The Iliad : The Fitzgerald Translation

The Iliad : The Fitzgerald Translation
ISBN: 9780374529055
Publication Date: 3 April 2004

Anger be now your song, immortal one,
Akhilleus' anger, doomed and ruinous,
that caused the Akhaians loss on bitter loss
and crowded brave souls into the undergloom,
leaving so many dead men-carrion
for dogs and birds; and the will of Zeus was done.
Lines 1-6

Since it was first published more than twenty-five years ago, Robert Fitzgerald's prizewinning translation of Homer's battle epic has become a classic in its own right: a standard against which all other versions of The Iliad are compared. Fitzgerald's work is accessible, ironic, faithful, written in a swift vernacular blank verse that 'makes Homer live as never before' (Library Journal).

In an introduction written especially for this edition, Andrew Ford, professor of classics at Princeton University and author of Homer: The Poetry of the Past, situates The Iliad both in the widespread ancient tradition of heroic songs and in relation to the specific concerns of archaic Greece, while also fully illuminating the strength of storytelling that is this poem's greatest enduring legacy.

Fitzgerald's definitive translation of Homer's epic is timeless in its authority and always fresh in its vivid rendering of the preeminent war story of the Western world.

Winner of the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award.

About the Author

Robert Fitzgerald's translations of The Iliad, The Odyssey, The Aeneid, and the Oedipus plays of Sophocles (created with Dudley Fitts) are modern classics. An admired poet and teacher of writing, Fitzgerald died in 1985.