time when Agamemnon, the son

of Atreus, and godlike Achilles first stood apart in contention.

Which god was it who set them to quarrel? Apollo, the son

of Leto and Zeus. Enraged at the king, Apollo sent an

evil plague through the camp, and the people died. 10

For the son of Atreus had not respected Chryses, a praying

man. Chryses had come to the swift ships of the Achaeans

to free his daughter. He brought boundless ransom, holding

in his hands wreaths of Apollo, who shoots from afar,

on a golden staff. He begged all the Achaeans, but above all 15

he begged the two sons of Atreus, the marshals of the people.^◦

“O you sons of Atreus, and all the other Achaeans,

Whose shins are protected by bronze, may the gods who

Have houses on Olympos let you sack the city of Priam!

May you also come again safely to your homes. But set free 20

My beloved daughter. Accept this ransom. Respect

the far-shooting son of Zeus, Apollo.”

All the Achaeans

shouted out that, yes, they should respect the priest

and take the shining ransom. But the proposal was not

to the liking of Agamemnon, the son of Atreus. 25

Brusquely he sent the man away with a powerful word:

“Let me not find you near the hollow ships, either

hanging around or coming back later. Then your scepter

and wreath of the god will do you no good! I shall not

let her go! Old age will come upon her first in my 30

house in Argos, far from her homeland. She shall

scurry back and forth before my loom and she will

come every night to my bed. So don’t rub me

the wrong way, if you hope to survive!”

So he spoke.

The old man was afraid and he obeyed Agamemnon’s 35

command. He walked in silence along the resounding

sea. Going apart, the old man prayed to his lord

Apollo, whom Leto, whose hair is beautiful, bore:

“Hear me, you of the silver bow, who hover over

CHRYSÊ and holy KILLA, who rule with power 40

the island of TENEDOS^◦—lord of plague!^◦ If I ever

roofed a house of yours so that you were pleased

or burned the fat thigh bones of bulls and goats,

then fulfill for me this desire: May the Danaäns^◦ pay

for my tears with your arrows!” 45

So he spoke in prayer.

Phoibos^◦ Apollo heard him, and he came from the top

of Olympos with anger in his heart. He had on his back a bow

and a closed quiver. The arrows clanged on his shoulder

as he sped along in his anger. He went like the night.

He sat then apart from the ships. He let fly an 50

arrow. Terrible was the twang of the silver bow. At first

he attacked the mules and the fleet hounds. Then he

let his swift arrows fall on the men, striking them

with piercing shafts. Ever burned thickly the pyres

of the dead.

REVIEW COMMENT

[This comment is based on a look at the preview material available at Amazon.com, i.e., on a very small part of the total translation.]

Powell’s translation appears accurate and clear. He sticks closely to the original Greek and, for the most part, his language is clear and easy to follow. The reader moves through the translation easily. The frequent footnotes are informative and generally useful, if occasionally more detailed than necessary. However, the translation (or at least the preview I read) is poetically inert throughout. Powell’s idea of creating verse here involves arbitrarily carving up lines of prose (with, he tells us, roughly five stressed syllables per line), without any concern for the significance of line breaks and their relationship with the rhythm and flow of a sentence. In addition, the basic style has little sense of compressed intensity. In spite of his introductory comment about “trying always to communicate in a lean direct manner” Powell seems frequently (generally?) to prefer the prolix expression (“Agamemnon whose rule is wide,” “sea that grows no crops,” and so on) over less wordy possibilities. The habit creates a sense of an unnecessarily flabby verse. And for all his desire not “to impose a modern sensibility on the style” Powell appears at times overly fond of modern colloquialisms that strain or interrupt one’s imaginative contact with the ancient poem: “So don’t rub me/ the wrong way,” “Okay, I’m off/ to Phthia. I think it’s better to head away in my beaked ships/ than to hang around here. . . ,” “Good grief, daughter of Zeus who carries the goatskin fetish . . . ,” and so on. I also get very irritated when any translator tries to lecture me in the footnotes on how I’m supposed to interpret a passage (especially when, as at 2.150, he proposes an interpretation which is, to my mind, totally misguided, and he offers as the sole justification the empty excuse that that’s how Homer’s original audience would have responded). If the translated text can’t deliver the impact of the scene as the translator imagines it, then prose guidance in the footnotes is no help and simply insults the reader by usurping his function. I don’t know how much of this authorial interference there is in the total translation, but more than a little would be much too much.

For a review of Powell’s Iliad, use the following link: CJ Online; Open Letters Monthly.

For a longer preview of Powell’s translation, see Powell Iliad Preview (Amazon)

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