The Iliad of Homer
Done Into English Verse
Arthur S. Way
London 1886
Sample from the Opening of the Poem
BOOK I.
Of the biiter contention between hero and king; of
pestilence on earth and strife
in heaven.
THE wrath of Achilles the Peleus-begotten, O
Song-queen, sing,
Fell wrath, that dealt the Achaians woes past
numbering;
Yea, many a valiant spirit to Hades’ halls did it
send,
Spirits of heroes, and cast their bodies to dogs to
rend,
And to fowls of ravin,—yet aye Zeus’ will wrought on
to its end
Even from the hour when first that feud of the mighty
began,
Of Atreides, King of Men, and Achilles the godlike
man.
Which of the Gods into hate and contention drave these
twain?
The son of Latona and Zeus, for his wrath was the
war-king’s bane,
That he sent forth a plague through the host, and the
people were smitten and died;
For Atreides rejected the prayer of his priest when
Chryses cried,
When bereft of his daughter the sea-swift ships of
Achaia he sought,
To deliver from thraldom his child, and a countless
ransom he brought;
And the wreaths of Far-smiter Apollo in holy hands he
bare
On a golden sceptre, and cried unto all the Achaians
there,
And to Atreus’ sons, the arrayers of war-folk, uttered
his prayer:
“Ye sons of Atreus, Achaians battle-harness-dight,
May the Gods vouchsafe you, which dwell in the halls
of Olympus’ height,
To smite Troy-town, and to win safe home from your
war-toils done:
But take ye my ransom, give back my child, my darling
one,
For dread of Far-smiter Apollo, Zeus Allfather’s
son.”
Then shouted the other Achaians thereto in favouring
wise
To have respect to the priest, and to take the
ransom-price.
But it pleased not the spirit of Atreus’ son,
Agamemnon their lord,
For he shamefully drave him forth, with a stern and a
masterful word :
“Let me not find thee, old man, by the hollow
galleys more,
Neither tarrying now, neither wending again to the
ship-fringed shore,
Lest of the wreath of the God and his sceptre thy help
be small!
I will not give her up:—nay, sooner shall old age find
my thrall
In Argos, afar from her fatherland-home, in our palace
hall,
While yet at the loom she doth pace, and arrayeth her
lord’s bed there.
Begone, and provoke me not—that thy feet safe homeward
may fare!”
And the old man quailed at his eyes, and shrank
from the threat half spoken
By the shore of the thunderous-tumbling sea he went
heart-broken:
Far thence he went, and alone that old man cried in
prayer,
Cried to Apollo the King, whom Lêto the fair-tressed
bare:
“Hear, Silverbow, who art warder of Chryse and
Killa’s fane,
Hear, thou who in might of thy godhead o’er Tenedos’
isle dost reign!
Smintheus! if ever I wreathed thy temple in lovely
wise,
If ever I burnt unto thee on thine altar goodly
thighs
Of bulls and of goats, vouchsafe this boon to the
stricken in years—
May thine arrows requite the Danaan men for these my
tears!”
So spake he with prayer and strong crying, and Phoebus
Apollo heard;
And adown from the crest of Olympus he swept with soul
wrath-stirred.
His bow on his shoulders he bare, and his quiver, the
doom-enfolder:
Clashed they and clanged they, the shafts on the
wrathful Archer’s shoulder,
At the swoop of him earthward: his coming was like to
the onrush of night.
Down sat he aloof from the galleys; he sped forth a
shaft on its flight :
Terribly rang the twang of the silver
lightning-bright.
First on the mules of the host and the fleetfoot
hounds it came,
Thereafter his bitter-keen dart at the Danaan men did
he aim,
Smiting them: flared evermore the close-thronged
death-pyres’ flame.
REVIEW COMMENT
A translation from Australia, Way’s line-by-line
translation of the Iliad, earned praise from his contemporaries—“he is
unquestionably the most Homeric of English translators of Homer since Chapman”
(qu. Young 135)—but the truly wretched quality of the English verse tells us
more about popular Victorian taste in Homer translations than anything else
(although, to be fair, some reviewers did complain strongly about Way's olde
worlde diction).
For a contemporary review of Way's translation, use the following link: Way Iliad Review
Readers who would like to sample Volume I of Way’s
translation (Books I to XII) should use the following link: Way
Iliad.