The Iliad of Homer
Translated Into English Prose
by
John Purves
London 1891

[Sample from the Opening of the Poem]

SING, O goddess, the fatal wrath of Peleus’ son Achilles, which brought ten thousand troubles on the Achaeans, and sent to Hades many valiant souls of heroes, and made themselves a prey to gods and every fowl—such was the will of Zeus—after that day when first Atrides, king of men, and divine Achilles, quarrelled and were parted.
Who of the gods incited them to strife? The son of Leto and of Zeus. He was wroth with the king, and sent an evil plague upon the host, and the people died, because Atrides had slighted his priest, Chryses; he came to the swift ships of the Achaeans, seeking to redeem his daughter, and proffering unbounded price; in his hand he bore the chaplet of archer Apollo, set on a wand of gold; and he made his prayer to all the Achaeans, but most of all to the two Atridae, the marshallers of the people: “Ye sons of Atreus, and ye well-greaved Achaeans, may the gods, who dwell in houses of Olympus, grant you to take Priam’s town and to return safely home. But give me back my dear daughter, and accept the ransom, reverencing the son of Zeus, archer Apollo.”
Then all the Achaeans consented with a shout, to reverence the priest and take the rich ransom; but the thing pleased not Agamemnon, the son of Atreus, and he dismissed him with contumely and hard injunction: “Let me not find thee, old man, beside the hollow ships, either tarrying now or returning afterwards, lest the wand and the chaplet of the god protect thee not. And thy daughter I will not give back; sooner shall old age come upon her in my house in Argos, far from her own land, plying the loom and sharing my couch. Hence, anger me not, lest it be the worse with thee.”
He said, and the old man feared and obeyed: he went silent along the shore of the sonorous sea, and much as he walked alone the old man prayed to Apollo the king, whom sweet-haired Leto bore: “Hear me, archer of the silver bow, who protectest Chryse and divine Cilla, and art the lord of Tenedos; Smintheus, if ever I have laid roof upon thy fair temple, if ever I have burned to thee fat thighs of bulls and goats, fulfil my prayer: let thine arrows avenge my tears upon the Danaans.”

REVIEW COMMENTS

The translation (as the Preface by Evelyn Abbott explains) was started about 1871, completed in 1884, and published after Purves’s death. The long Introduction is almost entirely a detailed summary of the poem.

To access the complete text of Purves’ translation, please use the following link: Purves Iliad.

For a contemporary review of the Purves’ Iliad, use the following link: Saturday Review, Volume 72 (1891).

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