THE
ILIAD
CONTENTS
PREFACE: By Samuel Butler
Major Characters of the Iliad
BOOK I: The quarrel between Agamemnon and AchillesâAchilles withdraws from the war, and sends his mother Thetis to ask Zeus to help the TrojansâScene between Zeus and Hera on Olympus.
BOOK II: Zeus sends a lying dream to Agamemnon, who thereon calls the chiefs in assembly, and proposes to sound the mind of his armyâIn the end they march to fightâCatalog of the Achaean and Trojan forces.
BOOK III: Alexandria, also called Paris, challenges MenelausâHelen and Priam view the Achaeans from the wallâThe covenantâParis and Menelaus fight, and Paris is worstedâAphrodite carries him off to save himâScene between him and Helen.
BOOK IV: A quarrel on OlympusâAthene goes down and persuades Pandarus to violate the oaths by wounding Menelaus with an arrowâAgamemnon makes a speech and sends for MachaonâHe then goes about among his captains and upbraids Odysseus and Sthenelus, who each of them retort fiercelyâDiomed checks Sthenelus, and the two hosts then engage, with great slaughter on either side.
BOOK V: The exploits of Diomed, who, though wounded by Pandarus, continues fightingâHe kills Pandarus and wounds AeneasâAphrodite rescues Aeneas, but being wounded by Diomed, commits him to the care of Apollo and goes to Olympus, where she is tendedby her mother DioneâAres encourages the Trojans, and Aeneas returns to the fight cured of his woundâAthene and Hera help the Achaeans, and by the advice of the former Diomed wounds Ares, who returns to Olympus to get cured.
BOOK VI: Glaucus and DiomedâThe story of BellerophonâHector and Andromache.
BOOK VII: Hector and Ajax fightâHector is getting worsted when night comes on and parts themâThey exchange presentsâThe burial of the dead, and the building of a wall round their ships by the AchaeansâThe Achaeans buy their wine of Agamemnon and Menelaus.
BOOK VIII: Zeus forbids the gods to interfere furtherâThere is an even fight till midday, but then Zeus inclines the scales of victory in favor of the Trojans, who eventually chase the Achaeans within their wallâHera and Athene set out to help the Trojans: Zeus sends Iris to turn them back, but later on he promises Hera that she shall have her way in the endâHectorâs triumph is stayed by nightfallâThe Trojans bivouac on the plain.
BOOK IX: The Embassy to Achilles. Thus did the Trojans watch. But Panic, comrade of bloodstained Rout, had taken fast hold of the Achaeans, and their princes were all of them in despair. As when the two winds that blow from Thraceâthe north and the northwestâspring up of a sudden and rouse the fury of the mainâin a moment the dark waves uprear their heads and scatter their sea-wrack in all directionsâeven thus troubled were the hearts of the Achaeans.
BOOK X: Odysseus and Diomed go out as spies, and meet Dolon, who gives them information: they then kill him, and profiting by what he had told them, kill Rhesus, king of the Thracians, and take his horses.
BOOK XI: In the forenoon the fight is equal, but Agamemnon turns the fortune of the day towards the Achaeans until he gets wounded and leaves the fieldâHector then drives everything before him till he is wounded by DiomedâParis wounds DiomedâOdysseus, Nestor, and Idomeneus perform prodigies of valorâMachaon is woundedâNestor drives him off in his chariotâAchilles sees the pair driving towards the camp and sends Patroclus to ask who it is that is woundedâThis is the beginning of evil for PatroclusâNestor makes a long speech.
BOOK XII: The Trojans and their allies break the wall, led on by Hector.
BOOK XIII: Poseidon helps the AchaeansâThe feats of IdomeneusâHector at the ships.
BOOK XIV: Agamemnon proposes that the Achaeans should sail home, and is rebuked by OdysseusâHera beguiles JupiterâHector is wounded.
BOOK XV: Zeus awakes, tells Apollo to heal Hector, and the Trojans again become victorious.
BOOK XVI: Fire being now thrown on the ship of Protesilaus, Patroclus fights in the armor of AchillesâHe drives the Trojans back, but is in the end killed by Euphorbus and Hector.
BOOK XVII: The light around the body of Patroclus.
BOOK XVIII: The grief of Achilles over PatroclusâThe visit of Thetis to Hephaestus and the armor that he made for Achilles.
BOOK XIX: Achilles is reconciled with Agamemnon, puts on the armor which Hephaestus had made him, and goes out to fight.
BOOK XX: The gods hold a council and determine to watch the fight, from the hill Callicolone, and the barrow of HerculesâA fight between Achilles and Aeneas is interrupted by Poseidon, who saves AeneasâAchilles kills many Trojans.
BOOK XXI: The fight between Achilles and the river ScamanderâThe gods fight among themselvesâAchilles drives the Trojans within their gates.
BOOK XXII: The death of Hector.
BOOK XXIII: The funeral of Patroclus, and the funeral games.
BOOK XXIV: Priam ransoms the body of HectorâHectorâs funeral.
PREFACE
The headmaster of one of our foremost public schools told me not long since that he had been asked what canons he thought it most essential to observe in translating from English into Latin. His answer was that in the first place the Latin must be idiomatic, in the second it must flow, and in the third it must keep as near as it could to the English from which it was being translated.
I said, âthen you hold that if either the Latin or the English must perforce give place, it is the English that should yield rather than the Latin?â
This, he replied, was his opinion; and surely the very sound canons above given apply to all translations. The genius of the language into which a translation is being made is the first thing to be considered; if the original was readable, the translation must be so also, or however good it may be as a construe, is it not a translation.
It follows that a translation should depart hardly at all from the modes of speech current in the translatorâs own times, inasmuch as nothing is readable, for long, which affects, any other diction than that of the age in which it is written. We know the charm of the Elizabethan translations, but he who would attempt one that shall vie with these must eschew all Elizabethanisms that are not also good Victorianisms also.
For the charm of the Elizabethans does not lie in their Elizabethanisms; these are but as the mosses and lichens which Time will grow them upon our Victorian literature as surely as he has grown them upon the Elizabethanâupon such of it, as least, as has not been jerry-built. Shakespeare tells us that it is Timeâs glory to stamp the seal of time on aged things. No doubt; but he will have no hands stamp it save his own; he will rot an artificial ruin, but he will not glorify it, if he is to hallow any work it must be frankly secular when he designs to take it in handâby this I mean honestly after the manner of its own age and country. The Elizabethans probably knew this too well to know that they knew it, but whether they knew it or not they did not lard a crib with Chaucerisms and think that they were translating. They aimed fearlessly and without taint of affectation at making a dead author living to a generation other than his own. To do this they transfused their blood into his cold veins, and quickened him with their own livingness.
Then the life is theirs not his? In part no doubt it is so; but if they have loved him well enough, his life will have entered into them and possessed them. They will have given him of their life, and he will have paid them in their own coin. If, however, the mouth of the ox who treads out the corn may not be muzzled, and if there is to be a certain give and take between a dead author and his translator, it follows that a translator should be allowed greater liberty when the work he is translating belongs to an age and country widely remote from his own. For a poemâs prosperity is like a jestâsâit is in the ear of him that hears it. It takes two people to say a thingâa sayee as well as a sayerâand by parity of reasoning a poemâs original audience and environment are integral parts of the poem itself. Poem and audience are as ego and nonego; they blend into one another. Change either, and some corresponding change, spiritual rather than literal, will be necessary in the other, if the original harmony between them is to be preserved.
Happily in the cases both of the Iliad and the Odyssey we can see clearly enough that the audiences did not differ so widely from ourselves as we might expect after an interval of some three thousand years. But they differ, especially in the case of the Iliad, and the difference necessitates a greater amount of freedom on the part of a translator than would be tolerable if it did not exist.
Freedom of another kind is further involved in the initial liberty of rendering in prose a work that was composed in verse. Prose differs from verse much as singing from speaking or dancing from walking, and what is right in the one is often wrong in the other. Prose, for example, does not permit the iteration of epithet and title, sometimes due merely to the requirements of meter, and sometimes otiose, which abounds in the Iliad without in any way disfiguring it. We look, indeed, for the iteration and enjoy it. We are never weary of being told that Hera is white-armed, Athene gray-eyed, and Agamemnon king of men; but had Homer written in prose he would not have told us these things so often. Therefore, though frequently allowing common form epithets and titles to recur, I have not less frequently suppressed them.
Lest, however, the reader should imagine that I have departed from the letter of the Iliad more than I have, I will give the first fifty lines or so of the best prose translation that has yet been madeâI mean that of Messrs. Leaf, Lang, and Myers, to which throughout my work I have been greatly indebted. Often have they saved me from error, and rarely have I found occasion to differ from them as to the meaning of a passage. I do not believe that I have translated a single paragraph without reference to them, but this said, a comparison of their opening paragraphs with my own will show the kind of way in which I differ from them as to the manner in which Homer should be translated.
Their translation (here, by Dr. Leaf) opens thus:
Sing, goddess, the wrath of Achilles Peleusâ son, the ruinous wrath that brought on the Achaeans woes innumerable, and hurled down into Hades many strong souls of heroes, and gave their bodies to be a prey to dogs and all winged fowl; and so the counsel of Zeus wrought out its accomplishment from the day when strife first parted Atreides king of men and noble Achilles.
Who then among the gods set the twain at strife and variance? Even the son of Leto and of Zeus; for he in anger at the king sent a sore plague upon the host, that the folk began to perish, because Atreides had done dishonour to Chryses the priest. For he had come to the Achaeansâ fleet ships to win his daughterâs freedom, and brought a ransom beyond telling; and bare in his hand the fillet of Apollo the Far-darter upon a golden staff; and made his prayer unto all the Achaeans, and most of all to the two sons of Atreus, orderers of the host: âYe sons of Atreus and all ye well-greaved Achaeans, now may the gods that dwell in the mansions of Olympus grant you to lay waste to the city of Priam, and to fare happily homeward; only set ye my dear child free, and accept the ransom in reverence to the son of Zeus, far-darting Apollo.â
Then all the other Achaeans cried assent, to reverence the priest and accept his goodly ransom; yet the thing pleased not the heart of Agamemnon son of Atreus, but he roughly sent him away, and laid stern charge upon him, saying, âLet me not find thee, old man, amid the hollow ships, whether tarrying now or returning again hereafter, lest the staff and fillet of the god avail thee naught. And her will I not set free; nay, ere that shall old age come on her in our house, in Argos, far from her native land, where she shall ply the loom and serve my couch. But depart, provoke me not, that though mayest the rather go in peace.â
So said he, and the old man was afraid and obeyed his word, and fared silently along the shore of the loud-sounding sea. Then went that aged man apart and prayed aloud to King Apollo, whom Leto of the fair locks bare, âHear me, god of the silver bow, that standest over Chryse and holy Killa, and rulest Tenedos with might, O Smintheus! If ever I built a temple gracious in thine eyes, or if ever I burnt to thee fat flesh of thighs of bulls or goats, fulfil thou this my desire; let the Danaans pay by thine arrows for my tears.â
So spake he in prayer, and Phoebus Apollo heard him, and came down from the peaks of Olympus wroth at heart, bearing on his shoulders his bow and covered quiver. And the arrows clanged upon his shoulders in his wrath, as the god moved; and he descended like to night. Then he sate him aloof from the ships, and let an arrow fly; and there was heard a dread clanging of the silver bow. First did he assail the mules and fleet dogs, but afterward, aiming at the men his piercing dart, he smote; and the pyres of the dead burn continually in multitude.
I have given the foregoing extract with less compunction, by reason of the reflection, ever present with me, that not a few readersânor these the least culturedâwill prefer Dr. Leafâs translation to my own. Throughout my work I have taken the same kind of liberties as those that the reader will readily detect if he compares Dr. Leafâs rendering with mine. But I do not believe that I have anywhere taken greater ones. The difference between us is the prayer of Chryses, where Dr. Leaf translates âIf ever I built a temple,â etc., while I render âIf ever I decked your temple with garlands,â etc., is not a case in point, for it is due to my preferring Liddell and Scottâs translation. I very readily admit that Dr. Leaf has in the main kept more closely to the works of Homer, but I believe him to have lost more of the spirit of the original through his abandonment (no doubt deliberate) of all attempt at stately, and at the same time easy, musical, flow of language, than he has gained in adherence to the letterâto which, after all, neither he nor any man can adhere.
These last words may suggest that I claim graces which Dr. Leaf has not attained. I can make no such claim. All I claim is to have done my best towards making the less sanguinary parts of the Iliad interesting to English readers. The more sanguinary parts cannot be made interesting; indeed I doubt whether they can ever have been so, or even been intended to be so, to a highly cultivated audience, they had to be written, and they were written; but it is clear that Homer often wrote them with impatience, and that actual warfare was as distasteful to him as it was foreign to his experience. Happily there is much less fighting in the Iliad than people generally think.
One word more and I have done. I have burdened my translation with as few notes1 as possible, intending to reserve what I have to say about the Iliad generally for another work to be undertaken when my complete translation of the Odyssey has been printed. Lastly, the reception of my recent book, The Authoress of the Odyssey, has convinced me that the general reader much prefers the Latinized names of gods and heroes to those which it has of late years been attempted to popularize: I have no hesitation, therefore, in adhering to the nomenclature to which Pope, Mr. Gladstone, and Lord Derby have long since familiarized the public.2
SAMUEL BUTLER
AUGUST 8, 1898
MAJOR CHARACTERS OF THE ILIAD
The Achaeansâaka the Danaans or Argives (names used for the Greeks):
AGAMEMNONâking of Mycenae, leader of the Greeks, and brother of King Menelaus of Sparta
ACHILLESâleader of the Myrmidons from Phthia. A half god war hero, he is the son of sea nymph Thetis and the mortal Peleus. Achillesâ anger is one of the key plots of the story.
ODYSSEUS (Ulysses)âking of Ithaca; the smartest Greek commander, and hero of the Odyssey. Husband of Penelope and son of Laertes.
AJAX THE GREATERâson of Telamon, ruler of Salamis. He is the second greatest warrior after Achilles.
MENELAUSâking of Sparta; husband of Helen, and brother of Agamemnon
DIOMEDâson of Tydeus, King of Argos
AJAX THE LESSERâson of OĂŻleus, ruler of Locris, and often a war partner of Ajax the Greater
PATROCLUSâAchillesâ best friend, advisor, and closest companion
NESTORâking of Pylos and chief advisor to the Achaeans; father of Antilochus and Thrasymedes
IDOMENEUSâking of Crete
PHOENIXâelderly warrior and friend of Achilles
MACHAONâa physician to the Greeks
CALCHASâsoothsayer
Victims and Prisoners of the Achaeans:
CHRYSESâpriest of Apollo, father of Chryseis, not to be confused with Chryse, the name of a town in the Iliad
BRISEISâA Trojan woman captured by the Greeks; she was Achillesâ war prize.
CHRYSEISâChrysesâ daughter taken as a war prize by Agamemnon
The Trojan Men:
HECTORâson of King Priam and Queen Hecuba; the Trojansâ mightiest warrior
AENEASâson of Anchises and Aphrodite
DEIPHOBUSâbrother of Hector and Paris
PARISâlover of Helen (whose abduction sparked the Trojan War); son of Priam and Hecuba and brother of Hector
PRIAMâthe aged king of Troy, husband of Hecuba, and father of Hector and Paris
POLYDAMASâA young Trojan commander whose prudent advice is ignored; he often serves as Hectorâs foil.
AGENORâA Trojan warrior who tries to fight Achilles.
SARPEDONâOne of the sons of Zeus; killed by Patroclus. A coleader of the Lycians (who fought for the Trojans).
GLAUCUSâson of Hippolochus, a friend of Sarpedon and coleader of the Lycians
DOLONâa Trojan sent to spy upon the Greek camp
ANTENORâcounselor to King Priam and the Tro...