Greek Literature

Richmond Lattimore's translation of the Iliad was first published in 1951, to great acclaim: ‘The feat is so decisive that it is reasonable to foresee a century or so in which nobody will try again to put the Iliad in English verse.’ That testimonial is reproduced on the back cover of the latest reprint, even though Robert Fitzgerald falsified his own prophecy less than a quarter of a century later. Richard Martin's introduction ends by comparing Lattimore's rendering of 9.319–27 with three older and three more recent verse translations. Lattimore's superiority to Fitzgerald, Fagles, and Lombardo emerges clearly – but that's in a short excerpt. I've always felt a stiffness, and a lack of variety and narrative drive, in Lattimore's version that makes it intolerable for reading at length. In a long epic, that's a serious failing.