The Iliad of Homer
translated by James Macpherson
London 1773
[Sample
from the Opening of the Poem]
BOOK I.
The wrath of the
son of Peleus,—O goddess of song, unfold! The
deadly wrath of Achilles: To Greece the source of many woes! Which
peopled the regions of death,—with shades of heroes untimely slain: While pale
they lay along the shore: Torn by beasts and birds of prey: But
such was the will of Jove! Begin the verse,
from the source of rage,—between Achilles and the sovereign of men.
WHO of the gods was
HE? Who
kindled rage between the chiefs? Who, but the son of Latona and high-thundering Jove? HE—rouzed to wrath against the king,—threw death and disease,
among the host. The people perished before him. The
son of Atreus had dishonoured his priest. White-haired,
the aged Chryses came—to the swift ships of the
Argive powers. He came to redeem his daughter. The
high-prized ransom is borne before. In his hands is the
wreath of the god,—the golden scepter of far-shooting Phśbus. The
aged suppliant, Greece addressed,—but most addressed the sons of Atreus: The
two leaders of the nations in war!
“SONS
of Atreus!” he said: “Other warriors of Achaia hear! May
the gods crown all your desires! May the deathless
dwellers of heaven give ear,—and grant to YOU, the city of Priam:
With a safe return to your native land. But release my much-loved daughter. Receive her ransom
from these hands. Revere the son of
thundering Jove: Apollo, who shoots from afar!”
APPLAUDING
Greece arose around. The holy man they
all revered. They wished to take the splendid
prize. But
the soul of Agamemnon refused. HIM he dismissed
with contempt,—and thus added threats to his rage:—“Take heed, I say, old
man! Lest
that scepter, that wreath of thy god,—should not in ought
avail. HER I will never release,—till age her
lovely form invades,—within our lofty halls in Argos,—far from her native land:
While she runs o’er the web—and ascends the bed of her lord. Hence! Provoke
me not—that safe thou may’st still retire.”
HE,
frowning, spoke: The old man feared,—and shrunk from his
high commands. Sad, silent, slow, he took his
way,—along the wide-resounding main. Apart and distant
from the host,—he poured his mournful soul in prayer: He
poured it forth to bowyer Phśbus,—whom the
long-haired Latona bore.
“HEAR,
bearer of the splendid bow! Guardian of Chrysa, of Cilla, the
divine! Thou
that o’er Tenedos reign’st
with fame! O Smintheus,
hear my prayer! If ever with wreaths I adorned,—O Phśbus! Thy beauteous fane: If
ever thine altars smoked with offerings—from the
flocks and herds of Chryses: If
ME thou regardest in ought—O Phśbus, hear my prayer! Punish
Greece for these tears of mine. Send thy deadly
arrow abroad.”
HE
praying spoke. Apollo heard. He
descended, from heaven, enraged in soul. On
his shoulders his bow is hung: His quiver filled with deadly shafts: Which
harshly rattled, as he strode in his wrath. Like
Night he is borne along: Then darkly-sitting,
apart from the host,—he sends an arrow abroad. The
bright bow emits a dreadful sound,—as the shaft flies, unseen, from the
string. Mules,
first, the angry god invades: Then
fleetly-bounding dogs are slain: Soon, on the heroes
themselves,—the death-devoting arrow falls. The
frequent piles are flaming to heaven.
Macpherson is particularly
impressed with the “simplicity” of Homer and in his introduction observes that
contemporary taste in poetry does not allow poetical translators to deliver
that aspect of the original: “The best translators have not . . . occupied the
whole ground. The simplicity, the gravity, the characteristical diction, and perhaps, a great part of the
dignity of Homer, are left untouched. They have rendered the father of
poetry, in a great measure, their own: And, in stripping him of his
ancient weeds, they have made him too much of a modern beau.” By
choosing prose, Macpherson hopes he has been faithful to the simplicity of
expression and smoothness of language of the original and assures us that he
has “translated the Greek VERBATIM.”
The result is an English style
which must be among the simplest and most straightforward ever attempted, with
no attempt to involve traditional “poetical” effects from the past or the
present. Typically,
Macpherson keeps the clauses so short (with sentences often broken up by
punctuation into even shorter units) that the effect is one of continuously
stopping and starting, a technique which, for all its extreme clarity and
directness, prevents the Homeric lines from accumulating much momentum as a
long sentence unwinds (a common feature of the Homeric simile and some of the
battle descriptions) and creates a certain monotony in the sentence
structure. But the prose is for the most part
accurate, energetic, and free from artifice.
To access the Volume I of the
Macpherson translation, click on the following link: Macpherson
Iliad.
For some interesting remarks on the
contextual connections between Macpherson’s Iliad
and his other “traditional” poems, use the following link: Homer
Among the Moderns. For a review of Macpherson’s
Iliad, use the following link: The
Critical Review (1773, pages 161 ff.).
[List of
Published English Translations of Homer’s Iliad
and Odyssey]