The Iliad

“You startle me! You always have your notions!

He stayed there 640 and wore his heart away.

A translator can legitimately render an idiom by another, different idiom, to honor the clarity and register of the original—on the principle that an idiomatic original should not be rendered with stilted translationese.

I tried to avoid colloquial or slangy phrases, which will date quickly and detract from the partially elevated tone of the poem.

Immortal sleep was swirling all around him.

However, many modern English translations of Homer use contorted, unnatural language that seems to me quite alien to the experience of the Greek.

We die too soon, and there is no adequate recompense for the terrible, inevitable loss of life.

Yet translations often reduce this narrative flexibility, creating a more monolithic voice for the Homeric narrator—and often a voice that is more unambiguously militaristic and aristocratic than that of the Greek original.

I hoped to allow the reader to experience formulas as an essential element of traditional Homeric word-building, without making the text entirely unreadable.