The Iliad - Homer

I know, but I think that there's so much of Chapman in it that you can't really call it Homer. This is one of the problems I usually have with translations, it's often hard to tell how much is the translator and how much the original writer. I think Chapman's Homer is a brilliant work in its own right.

true of all good translations: 'a pretty thing,mr.pope, but you must not call it homer.' or the famous remark that translations are like wives: if they are faithful they are seldom beautiful; if they are beautiful they are seldom faithful.'

i can't work out whether i prefer virgil to homer

Quite. So I'm actually rather fond of these 'versions' (the one which springs to mind is Don Juan adapted by Simon Nye, though there are many others), where an actual translator literally translates the text, then a proper writer makes it into a proper literary book/play/poem. But I fear I'm too much of a linguist to really appreciate anything in translation. Except Pound's translations, but I suppose I read them as Pound rather than as other people in translation.

I quite enjoyed it.
My translation (I don't know if it's the same for every one) had all these little expressions they'd mention - like a title - for the characters

Now there's a tricky question (despite it not being a question, but I'll happily ignore that). There was a time when I was a hardcore-ovid fan, but then I discovered homer. Virgil I'm tackling at the moment.

Paris is a tw*t, btw. er, I mean, Paris of the withered gonads is a tw*t.

Weejimmie, thanks for the recommendation. That looks rather exciting.

I much prefer Homer to Vergil, but I think that's partly because I try to read Vergil as Homer, which doesn't really work. I know Vergil's good and everything, but Homer is just...completely beyond words.
The honorific epithet thing shows why we should only read languages with noun cases. Clearly they're morally superior


Totally. I don't much like Achilles, either.

the aeneid is simply great. it's got everything in equally sufficient portions (which homer's books, individually, can seem to lack), i.e. fighting, romance, personal problems.

In the original language, I always found Vergil far more interesting than Homer since there is so much more you can learn from the text, metre, imagery, doctrina etc Homer becomes repetitive after reading pages and pages of the Iliad/Odyssey in Greek.

(PS. how can I join the latin soc?...and is there are greek soc?)

Well, I've only read Book II of the Aeneid in Latin and a section of the Odyssey in (heavily adapted) Greek, but even so I vastly preferred Homer. Although I'm starting to think that I prefer Greek to Latin (but how can I choose?), so that might be something of a factor. Even so, to me, comparing Homer and Vergil is like comparing Shakespeare and Marlowe - much as I love Marlowe, there's simply no contest. And I think you might be right about there being more to the Aeneid, but it doesn't enthrall me the way Homer can. Look at me abandoning all pretence of rationality, I feel so pre-feminist

and just as a side note: there's a programme of channel 4 in five mins (7.30pm) all about helen of troy... it's 2 hours long so it could be quite interesting. i'm off now to watch it.