Homer's Iliad/Odessy

[FreakPower70]

got a question about these, there are so many translations and things as such and I just wondered if anyone knows the best version to go with.

Thanks
Happy Travels

[JECompton]

"Best" is a four-letter word when it comes to lit :D

I like the supermarket approach: go down to the section in the bookstore where they have the copies of the Iliad/Odyssey, and open up to a random page here and there. If you just can't get into it, it might not be for you.

Also, look for award-winning translators/translations (Fitzgerald, Fagles, Lattimore, Mandelbaum, etc). Amazon and Google will help you find the ones that many different people have found useful.

To get a real ancient Greek feel, I like Fitzgerald, but I liked Fagles for an easier traditional read. Both are very poetic.

[majestic62]

Just a quick question. Are the Iliad and Odyssey in any way related? And if so, would it be best to read them in a particular order?

[FreakPower70]

The Iliad came first, the odyssey seconod. War of Troy is the Iliad I am not exactly sure on the odyssey. Since JECompton seems to have read them he would answer this better. I do know this, the Iliad came first.

[majestic62]

Ok, thanks because I have got the Odyssey. So maybe I will try and read the Iliad first ;)

[vierdreieins]

Just a quick question. Are the Iliad and Odyssey in any way related? And if so, would it be best to read them in a particular order?

Yes, the Iliad is first--the tail end of the Trojan War, in which Achilles deserts because Agamemnon steals his slavegirl. The Odyssey is years after the war, seven I believe, in which Odysseus makes his way home to Ithaca. The Odyssey is way better than the Iliad, in my humble opinion, because it's packed full of adventure and interesting things never stop happening. But it would definitely be best to read the Iliad first, even if it seems a bit dry. It's mostly battle scenes and quarrels between the gods themselves or the gods and humans or humans and humans...

[JECompton]

You're right on, FreakPower, the Iliad is about the Trojan War. (Ilion is another word the Greeks used for Troia, and Iliad means a story/poem about Ilion)

I can say this without it being a spoiler: Odysseus (aka Ulysses by the Romans) goes with the Greeks to war against Troy. He plays an important role throughout the war, but is more of a supporting character.

After the war is over, he and his men sail away to get back home, and the Odyssey (a story/poem about Odysseus--don't ask me why it's not called the Odyssiad) tells of all the adventures on the way back, what was going on at his home in Greece all during the long Trojan War.

There are long portions of the Odyssey that refer to characters and stories from the Iliad, so it's probably best to read The Iliad first (though I didn't know this when I first read them--no big harm done).

[JECompton]

oops, must have been typing at the same time as Vierdreieins. Excuse me!

[apostasy]

Just purchased The Odyssey as translated/edited by HJ Eickhoff (professor of Greek and Gaelic history, author of Vietnam novel "The Quick and the Dead"). I have no point of reference to compare this translation with others, however I will write up a description after I read the book (down the road a bit).

[bloodie]

If you're looking for the original Greek feel of the poems, try Chapman, he writes in the original-- hexacyclic something meter? That Homer would have used. I don't know what it is though, and it's quite difficult to get into the language...

My brother-in-law's got the text that's known to be the 'best' modern translation of the Iliad -- I'll get the name off of him for you...though it seemed to me when I read that version that there was a god-quarrel that the translator left out.

[Ygraine]

Dactylic hexameter is the original metre, but as metre wasn't about stressed and unstressed syllables but long and short vowels it's an effect which is impossible to re-create in modern speech, so really whether the translation you choose is prose or verse doesn't matter. Our lecture recommends the Robert Fagels translation, but as I only bought the Oxford World's Classics edition I can't tell you what it's like.

[bluevictim]

I have to disagree slightly with Ygraine. While the meter may be hard to re-create in modern speech (especially English), some aspects of the rhythm may be worthwhile to attempt to reproduce. For example, Lattimore translates into six-beat lines. I think that rhythm contributes significantly to the beauty of Homer's verse, and reading verse is very different than reading prose, so I think that it does matter whether the translation is in verse or prose (but it's not necessarily the most important issue). Having said that, I'm not familiar with any of the other translations, so I can't really say which is better.

I can't resist adding that I think the Iliad is one of the greatest works in Western literature.

[majestic62]

I went to my university library and took out a few different translations. I just started the Alexander Pope translation, I must say poetry (or it prose??) is not usually my type of thing, but so far I'm quite enjoying it. :)

I must say I just read two or three pages of the Fitzgerald translation and I didnt like it that much. So yes, It definitely seem like it all comes down to individual tastes when selecting a 'better' translation :rolleyes:

[rose_bishop]

As reagards Fitzgerald's translation of The Odyssey, I find that it is only one that can captivate my attention.

The other translations seem to have endless prologues ceaseless editorial comments and impossible fonts. I found that Fitzgerald sticks to the translation and leaves the drivle for "cliffnotes.com"

-rose_bishop

[The_Master's_Margarita]

I'm reading the old Penguin Classics versions; The Iliad and The Odyssey translated by E.V. Rieu.
I think they're good editions, although the font size is a little challenging in "The Iliad." I'm liking them a lot, actually, though I started reading the Odyssey first, before someone told me I wasn't supposed to, so I'm kind of halfway through each of them at the mo! :D Just to be confusing.

[Marlow]

got a question about these, there are so many translations and things as such and I just wondered if anyone knows the best version to go with.

Thanks
Happy Travels
I've read both the Fitzgerald and Fagels translations. Both are good, but I prefer the Fagles translations. I did enjoy the Fitgerald translation of The Aneid.

[sonic1]

I have just re-read the Iliad, and though I hated the thing in Jr. High School, I loved it this run through. Something about being almost 20 years older I guess.

I read the Fagles, just because it was the first I picked up. Thoroughly enjoyable and poetic. Homer was really amazing (provided he actually DID write these tales, or transcribed them anyway). To have empathy for the enemy in those times was something. Also the characters, even the heros and gods, were so flawed and human, so real. The petty jealousies, tragically pomposity, etc. were all so real. Homer was better thousands of years ago at describing humanity than people do today! By comparisson most modern literature is a bunch of lies.

[craig.melson]

homer was an epic poet and most translations are poetic. and its best to read the Iliad first since the events occur before the odyssey. odysseus is a key figure (he thinks up the horse thing) in both. The styles are very different. id have to say that i prefer the odyssey as there is more variety in settings and tension. if u dont like the poetic style the penguin guys have a cool prose version and its pretty easy to follow. or alternatively you could watch 'Troy'.......i for one cant stand either as they have caused me pain and suffering for the last two years of my degree!

[bluevictim]

I have just re-read the Iliad, and though I hated the thing in Jr. High School, I loved it this run through. Something about being almost 20 years older I guess.

I had a very similar experience. It took me a little growing up before I could really appreciate the Iliad.

[vierdreieins]

I went to my university library and took out a few different translations. I just started the Alexander Pope translation, I must say poetry (or it prose??) is not usually my type of thing, but so far I'm quite enjoying it. :)

I must say I just read two or three pages of the Fitzgerald translation and I didnt like it that much. So yes, It definitely seem like it all comes down to individual tastes when selecting a 'better' translation :rolleyes:
Oh my goodness, I admire your strength! Alexander Pope's translation is by FAR the hardest to get through, and, though being the reader that I am, I'm not willing to touch it with a stick. (And this is even coming from someone who considered Pope as her favourite poet once upon a time.) One thing people don't like about Pope's translation is that it rhymes, and they original Greek most certainly did not, so he had to write veryveryvery far away from the original Greek, and thus lose a lot of character from the original poem.

Fitzgerald is all right, Lattimore is horrible, and Fagles (I've heard), is the best. There are two people I know that I trust almost blindly when it comes to translations: One swears by Fagles without any doubt (she's excited about his upcoming translation of The Aeneid, I bet); and I've trusted the other's opinions because I was always hit in the face with a bad translation if I didn't listen to his advice. Most St John's College students agree that Fagles is the best, being as close to experts as they can get, with the reading list they're required to read.

So, I say go with Fagles, and if he isn't what you expect, try Fitzgerald. (This is geared to everybody, seeing as it's a relatively old post.)

[bluevictim]

Fitzgerald is all right, Lattimore is horrible, and Fagles (I've heard), is the best.
I'm curious about the criteria you based this conclusion on. Ease of reading? Accuracy? Form? You mentioned that some trusted friends recommended Fagles. Do you happen to know why they came to their conclusions?

The reason I ask is because I actually think Lattimore's translation is quite good. Recently I compared Lattimore's translation and Fagles' translation of a passage in the Iliad and I thought Lattimore's was better because it was more accurate (erring, perhaps, on the literal side) and I thought his choice of free six-beat lines turned out to be a nice solution for the meter.

It would be nice (for me, at least) to get a different perspective.

[vierdreieins]

I judge by ease of reading, how well it flows.

One of my friends loves Fagles because he's simply more pleasing aesthetically to read. The other says that he hated Homer while reading the Lattimore translation, blaming Homer himself, until he switched to Fagles and could really get into it. Plus, I'm fairly certain that Lattimore was who I read, and I had a very tough time getting through it.

Another translator I'd forgotten to mention: yet another Homer-loving friend of mine (the best friend of the Fagles lover) swears by Mandelbaum and hates Fagles. So I think nine times out of ten, you're going to get a different opinion.

Anyone who translated Homer into prose has a death wish. (You know who you are, Butler.)

I'll be reading the Iliad again soon enough, so I'll be back here within a few months when it's fresh in my mind. I'll even get ahold of as many translations as I can and compare them.

In the meantime, someone start a thread on Dante translations! (Kidding... Mostly. I read Zappula and enjoyed it immensly, after switching from a horrible translation with a blue cover. I'd know it if I saw it. And it should burn. [Pun intended.])

[sonic1]

I have no experience with either the Pope or Lattimore translations. But between Fagles and Fitzgerald I think I prefer the Fagles.

With translated literature, I usually end up with whatever came to me first (in other words whatever I picked up). Only recently have I really paid attention to translators. The exception of course is when I simply cannot get into a particular book-I end up trying another translation because I know sometimes certain translators speak to particular people.

But I am not consistent enough to predict what sort of translation I will prefer. In many cases I have preferred the more archaic translations to the more modern ones. And in other instances I have preferred the more modern. So I usually just let luck and fate decide for me.

I have started collecting more than one translation of particular texts, just because I can find them cheap used, in paperback. It is hard to argue with a used paperback that costs around 2 bucks.

[vierdreieins]

I have started collecting more than one translation of particular texts, just because I can find them cheap used, in paperback. It is hard to argue with a used paperback that costs around 2 bucks.
Same here. The only reason I know anything about Fitzgerald is because I was able to get a hold of The Odyssey for a dollar; Fate decided to give me Fitzgerald in that instance, and I trusted that I'd be able to tolerate him at the very least.

When I first delved into the Classics a few years ago, starting with the Iliad, I just picked up any translation, whichever was available at the library and whichever volume I could hold easily while laying in bed. But now I refuse to buy a translator unless I know whether or not s/he's good, or if it's dirt-cheap, as the case was with Fitzgerald's Odyssey. So I've sent off many an email to my friend Sam in Annapolis, because he's read nearly everything I'm planning on reading and already knows which translators to avoid.

For example, I asked him which translator of Herodotus to buy, and he recommended the Penguin volume, saying that, not only is it a decent translation, it's awesome, and he now loves de Selincourt. So I bought that one.

[bluevictim]

So I think nine times out of ten, you're going to get a different opinion.

Isn't that what makes these Homer translations discussions fun?

For Homeric epic, it makes sense to pick a translation that is easy to read. In general that works for prose, too. I would suggest some caution with Greek drama and Greek lyric poetry, though. Some of the Greek poets intentionally use difficult expressions (just like English poets do), and the difficulty shouldn't be translated away. All of this is IMHO, of course.

[bluevictim]

I'm sorry for bumping a dormant thread, but I thought some of the people here interested in Homer translations might be interested in reading this review (http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/bmcr/2004/2004-09-41.html) of a recent translation of The Odyssey by Edward McCrorie.

[vierdreieins]

I'm sorry for bumping a dormant thread, but I thought some of the people here interested in Homer translations might be interested in reading this review (http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/bmcr/2004/2004-09-41.html) of a recent translation of The Odyssey by Edward McCrorie.
It wasn't too dormant. Don't ever worry about bumping an old thread, because if you've read a book but people stopped posting about it a year ago, we're still going to remember it and find your opinions worthwhile. Sometimes it just seems odd starting a new thread when there's already one available to post in. :)

This review reminded me of something I hadn't thought about, but have always noticed: The spelling of names. Menelaus, Menelaos; Achilles, Akhileus; Patroclos, Patroklus; etc. How much does that affect how you view a translation, if at all? I find it rather difficult calling him Akhileus when I grew up with "Achilles" ringing in my ears.

Thank you for posting that review. As for the language of McCrorie's translation, it seems very hard and stiff.


He spoke in rage and wept, throwing the scepter
hard on the ground. All the people felt pity.

This, while brisk, plain and paratactic, misses something of the elevated thrill and nobility of Fagles:

Filled with anger,
down on the ground he dashed the speaker's scepter --
bursting into tears. Pity seized the assembly.
I got almost nothing from McCrorie's passage, but I could really picture what was happening in Fagles'.

[bluevictim]

This review reminded me of something I hadn't thought about, but have always noticed: The spelling of names. Menelaus, Menelaos; Achilles, Akhileus; Patroclos, Patroklus; etc. How much does that affect how you view a translation, if at all? I find it rather difficult calling him Akhileus when I grew up with "Achilles" ringing in my ears.I agree. I see no good reason to insist on using unfamiliar transliterations of well-known names. It seems like a minor point, but considering how many times these names appear over the course of the whole epic, the effects add up. I think it tends to separate the Akhileus (for example) of the poem being read from the Achilles familiar to us because of our cultural background. In my opinion, this is not an insignificant effect.

[oceanflower]

Scholar: Iliad, Odyssey Penned by Woman
Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News


Aug. 28, 2006 — The author of the Greek epic poems the Iliad and the Odyssey was probably a woman, according to an upcoming book by a British historian and linguist.
Andrew Dalby, author of Rediscovering Homer, argues that the attribution of the poems to Homer was founded on a falsehood.

Homer’s link to the poems, Dalby writes, stems from an "ill-informed postclassical text, the anonymous Life of Homer, fraudulently ascribed to Herodotus," a respected Greek historian who lived from around 484-425 B.C.

Herodotus does mention Homer in his work Histories, but by then the legend of the mysterious, blind, male poet had already taken root, Dalby says.

Dalby explained to Discovery News that the earliest references to Homer by writers such as Herodotus and the Greek poet Pindar indicate the poet lived around 800 B.C.

But based on geographical references in the poems, Dalby believes the Iliad was composed in 650 B.C., while the Odyssey was written in 630 B.C., well after Homer’s supposed lifetime.

Aside from the poems themselves, no concrete clues exist to identify their author, but Dalby builds a case that the person probably was a woman.

"In many oral traditions, the best and most reliable creators, the ones who are used by folklore collectors, happen to be women," he said.

Dalby explained that women throughout the ancient world were "often the last and most skillful exponents of an oral tradition."

For example, the world’s first named poet was a Sumerian woman named Enheduanna, who lived from around 2285-2250 B.C. Dalby said women also saved the ancient oral poetry of the northern Japanese, many Irish traditions, and numerous English folk ballads.

Another recent book, Clever Maids: The Secret History of the Grimm Fairy Tales, claims the Brothers Grimm gathered most of their famous stories from women. Author Valerie Paradiz told Discovery News that the brothers "only gave credit to one woman by name," but then linked most other tales to male editors who also gathered stories from women.



Dalby thinks both works were composed by the same person, but that the more developed female figures in the Odyssey — particularly the heroic character Penelope — reflect change in the author's life.

"By the time she came to create her second masterpiece, the woman poet understood at last that in consigning her work to writing, she was able to address a whole new audience (including women)," he said.

While no master copy of the poems exists, many different written versions of the poems were circulating in Greece by 300 B.C.

Anthony Snodgrass, emeritus professor of classical archaeology at Cambridge University, agrees that, because of its emphasis on domesticity versus aggression, the Odyssey could have been written by a woman. But he finds it hard to believe a female could have composed the violence-infused Iliad.

If the poet was a woman, Dalby believes her name is probably lost to history.

"I would guess that Sappho (a female Greek poet) and her contemporary, the male poet Alkaios, probably knew the name, but they did not mention it in their own poetry," Dalby said.

(From http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2006/08/28/homer_his_print.html)

[Marlow]

Scholar: Iliad, Odyssey Penned by Woman
Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News


Aug. 28, 2006 — The author of the Greek epic poems the Iliad and the Odyssey was probably a woman, according to an upcoming book by a British historian and linguist.
I would be shocked to find this to be true. Unless the writer of the Illiad was a female warrior, the knowledge of battle and killing with spear and sword is very detailed. Some first hand experience of it would probably have been needed. Now there were many writers who synthesized the stories of the Illiad and the Oddysey and perhaps a woman may have contributed (although I would still be skepital given how male oriented ancient Greek society was; I would be less skeptical of ancient Roman, Egyptian, or Israeli socities but even there I can't think of a known female narrative writer) somewhere along the line. Even Penelope seems drawn from a male point of view. But who knows.

[sonic1]

I have to read a few more translations to make sure I am not just reading different translators rather than different authors. But the Iliad sure reads a lot different than the Odyssey. I had heard this rumor before, and so I don't know if the suggestion is influential here, but I sure sense a more feminine pen myself, though it could be a male of more feminine quality and concern. Some notable differences: the passing of multitudes of characters in the Iliad vs the comparitively less number in the Odyssey, the greater concern with womanly affairs and thoughts in the Odyssey, the importance of the queens in the Odyssey vs the passive roles in the Iliad, the multilayered plot of the Odyssey vs. the singular plot of the Iliad, the emulation of characters and the bravado/braggartly ways of them in the Iliad....

In the Iliad there is an almost reverent treatment of characters, even as they act like asses, whereas in the odyssey they seem to be punished more for their transgressions and they are less worshipped by the storyteller.

The Iliad is almost like a national anthem, while the Odyssey is more like a folk song.

[vierdreieins]

The Iliad is almost like a national anthem, while the Odyssey is more like a folk song.
I like that description. I've always taken the "different author" theory with a grain of salt, because I feel that we're probably never going to know one way or the other. Calling the author Homer is just as good as calling him (or her) any other name.