The Iliad of Homer
To which is added an Appendix containing
Poems selected from Twenty-six
Languages all Translated
by
Edgar Alfred Tibbetts
Boston 1907

[Selection from the Opening of the Poem]

    O Goddess, sing Pelides Achilles’ baneful ire,
Which brought on the Achaians ten thousand sorrows dire,
And many strong souls of heroes sent down to Hades’ sway;
Themselves to all the birds and dogs became a prey,
Since first, in anger parting (it was the will of Jove),
The king of men, Atrides, and divine Achilles strove.
     Who of the gods incited to strife these rulers twain?
The son of Zeus and Leto. For with the king amain
Enraged, upon the army he sent a sickness dire;—
The people failed and perished, infected by its fire,
Because Atrides Chryses, the priest, had held in scorn
When to the rapid vessels of th’Achaians his course was borne,—
A priceless ransom bearing to loose his daughter’s bands,—
With garlands of far-darting Apollo in his hands
(Hung from a golden sceptre); th’ Achaians all he prayed,
But most the two Atridae whom all the folk obeyed:
“Atridae and ye others, well-greaved Achaian bands,
May the gods who hold Olympus bestow upon you hands
To ruin Priam’s city and homeward safe to fare;
But free my cherished daughter and take the price I bear,
Thus reverencing far-darting Apollo, Zeus’s son.”
    Then all the other Achaians said that ’t were better done
To hold the priest in honour and take the splendid prize;—
Yet this was nowise pleasing in Agamemnon’s eyes,
Who Evilly dismissed him—a menace on his lips:
    “Old man, let me not meet you among these hollow ships;
For if to-day you linger, or to-morrow here shall see,
The scepter and the garland of the god no shield shall be.
But her I will not ransom till age upon her come;—
Far from her native country, within my Argive home,
She at the loom shall labour, her hands my bed adorn.
But go, nor rouse my anger, that safe to your return.”
     He spoke; the ancient, fearing, obeyed the stern decree
And silent sought the shore of the many sounding sea,
Then prayed, when he had wandered afar upon the shore
A prayer to King Apollo whom well-haired Leto bore.
“Hear me, with bow of silver, who watch o’er Chyrsa’s land,
Who rule o’er sacred Killa and Tenedos command,
Smintheus! If e’er a temple, grateful to you, I raised,
And there the thighs well-fattened of goats and bullocks blazed,
Accomplish what I pray you, master of hopes and fears,
Avenge me on the Danaans with arrows for my tears.”



REVIEW COMMENT

Tibbetts begins with a short Preface:

It is proposed in this new translation of Homer’s Iliad to follow the original text as nearly as practicable in rhymed verse. With this object in view, and since neither a paraphrase nor an imitation has been intended, the versification has been almost invariably subordinated to accuracy of translation. It is hoped that the meter selected, the historic epic measure of the Germanic languages, that of the Niebelungen Lied and Gudrun, will be found adequate to express the narrative flow, rapidity and simplicity of the hexameter.

To judge by the results over the years, the tradition of adopting (or adapting) “the historic epic metre of the Germanic languages” for a translation of Homer’s Iliad has not had a great deal of success. This may not be simply a matter of metre (important though that is), since the desire to turn Homer into a Teutonic saga all too often tempts the translator into an artificially aged diction, the limitations of which are particularly evident when it is put into the service of rhyme (e.g., “twain” “amain,” and so on). Tibbetts’s translation is as good an example as any of this deleterious trend. The translation, so far as I can tell, has never been especially popular, although it is available in many places on the internet.

The collection of poems at the end of the volume is (as, one assumes, it was meant to be) a tribute to Tibbetts’s command of many languages, including the following: Persian, Arabic, Hebrew, Turkish, Hungarian, Finnish, Greek, Modern Greek, Dutch, German, Swedish, Danish, Icelandic, Spanish, Anglo-Saxon, French, Provencal, Romanian, Portuguese, Latin, Russian, Polish, Ruthenian, and Slavonic. None of these English poems is exceptional, but some are of more interest than the translation of Homer which precedes them.

To access the full text of Tibbetts’s Iliad, use the following link: Tibbetts’s Iliad.

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