What a difference a gifted narrator makes! When I listen to Dominic Keating read this translation, it sounds anything but formal and knotty: yes, it's rhythmic and filled with all the repetitive epithets so dear to Homer's heart, but boy does it have an impact.
I kept comparing it to another line-by-line translation that came out recently, the one by Peter Green, and found greater clarity in his. The language seemed unnecessarily formal, sometimes downright knotty. I had a hard time getting into this translation when it first came out. And, as told by Homer, this ancient tale of a particular Bronze Age conflict becomes a sublime and sweeping evocation of the destruction of war throughout the ages.Ĭarved close to the original Greek, acclaimed classicist Caroline Alexander's new translation is swift and lean, with the driving cadence of its source - a translation epic in scale yet devastating in its precision and power. Soldier and civilian, victor and vanquished, hero and coward, men, women, young, old - The Iliad evokes in poignant, searing detail the fate of every life ravaged by the Trojan War. From the explosive confrontation between Achilles, the greatest warrior at Troy, and Agamemnon, the inept leader of the Greeks, through to its tragic conclusion, The Iliad explores the abiding, blighting facts of war. With her virtuoso translation, classicist and best-selling author Caroline Alexander brings to life Homer's timeless epic of the Trojan War.Ĭomposed around 730 BC, Homer's Iliad recounts the events of a few momentous weeks in the protracted 10-year war between the invading Achaeans, or Greeks, and the Trojans in their besieged city of Ilion.
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