/lit/ - Literature

>>11499150
>translation
go back to r/books brainlet, we don't want your kind here

>>11499150
samuel butler

>>11499158
what's your problem

>>11499160
brainlets like you probably claim you've actually read the text. If you read a translation you might as well read sparknotes, they both have equal bearing on the original.

I have the Fitzgerald and the Fagles, and while the former may have a better reputation around here the latter (OP's pic) has an excellent introduction and endnotes that can be helpful for those reading it for the first time.

>>11499150
I can tell you that WHD Rouse's translation is shit. and the Lattimore translation is the closest to the Greek. Here's a site with a more in-depth answer.

https://iliad-translations.com/translation-comparison/

Lattimore: longer verse (that kind that you often just read as prose), full of peculiar phrases and turns of syntax which remind one of the Greek manner of speech. It is very 'archaic' and I imagine (though I have no Greek) it's probably quite faithful to the original Homer. He employs all the repetitions, which I think is quite essential in transmitting the oral poetry spirit. His vocabulary seems to me to be ideal. I read it with great delight.

Fitzgerald: haven't read his Iliad, but his Odyssey is a book of sheer delight. He was a better poet than Lattimore. However, he uses iambic pentameter (rhymed tetrameters when Hermes speaks), and avoids a lot of the archaisms and oral aspects of the original. He constantly makes variations upon the epithets, for instance. At any rate, it is a beautiful book of poetry, one of the most delightful that I have read. He was a master verse-maker, and at his best moments (the Circe episode, for instance) really reminds me of Keats. I might be wrong, but I think it's the only translation of Homer into English which was received with enthusiasm by Ezra Pound.

Chapman: great poetry too, but needless to say Elizabethan, far from the spirit of Homer. I recommend it for the poetry.

Pope: even more distant from Homer, although perhaps the best of all if you look at it as an independent work of poetry and neoclassical verse is your thing.

Here is my recommendation: buy them all, start with Lattimore, then Fitzgerald, then Chapman and Pope. You can also do what I did and read Lattimore for the Iliad and Fitzgerald for the Odyssey. The Odyssey is, in many aspects, novelistic, so it loses less than the Iliad in translation, I think. The Iliad is a very static, primitive (in the good sense of 'primeval') poem, while the Odyssey is a tale of homecoming full of adventures and changing of scenes that contains much more that is familiar to us. The Iliad is like Moby-Dick, the Odyssey is like D. Quijote.

I haven't read Fagles yet.

>>11499170
i'm a literae humaniores student.
and the hell they do. for example, is it necessary for hera to be called ‘white-armed, queen, daughter of great cronus’, or athene ‘the owl-eyed virgin daughter of zeus’ more than once or twice in every book? and what can the uninstructed reader make of ‘alalcomenean athene’? paradoxically the more accurate a rendering, the less justice it does homer.

>>11499225
>delight
>delight
>delightful

>>11499170
Jorge Luis Borges only read Homer in translation (Chapman, Pope, T. E. Lawrence, and many others), and yet he was deeply influenced by the poet, and that influence was much more important and seminal for world literature than whatever influence the original might have had on you. Even more important to his style was the book of the Arabian Nights, which he also only read in translation.

Reading the Iliad and the Odyssey is something that everyone should do while they are teenagers at most, such is the importance of those texts. Since the majority of people will not learn Greek at such a young age (even if they are great students they will probably be more worried learning French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and Latin first), this means translations are absolutely necessary and there's nothing wrong in reading them. I can read, with different degrees of ease, in about eight different languages, and yet I cannot read Greek.

Will you deny yourself the pleasure of Confucius just because you cannot read him in the original? What about Guimarães Rosa and Milosz? What about the Popol Vuh? What about Gilgamesh?

Or are you going to tell me you've never read any of those? Oh, what a 'brainlet'...

>>11499237
Sorry, English is my third language and I often repeat myself when using it. I swear it wouldn't have happened in Portuguese.

>>11499264
you're american aren't you? just learn the languages, it's not that hard, put down the sparknotes and pick up the rosetta stone

>>11499232
>i'm a honor student
doubt.

>>11499237
I also tend to repeat the word 'I' a lot, probably because in Portuguese it doesn't sound repetitious, since the 'I' is already implicit in the verb, so that

>tenho um amigo e falo para ele as coisas que quero

des not even use the Portugue word for 'I', but

>I have a friend and tell him the things I want'

already repeats the 'I' twice, so that you actually have to substitute 'the things I want' for 'my wishes' or something of the sort.

>>11499278
But Rosetta Stone is not a good way to go about learning a language

>>11499278
No, I am Brazilian and can read poetry in eight different languages (five perhaps, if you discount Portuguese/Spanish/Catalan which are so similar). I am 22 years old and am improving my Latin, as well as learning a little German. I intend to learn Greek and perhaps Russian before I am 30. Maybe you know some fifteen languages and think eight is too few, but so what? I already read in more languages than Fernando Pessoa did, and he was infinitely superior to both you and me in terms of literary culture and talent.

And why not stop the cheap, short replies? Are you a troll? Your initial post made no sense. It is perfectly fine to read translations, because nobody will ever know all of the languages which are relevant for literature, and therefore will have to rely on translations eventually. Pessoa and Borges only ever read Homer in translation.

>>11499278
eh?

>>11499264
well hang on. he is wrong but he's not all wrong, a lot of the translations are quite bad because of the unconventional way homer wrote. the proper way of translating the iliad would be in 15th century english. also there are schools that still teach greek unseen and greek composition

>>11499290
Sorry, I meant to say ''already uses the 'I' twice''. This means the repetition, of course, happens only once.

>>11499324
are you the lawyer?

>>11499329
Which is why OP asked for the best translation - he's perfectly conscious of the fact that a bad one can ruin a masterpiece.

Now it is nonsense to suggest he should forget the translations and just start learning Greek. What will he lose by reading translations? Nothing, and yet he'll gain a fine view of one of the fundamental works of the Western tradition: he'll learn about the characters, the story, the Homeric similes, the physical descriptions of the wounds, the customs and ways of the Greeks, the scenes of war and adventure, the tales of myth and incantation, all of which can be translated. And he might learn them with great pleasure if the translator is a talented poet like Fitzgerald, Lattimore, Chapman and Pope.

Also, if he has not yet read Homer in translation, why on earth would he even want to learn Greek? Things work the other way around: first you read the translation, then you fall in love with it so intensely that it makes you want to read the original!

Saying that the Iliad should be translated in 15th century English means that you hold a view which is not shared by most modern translators of Homer that I am familiar with. I haven't read the original, so I can judge, but I might imagine someone making the same argument for Dante or Camões, and I would have to disagree.

>>11499347
I am not actually a Lawyer yet, I just said so to make the Marxists mad. I know lying is ugly, but I'd do anything to see a Marxist seething like a mad cow, which I saw (and it was good).

But yeah, I do work in an office and I am finishing Law school pretty soon, so I'm sort of in it already. It's not so bad and it does give you fine amounts of money. My sister finished Law school recently and is already earning more than the 99% of Brazilians, as well as taking vacations in Miami (disgraceful destination, but she's not very cultured). Law is the most common degree here in Brazil, and therefore most students learn very little, so people get an impression that it's not worth it, which is wrong: it is worth it as long as you study hard.

>>11499379
Again, I should have written 'so I can't judge'. One of the (many) things I hate about captcha is that I always feel tempted to do away with it already as soon as I finish writing, and so I have little time left for reviewing what I wrote.

>>11499379
i think you might have lost something in translation there. i didn't say he was right, but for example the chapman, pope, fitzgerald and lattimore translations you mention are quite bad. and as a sidenote, the descriptions of wounds and scenes of war aren't very good even in the greek, homer tediously added those to satisfy his anti-intellectual audience.

anyway, i'm not telling him to learn greek. though most modern translators are wrong, they play it safe and keep as close as possible to lang's translation. homer, in greek, used archaic language (and metre), 15th century sort of english would give it its semi-barbaric flavour. remember dante, and camoes came around about 2000 years later.

>>11499443
I'm sorry I said the translations thing. I was just trying to fit in.

>>11499449
Why do you think those translations are bad?

I believe Lattimore is successful in transmitting the ''semi-barbaric'' (would 'archaic' be a good synonym?) flavor that you talk about, both in his use of vocabulary as well as through the use of the repetitions, which is an essential feature of oral poetry. Again, I do not know the original, but I think Lattimore is close enough to other stuff that I've read and would consider 'archaic' (some Medieval stuff and some Latin poems).

And I think the descriptions of wounds are among the best things in the Iliad, for they present to you a very physical view of a battle that is supposed to have happened more than 3000 years ago by a man (or many men, or woman, or who knows) who lived just a few centuries after. I don't know about you, but when I read them I feel like I myself am there, watching the fight. I even remember reading (I think it was in Pound's ABC of Reading) some speculation that Homer might have been a physician, for his descriptions of the wounds were extremely realistic.

>>11499460
No problem, mate. We all should enjoy some nice banter from time to time.

>>11499225
excellent post my man, thank you for being here and contributing among so many other louder and obnoxious posters.

Fagles is basically a prose translation that reads at a 9th grade level. You're not missing anything. Fitzgerald is my favorite for Homer, and Virgil. Lattimore did a handy book of greek lyric poets fragments.

>>11499526
well i mentioned some of the reasons in >>11499232
and translations are made for the general, non-classical public, yet the authors seldom consider what will be immediately intelligible, and therefore readable, and what will not.
homer is a difficult writer. he was breaking new ground, and often failed to express a complex idea adequately in hexameters; he also left out many vital pieces of information, or inserted them too late. few translators save homer’s face by remedying these defects, or soften the wearisome formality of phrase which slows down the action.

listen, homer's implicit attitude in his stories was a loathing of war. the battles were cartoons to sate his reactionary and - like i said - anti-intellectual audience. he barely bothered to get his military background accurate, his fighting is a careless muddle and he indiscriminately mixed up modern and outmoded weapons. he was really contemptuous of the stupidities of war. the war is simply a bit of action, remember homer had to make a living.

don't even get me started on pound.

>>11499588
>listen, homer's implicit attitude in his stories was a loathing of war. the battles were cartoons to sate his reactionary and - like i said - anti-intellectual audience. he barely bothered to get his military background accurate, his fighting is a careless muddle and he indiscriminately mixed up modern and outmoded weapons. he was really contemptuous of the stupidities of war. the war is simply a bit of action, remember homer had to make a living.

Well, I do not see this at all, nor do I see how this could be derived from his words, at least from those I've read in translation.

His battles were careless muddles because wars are careless muddles. I believe also that Aristotle already commented on the static - some would say static to the point of being cartoonish - quality of some scenes (such as when all stops to contemplate the death of Hector, or when, right in the middle of the fight, Diomedes suddenly stops to ask the genealogy of the Trojan warrior he's fighting against), but I believe those can be perfectly justified by poetic convention - Homer was more worried with pleasuring his audience by giving them the stories of the personal lives of the heroes than with following abstract rules of 19th century Balzac-style realism.

As for his mixing up modern and outmoded weapons, did he actually know what weapons they had 400 years before him? I am no expert, but I suspect he probably didn't. Maybe he knew some weapons were older than others, but I don't think he knew much more, since they didn't have written records nor archaeology around, so I don't think historical inaccuracies can be given as evidence of anti-war contempt on the part of the poet.

The vast majority of Greek men had been warriors in their early years, and I believe they didn't feel any contempt for war at all. I believe they saw it as the best way to defend your state against the very serious possibility of strangers attacking it to steal your goods, kill your friends, eat your cows, rape your wife, rape your daughter, and enslave your son. Homer, it seems to me, was no exception.

Chapman

The next of name, that serv’d his fate, great Ajax Telamon
Preferr’d so sadly. He was heir to old Anthemion,
And deck’d with all the flow’r of youth; the fruit of which yet fled,
Before the honour’d nuptial torch could light him to his bed.
His name was Simoisius; for, some few years before,
His mother walking down the hill of Ida, by the shore
Of silver Simois, to see her parents’ flocks, with them
She, feeling suddenly the pains of child-birth, by the stream
Of that bright river brought him forth; and so (of Simois)
They call’d him Simoisius. Sweet was that birth of his
To his kind parents, and his growth did all their care employ;
And yet those rites of piety, that should have been his joy
To pay their honour’d years again in as affectionate sort,
He could not graciously perform, his sweet life was so short,
Cut off with mighty Ajax’ lance; for, as his spirit put on,
He strook him at his breast’s right pap, quite through his shoulder-bone,
And in the dust of earth he fell, that was the fruitful soil
Of his friends’ hopes; but where he sow’d he buried all his toil.
And as a poplar shot aloft, set by a river side,
In moist edge of a mighty fen, his head in curls implied,
But all his body plain and smooth, to which a wheelwright puts
The sharp edge of his shining axe, and his soft timber cuts
From his innative root, in hope to hew out of his bole
The fell’ffs, or out-parts of a wheel, that compass in the whole,
To serve some goodly chariot; but, being big and sad,
And to be hal’d home through the bogs, the useful hope he had
Sticks there, and there the goodly plant lies with’ring out his grace:
So lay, by Jove-bred Ajax’ hand, Anthemion’s forward race,
Nor could through that vast fen of toils be drawn to serve the ends
Intended by his body’s pow’rs, nor cheer his aged friends

>>11499659
by a muddle i mean he often couldn't decide whether a particular hero is armed with the single lance and body-shield or with two throwing-spears and a shield.

a couple of reasons prevented homer from making his battles realistic. one was that the feats or fates of common soldiers did not interest his patrons, who cared to hear only of duels between noblemen. no man-at-arms ever kills a nobleman, even by mistake; which seems odd, since they are all clad in full armour, with corslets, greaves, helmets and shields. i can really get into this if you like but it's not very interesting.

the iliad presupposes an presupposes an earlier story cycle about the events leading up to it, these generally described heavy-chariot fighting, which had fell out of vogue by homer's day, so he modernized most of the fighting. he often had to strain his imagination in describing novel varieties of manslaughter, which he credited to the ancestors of his hosts (typically crass, snobbish princelings).

homer absolutely was an exception. he wasn't a solemn old bore, but an iconoclast with a deep sense of irony who had to wrap up his jokes about the gods and his lampooning of the ancient heroes to get them by his stuffy public. he wrote satire, not pompous tragedy, an attitude that has been consistently misunderstood.

>>11499745
I must admit your views are new to me and don't seem very convincing. In fact, they appear to me to be very wrong, but I will not judge. It seems to me that that you are trying to read Homer with a very specific, anti-war, anti-conservative kind of modern eye that I suppose must have been entirely alien to him. It would be useful to learn more about this interpretation, however. Do you have the name of any Homer specialists who expressed those views in their writings?

>>11499676
/thread

>>11499745
Furthermore, I would say that the basic problem I have with your views is that they seem to present a problem, then offer an explanation that is not the best one. For instance:

>Problem: Homer mixed old with new weapons.

Possible explanations: 1) his ignorance due to lack of written sources/archeology; 2) his belief that the ancients were better, and therefore must have had weapons at least as good as those of his own time; or 3) his contempt for war.

Of all those possibilities, you chose 3), but this, I think, is the one that is the most alien to the Greek, and the overall ancient frame of mind, while the first two are much more in harmony with it.

>Problem: no nobleman is killed by a peasant

Possible explanations: 1) noblemen are favored by the gods, perhaps due to their value or their often divine genealogies; 2) noblemen are seen as stronger; 3) the noblemen were the main characters, and therefore it would not be very nice, from an entertainment point of view, to let a main character be killed by an irrelevant one; 4) Homer had to submit to the prejudices of his patrons, which he shared; or 5) Homer had to submit tot he prejudices of his patrons, which he didn't share at all.

You pick 5), and again I think this is not at all the most likely explanation.

But again, your interpretation is still coherent enough and pays attention to the text, so it would be interesting for me to read more about it.

>>11499818
>kind of modern eye
you couldn't be more wrong.

it's based on what homer wrote. i'm certainly not alone in this. a lot of homer scholars happen to agree, including samuel butler, t.e. lawrence, robert graves, sir william smith well as sophocles and plutarch. if i've said anything out of line, show me.

>>11499848
>his ignorance due to lack of written sources/archeology
like i said there were story cycles that mentioned the use of heavy-chariot fighting.
>his belief that the ancients were better, and therefore must have had weapons at least as good as those of his own time
but his fighting was entirely modern; he omits cavalry entirely, and ajax, achilles and hector fight in true mycenaean style.
>his contempt for war
his lack of interest in these particular scenes, which have nothing to do with the actual epic, that is, the 'anger of achilles'

>and therefore it would not be very nice, from an entertainment point of view, to let a main character be killed by an irrelevant one
this is what i said

>>11499866
I already mentioned what I believe is wrong with your vision. However, I will read those authors that you mentioned, all of whom I respect. Thank you!

>>11499920
listen i think you're still missing my point about homer not really bothering with the battle scenes.

though chariot combats do occur frequently - hector even drives a quadriga and orders a couple of mass-charges - the relation of chariotry to infantry remains obscure. homer feels most at ease when his heroes forget their chariots and fight shield to shield in an unbroken line. this unbroken line is a post-mycenaean development of greek infantry tactics, and implies a changed social organization. the chariot-riding mycenaean prince used a long thrusting-lance, a figure eight body-shield, and a heavy bronze broadsword. the free citizens of homer’s day, however, fought in a close line, like the roman legionaries, and their weapons were a couple of throwing-spears, an iron stabbing-sword, and a small, round shield. archers, slingers, and cavalry supported them. homer omits cavalry but, though ajax fights in true mycenaean style and so at times do hector and achilles, he feels obliged to modernize most of the fighting in order to hold his audience; and often cannot decide whether a particular hero is armed with the single lance and body-shield or with two throwing-spears and a shield.

just reread the iliad and you'll probably see what i mean.

>>11499950
>he feels obliged to modernize most of the fighting in order to hold his audience; and often cannot decide whether a particular hero is armed with the single lance and body-shield or with two throwing-spears and a shield

I see. But wouldn't that just be poetic licence in the same way suddenly stopping the battle to describe a conversation on genealogy is? Maybe he wanted to add a modern flavor so that his audience would feel more at ease, since many of those listening to him probably didn't know the details of ancient warfare? That still doesn't show the presence anti-war contempt, I believe, it's just that he placed the enjoyment of his audience above realism.

>>11499950

Great description bro. Id like to rape your daughter in front of you and then kick you in the mouth until i can glue a cross together out of your teeth. That would shut your smug pussy-ass up.

Wat???

>>11499969
homer smuggles into book 23 a bitter comment on the monstrous slavery it entails, by awarding the winner of the wrestling match a copper cauldron worth twelve oxen, and the loser a captive trojan noblewoman valued as highly as four, because she is skilled at the loom.

re his not bothering so much with the battle scenes.

his account of immense earthworks built around the greek camp adds entertainingly to the legend - it has been suggested that, since the Iliad omitted any greek assault on troy, a Trojan assault on these defences was invented to supply the lack - but sometimes he forgets that they are there, and allows free passage between camp and plain.

at one point a parenthesis explains that, since the beach could not accommodate every greek ship, the latest flotillas to arrive were hauled up the strand in three rows. yet when hector attacks the hindmost row, he sets protesilaus’ flagship on fire - the first vessel, as we have been told, to be beached.

he is so careless, too, about the names of trojans killed - greek sword-fodder - that erymas, acamas and chromius get dispatched twice, and chromius lives to tell the tale.

books 16 and 17 are a sad muddle as regards time and weather continuity: first sunset, then bright sun and no cloud, then a rainbow, then a thunderstorm, then a long spell of fighting, then night falls.

hence the latin tag: ‘our good homer himself occasionally nods.’

>>11500009
you wouldn't last a week on my university course ;)

>>11499278
>ancient greek
>it's not that hard

>you haven't "really" read a book unless you read the original translation
>completely expecting people to learn some 10-20 languages just to cover Western canon and ancient classics

This board.

>>11500360
look man, if you aren't dedicated enough to devote the entirety of your life to the pursuit of literature, then you deserve none of its fruits and yes, those who are adroit enough to have secured the necessary excellence in linguistics will belittle you and YES, if you haven't read and studied a work in the original then NO you haven't REALLY read the book

this is a fucking literature board and I hope you know it, you pseud-slacker. literature isn't some fucking joke or game, it is literally one of the most serious subjects of study in human EXISTENCE. nut up or shut up.

we're done here.

anyone have experience with Rieu? pic related is the cheapest hardcover but if the translations shit i wont get it

>>11500474
Don't cheap out on translations dude. You'll only end up having to re-read it later.

>>11500373
It's not all black-and-white.

Demanding a knowledge of foreign languages is absolutely necessary, but you don't have to exaggerate it. You don't know the people you are talking to - what if a guy actually knows a lot of languages and is quite the erudite, but, due to some reason, does not know any Greek? This was the case with Borges, who could read Spanish, Portuguese, English, French, German, Italian, Old English, Latin and Icelandic but had to rely on translations to read his Homer as well as his Arabian Nights.

I agree that you should know some foreign languages, and I myself dedicate a lot of time to studying them, but you shouldn't belittle other people just because they don't know Greek.

>>11500474
I read the original Rieu (i.e. not the revised version) and it was OK. Because it's a prose translation, it sometimes feels like reading a summary of the Iliad, but at other times it's fine. Definitely not on the level of Fitzgerald/Fagles/Lattimore though.

But >>11500486 is right. I read it the Rieu the first time, and while it succeeds in giving a clear picture of the events, it has only a quarter of the force of the other translations.

>>11500524
>>11500373
The only important languages are really English, Russian, German, and French. Latin and greek are memes, read Celine's critique of the Greeks (if you really knew french, which I doubt you do and are only posturing about philology). The classics are essential, but frankly poor compared to literature of the past 500 years, only a pseud would deny it.

>ooh da strong tanned mediterranean man slayed the beast and fucked this queen and sailed around and founded chad city and they conquered everyone and were alpha chads blessed by the GODS

That's great but you don't need to study one of the most difficult and abstruse languages (ancient greek) to pick up on the (lack of) nuance. Respond to me with as many ad homs and assumptions as you wish.

>>11500486
>>11500529
thanks lads. Are you saying its accurate but not very enjoyable/interesting to read? I might just go with fagles then

>>11499150
Every day we have like 6 iliad translation threads. Just google or pirate the translations you fucking retard and decide for yourself.

>>11500574
>brainlet keeps claiming ancient greek is hard

its not any worse than latin, its an indo-european language the only weird thing about it is the inflection but its not very different from latin in that respect, and it has a shitload of cognates

>>11500580
Right, using sparknotes + a poetic translation is better than a prose translation. Lattimore is supposed to be closest to the Greek, but I haven't heard anything bad about Fagels or Green.

>>11500581
Because there's no obvious definitive translation.

>>11500586
>brainlet keeps claiming ancient greek is hard

No intellectually honest person would claim that learning ancient Greek isn't difficult to some degree. There are lots of verb forms to memorize including tons of irregulars, there's the tricky participle, there's the alphabet, the expansive vocabulary which is more distant than the Latin, and you need to have internalized all of that deeply before you can read anything on a meaningful level. And then you have different dialects. Homeric Greek differs substantially from Attic, and Attic from Koine, though Koine is the easiest of the three to read, and is essentially just simplified Attic. All of this is doubly difficult if you're a native English speaker, given just how inflected ancient Greek is, and how uninflected English is. It's not an easy language to learn. It's not classical Chinese, but it's not French either. Stop larping.

>>11500049
The mistakes are better explained by viewing the poems as a concatenation of different oral sources with no single poet composing them. Homer is a legendary figure and we have no evidence he actually existed.

>>11500586
>its not any worse than latin

LOL. 2/10.

>and it has a shitload of cognates
not outside basic suffixes and prefixes, brainlet

>>11500755
the homeridae (sons of homer), were a family guild of ionian bards based on chios who enlarged their ancestor’s first short draft of the iliad to 24 books, and became comprehensively known as ‘homer’.

doesn't explain why these mistakes are entirely focused on the warfare.

>>11501254
>the homeridae (sons of homer), were a family guild of ionian bards based on chios who enlarged their ancestor’s first short draft of the iliad to 24 books, and became comprehensively known as ‘homer’.
Might be, might not be. We simply don't have enough information to say anything with certainty. There are mistakes with the weather, but we wouldn't suggest the writer(s) was unfamilar with weather

>>11501268
we know pretty well about the homeridae, the ancient greeks thought homer was a man as well, born near smyrna, which is one of reasons why peisistratus served as patron to it's publication.

the mistakes with the weather were chronologically incorrect: bright sunshine follows sunset.

>>11501365
>the ancient greeks thought homer was a man as well,
Proves nothing. We don't have a single primary source within 300 years of the historic 'Homer'.

Fagles is nice

>>11501389
having no primary source of a man who lived 2,000 years ago is no strange thing though. we only have 5 facts about the circumstances of shakespeare's life (as such some people think francis bacon wrote his plays). in any case one could (and many scholars do) think from reading the iliad it is the work of a single poet of genius. though that wasn't really the point i was making

>>11499225
Good post.

>>11501425
Wtf Fagles makes the others look like hot garbage!

>>11501425
>>11501478
what do you think homer is saying in this passage out of curiosity?

>>11501478
The reason it's popular is because it's actually very good. Surprise.

>>11501425
Fagles writes more in the "historic present" which is the only objectively correct way to write.

>>11501690
it's a well-known fact that in the homeric poems no historical present can be found

You posted it. Be sure to read Knox's intro, as it will answer half the FAQs from beginners. Follow up with Pope's translation if you want something more traditional.

>>11501726
And?

Once again, everyone ignores Lombardo for no reason.

>>11502190
no one's heard of him
anyway broken metre seems to me an unfortunate compromise between verse and prose

>>11499526
>fellow prospective lawyer
>is based
I like you, please keep posting.

>>11501478
>>11501575
>>11501425
Are you kidding? Complete pleb shithead here, Lattimore's is better. I'm currently reading it and I even have a phyiscal copy of Fagles, but I'm sticking to my electronic Lattimore.

>>11502531
>he fell for the lattimore meme

>>11502531
how would you know unless you've read the greek?

Merrill

>>11502599
Which do you prefer? Because Lattimore is certainly superior to Fagles, unless you would recommend Chapman or something.

>>11502615
martin hammond

>>11502628
cant find it online

>>11502531
>>11502615
>muh literal translation
>oh god it's so close to the greek, look he even transcribes the names instead of using the english equivalents...........
>brainlet.jpg

>>11502708
That isn't my concern at all, turbonerd. It just sounds better to me when I read it. Plus it certainly does have that archaic flavor that Brazilanon was describing earlier. It's good. What would you recommend, if your opinion is so superior? I agree that literalfags are awful, Lattimore's just reads better too so it has both benefits.

Also, more importantly, would you recommend Ciardi or Mandelbaum for Dante's Comedy? I bought Mandelbaum but if Ciardi's captures the spirit of the original better, please tell

>>11502794
>It just sounds better to me when I read it.
Ultimately this is my chief concern as well. I prefer Fagles for this reason and did not enjoy Lattimore at all. I don't know enough about the Divine Comedy to give you a recommendation but Mandelbaum is certainly a talented translator.

>>11502663
https://www.abebooks.com/book-search/title/the-iliad-a-new-prose-translation-penguin-classics/author/homer-martin-hammond-translator/

>>11502853
Fair enough, it is definitely a matter of taste. Sounds good, I am at ease. I only worry because I prefer Ciardi's "dark wood" to Mandelbaum's "shadowed forest", but then I really like the latter's THROUGH ME THE WAY TO as opposed to I AM THE WAY TO...I'm sure I'm just being autistic and both translations are adequate if not great.
>>11502878
Thanks, I meant a free download but I saw this site linked before and it's a treasure.

I like Pope

Is Roche alright? I know Fagles and Fitzgerald are generally held in high esteem, but I had this old Roche translation from a class I took a while ago.

Here's my recent buys (except the Mythology and Euripedes)

>>11504674
>penguin