I have used very regular iambic pentameter throughout this translation, as the closest equivalent in the anglophone poetic tradition to the original’s dactylic hexameter. I hope that the use of this meter will invite reading out loud, honoring the oral heritage of the original. I believe, too, that the use of a meter that has been in regular use in

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

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

rage against the Greeks,

I wanted my English to enable an experience more like that of an ancient listener, who would have heard and understood Homer in oral performance from childhood onward, as a gripping form of live entertainment, and as a formative guide to life

“You startle me! You always have your notions!

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.

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.

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