I'm almost certain that I read the Fagles' translation of The Iliad not all that long after it came out. (I was in a book club that read The Iliad but I'm not 100% which translation it was.) However, I've always wanted to get around to reading the Lattimore and Fitzgerald translations, since those were the main choices when I was in undergrad, and, thus, they've always been the only ones that "counted" for me. But how to choose?
I don't do it that often, but when I have to choose between two translations, I sometimes read both books, alternating chapters. I did this for Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita (ultimately siding with Pevear and Volokhonsky). So I started in on the first two books of the Iliad, letting Fitzgerald go first. I have to say, I've already made up my mind and prefer Lattimore. First, his introduction is quite useful (my edition of the Fitzgerald Iliad doesn't have any notes at all) and he seems a bit more high-minded (if not a little stuffy) with longer line breaks. Indeed, Fitzgerald seems just a bit too casual, particularly when Achilles (or Akhilleus as Fitzgerald has it!) berates Agamemnon. But really the deal-breaker for me is the completely idiosyncratic spelling of names that Fitzgerald adheres to. I've decided to go ahead and read both, but I will only keep Lattimore, and I'll put the Fitzgerald in my Little Free Library. I took a quick look at the Fagles to refresh my memory, and it is a solid translation, but Lattimore really seems to be what I am looking for.
I'll do the same double duty for The Odyssey, but again am almost certain that I'll prefer Lattimore. Then it will be Virgil's Aeneid. I think it is a little less clear in this case. As far as I can tell, Lattimore never tackled Virgil. Fitzgerald was the dominant choice of my young adulthood, though Fagles is probably a solid choice as well. Interestingly, several reviewers praise Rolfe Humphries (whom I only know through his translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses). If I can track down Humphries in a local library, then I'll see how it stacks up, and I may browse Fagles as well.
After that, I plan on rereading Ovid's Metamorphoses. I would like to take a look at some of Horace's Odes and Juvenal's Satires. Depending on how much time is left in the month (likely not much!), I might read On the Nature of Things by Lucretius. I suspect that will be it for the hard-core classics for a while, though either late this year or early next year I expect to do a plunge into Greek drama.
Anyway, it should be a pretty significant shift from the fiction I've been reading lately. That's not to say that I will enjoy The Iliad any more than the other things I've been reading. It's mostly about the petulance of these warriors on a marginally justifiable raid to reclaim Helen, when by many accounts she was perfectly content with Paris (or at least as content as one can be when compelled to act by the gods). In some ways, it is more surprising that there weren't more rebellions, saying essentially that a 10-year siege just to save the "honor" of Menelaus was pointless -- and that if that's what these alliances between kingdoms/tribes entailed, then they would be well out of them. I'm well aware you can't read ancient texts using today's moral standards, but I've really never thought anything in The Iliad was particularly noble or even that enjoyable, though I have much better feelings towards The Odyssey. I guess that really does beg the question of why bother returning to it, and that only answer is that because it is there (at the centre of Western literature) and I feel a strange compulsion.
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