The Iliad of Homer
Done Into English Verse
Arthur S. Way
London 1886
BOOK I.
Of
the bitter 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 5
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, 10
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, 15
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, 20
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 :
25
“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, 30
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, 35
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 40
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: 45
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, 50
Thereafter
his bitter-keen dart at the Danaan men did he aim,
Smiting
them: flared evermore the close-thronged death-pyres’ flame.
A translation from Australia, Way’s
line-by-line translation of the Iliad earned
praise from some of 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.
For a contemporary review of Way’s Iliad, use the following link: Saturday
Review of Politics, Literature, Science and Art, Vol. 59 (1885).
Readers who would like to
sample Volume I of Way’s translation (Books I to XII) should use the following
link: Way
Iliad.
[List of
Published English Translations of Homer’s Iliad
and Odyssey]