But eventually I eliminated all of these, as too specific to a particular register, and out of keeping with the tone of the poem. The common Homeric exclamation of surprise and shock, ō popoi, was similarly challenging. I realized that none of the possible options—“Wow!” “Damn!” “Gosh!” “Argh!” “Oh no!” “Ugh!”—was viable. All were too slangy, too c

He stayed there 640 and wore his heart away.

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

I aimed for clarity, but I trust the reader to adapt to some slightly alien terms or phrases, especially where the Homeric idioms are fundamental to the poem’s understanding of life or death. For instance, I tried to echo the Homeric understanding of the dead person as still a person, rather than inserting terms such as “the body of,” when the Gree

Homeric verse is magnificent but not difficult;

rage against the Greeks,

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

Achilles has a particularly unusual way of speaking, and the speech patterns of other characters are also clearly distinguished. But in many English translations, all the characters sound more or less the same.

There is nothing like The Iliad. No translator, including me, can fully replicate all the poetic, dramatic, and emotional effects of the Greek. No translation can be simply “the same” as the original. A translator who underestimates her task will produce a clunky, incoherent mess.