The Iliad of Homer | 
| Author: Homer
Creator: Richmond Lattimore
Publisher: University Of Chicago Press
Category: Book
List Price: $14.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  64 reviews
Sales Rank: 12810
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 528
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.1 x 1.2
ISBN: 0226469409
Dewey Decimal Number: 883
EAN: 9780226469409
ASIN: 0226469409
Publication Date: June 1, 1961
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Product Description
"The finest translation of Homer ever made into the English language."—William Arrowsmith
"Certainly the best modern verse translation."—Gilbert Highet
"This magnificent translation of Homer's epic poem . . . will appeal to admirers of Homer and the classics, and the multitude who always wanted to read the great Iliad but never got around to doing so."—The American Book Collector
"Perhaps closer to Homer in every way than any other version made in English."—Peter Green, The New Republic
"The feat is decisive that it is reasonable to foresee a century or so in which nobody will try again to put the Iliad in English verse."—Robert Fitzgerald
"Each new generation is bound to produce new translations. [Lattimore] has done better with nobility, as well as with accuracy, than any other modern verse translator. In our age we do not often find a fine scholar who is also a genuine poet and who takes the greatest pains over the work of translation."—Hugh Lloyd-Jones, New York Review of Books
"Over the long haul Lattimore's translation is more powerful because its effects are more subtle."—Booklist
"Richmond Lattimore is a fine translator of poetry because he has a poetic voice of his own, authentic and unmistakable and yet capable of remarkable range of modulation. His translations make the English reader aware of the poetry."—Moses Hadas, The New York Times
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| Customer Reviews: Read 59 more reviews...
 Invaluable Documents but...an uneasy read. September 8, 2008
I recognize and agree that Lattimore's translations of "The Iliad" and "The Odyssey" are the MOST TRUE to Homer and Ancient Greek we have ever seen.
Two minor examples: he uses long verse lines (like Homer), maintains Homer's sentence structure and he keeps and repeats all the Epitaphs exactly as they appear in Homer.
Lattimore's choice of words and sentence organization can sometimes seem jumbled and complicated and his manner/style somewhat archaic, it is because Lattimore is showing how Homer "sounds" in English as if you were translating it directly and perfectly from the Greek. That is Lattimore's aim, to render Homer as EXACTLY as possible. For this I am grateful...he has helped many to develop a more scholarly aptitude.
This aside,
I give it 3 stars because I find that his translation is not condusive to reading. Lattimore's 1950's American English is out of date and the story moves excessively slow. I often find Lattimore's Homer stodgy, hard, complicated, and often boring!
My favorites are still Stanley Lombardo's (Prosaic Verse) and E.V. Rieu's (Novel-like Prose) versions. Both full of fire-like Excitement, shimmering Beauty and monumental Drama.
I always recommend having 2 or 3 different versions of Homer on shelf, Lattimore is always on mine...not for reading enjoyment though but only for comparing.
Thanks
 Western literature starts here September 5, 2008
Having been a very lazy student in high school, I'm sure I was assigned to read the Iliad or Odyssey, but never did. A recent trip to Crete, and to the ruins of the Bronze Age Minoan civilization inspired me to read Homer. Considering the comments of reviewers who read the Iliad under duress as students, I'm glad that I read it on my own account.
Why read the Iliad? For one thing, it's where Western literature begins. The Minoans had writing, but their language is undeciphered. The Mycenaean Greeks adapted the Minoan writing system, and their language has been identified as an early form of Greek, but if they ever wrote any extended works, none have been discovered. That means that Homer and Hesiod, who are generally thought to have lived in the 8th Century B.C., are the earliest surviving literature in Europe. Homer is assumed to predate Hesiod. The themes of the Iliad - fate and free will, for instance - have been dealt with by writers through the ages, and continue now.
Homer's works represent the transition point where the legends and traditions transmitted orally since time inmemorial are first recorded in writing. The settings of the Iliad and the Odyssey are in Bronze Age Mycenaean Greece, and many of the traditional legends which serve as a basis for the stories undoubtedly date back far into prehistory. The style and contents of the Iliad have many elements which undoubtedly come directly from the oral traditions, most notably the Iliad is written in verse. These, as Lattimore explains in his introduction, are tools which the narrator uses (a) to memorize the tale, and (b) to help to help the listener follow along. A lot of elements are repeated, especially the epithets (my favorite is "Thersites of the endless speech") and descriptions of repeated events like religious ceremonies or the death of a warrior ("his armor clattered about him"). Reading it, it can seem a bit repetitive at times, but keep in mind that this is an epic composed long before it was transcribed to written language.
This is by no means easy reading, and it is quite long (485 pages). Things are usually developed very slowly. The plot of the story is actually fairly simple. Lattimore starts the book with a 50 page introduction, which is very helpful in explaining how the Iliad works. In the beginning of the introduction he gives a summary of the story which takes less than one page, but you would be missing the entire point by reading the "cliff notes". To give you an example, there is a description of Achileus' shield which takes up 4 pages, and which is an absolute highlight of the book. Patroclos's funeral is also detailed at length, giving a fascinating look at the culture in pre-Classical Greece (you can't be sure how much is from the Mycenaean Bronze Age, and how much is from the Iron Age Dark Ages, when Homer lived).
A lot of time is given to the interaction of the various gods and immortal beings with mere mortals. This is one of the most interesting aspects of the book. These gods are hardly impartial, loving, or "above things". They all have competing stakes in the outcomes of the war, and scheme and deceive humans and one another to affect the outcomes for their favorite mortals.
Not having read any other translation of the Iliad, I really can't comment on the relative merrits of Lattimore's translation compared to others. Lattimore's goal is to be as true to the original Greek sentence structure and the original meter of the verse. Since English and Ancient Greek have very different grammatical structures, this inevitably results in some convoluted sentences at times. Unlike some other translations, this one remains pretty faithful to the original Greek names, rather than the Roman ones (Zeus and Ares vs. Jupiter and Mars, etc.). This attempt to be faithful to the original is why I ultimately chose to read this translation. I really wanted to get into the spirit of the times, as much as possible.
BTW on the web you can listed to a recitation of the "Iliad" in ancient Greek by Prof. Stanley Lombardo, who also did a translation. I can't understand anything, but it sounds great, and you can really appreciate the musicality of the poem.
The BEST Iliad September 1, 2008
"The Iliad" is my all time favorite single piece of literature (even though I am a Shakespeare scholar), so I did not buy this copy to read "The Iliad" for the first time, but because my nearly forty-year-old and much read/much loved 1970 copy was genuinely falling apart (despite repairs with both packing and duct tape at two separate points in the past). So I bought it to read again and hopefully to last another forty years. The Lattimore translation is to me by far the best translation of the "The Iliad," readable, dramatic, accurate, and very, very beautiful. I recently also re-read the good and serviceable Rouse translation, and it's excellent--in fact for first time readers, I would probably recommend it since it's easier for new readers, especially younger ones, because of the simpler prose translation. However, I compared passage after passage and found the Lattimore to have many times the poetic POWER! "The Iliad" is after all a POEM, and Lattimore shows us the power of that gorgeous poetry even now three-thousand years later.
Worth Reading if You Like Greek Mythology June 6, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I love Greek mythology, so this sparked my interest. I had to read it for college and struggled through the first portion of it since it dealt with every man who was dying on the field. A brief description was given for each man. These were not the main characters so I didn't really care, but the teacher said it was to show that the nameless fighters each had their hopes and dreams in life. Maybe so, but if all that was taken out, it would have been more interesting faster. I'm the kind of reader who likes to get to the point.
However, after skimming through those details, I was delighted to find the overall storyline to be worth the time to read it. It was fascinating to read about the Greek gods and goddesses manipulating the Trojan War, so the war was more about the gods fighting each other and humans happened to be pawns in it. If you're familiar with Greek mythology, you'll love this because the gods had such distinct and colorful personalities that show up here.
I know Achilles was the hero, but I liked Hector the most, for he was a good father and husband. I won't spoil the ending but Homer did a great job of pointing out that good men can come from both sides of a war.
 One of our first war novels April 15, 2008
I used the W. H. D. Rouse translation.
One of our first war novels: the Achains and their allies send a great multitude of ships laden with armored warriors carrying bows, spears, and swords; divisions of horse drawn chariots rumble there way into the ranks of the Trojans and their allies laying siege to Troy. The Trojans counter-attack with a push all the way to the ships. And as we read, these gains and losses continue throughout the story. There is a short truce to mourn the dead and recoup, then the battle rages on only in our minds.
It flows like a song. Lucid, with wonderful imagery and symbolism's. Homer, with Rouses' help, bring out the details of battle and personalize each warrior: we learn he has a wife, a family, and a life elsewhere, after he has been cut in two and stripped of his armor. Men are slaughtered with an indifference, as if they were mere cattle. I found it hard to follow the extensive list of characters. I believe some of the realism was lost to modernization. I also found the knowledge Homer had of the human anatomy surprising. The footnotes were helpful. Better than Odyssey.
It is interesting to note: the gods control man, and man controls the gods. The two interact with each other; the gods send down their wrath and protections upon their favored nation. The gods are no different than the humans they try to control, except for their immortality. Hades is where all mortals go unto death. The parallels to the Bible are evident, with connotations of God. It can be hard to grasp.......a story that is 2,700 years old.
Wish you well
Scott
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