This is the classic Iliad matchup, and the real question is what you want from the poem. Choose Richmond Lattimore if you want Homer as close to the Greek as English gets; choose Robert Fagles if you want him dramatic, spoken, and alive on the page. Lattimore hands you the architecture; Fagles hands you the performance.
Read Fagles if you want a dramatic, lucid Iliad you can hear and actually finish — the version classrooms have leaned on for decades.
Read Lattimore if you want the closest mirror of the Greek in English, and don't mind a graver, slower line.
Richmond Lattimore (1906–1984) was a poet and classical scholar whose 1951 Iliad, published by the University of Chicago Press, has been the scholar's standard for more than seventy years. His guiding principle was fidelity: he rendered the poem in a long, six-beat line, matched it closely to the Greek line for line, and kept Homer's formulaic epithets and word order visible in the English. Reading Lattimore, you are as close to seeing the shape of the original as a translation allows.
Robert Fagles (1933–2008) was a Princeton scholar and one of the rare translators to carry all three great epics into English — the Iliad, the Odyssey, and Virgil's Aeneid. His 1990 Iliad (Viking/Penguin), introduced by the classicist Bernard Knox, runs in long, loose, unrhymed lines of roughly six beats. He set out for grandeur and voice: a Homer that sounds like a bard performing, not a text being studied, and it won the Academy of American Poets' Harold Morton Landon Translation Award.
Homer's very first word is menin — "wrath." Everything the poem will do is packed into where each translator chooses to put it.
Lattimore opens: "Sing, goddess, the anger of Peleus' son Achilleus / and its devastation…" It is measured and faithful, following the Greek's own procession of ideas, and it keeps the hero's name in its Greek form, Achilleus. This is the translation as clear glass: it tries to add nothing and take nothing away.
Fagles opens: "Rage — Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus' son Achilles, / murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses…" He throws the single word Rage to the very front, off the top of the line, exactly where Homer's menin stands in the Greek — then lets it detonate. It is the more dramatic English, and, in this one respect, closer to the Greek's own hammer-blow opening.
So the choice is between two kinds of faithfulness. Lattimore is faithful to the whole architecture, line by line; Fagles is faithful to the force. Neither is simply more "Homeric" — the Greek is at once exact and overwhelming, and each translator has chosen which truth to carry across.
| Richmond Lattimore | Robert Fagles | |
|---|---|---|
| Form / meter | Long six-beat line, unrhymed | Free verse, long loose lines (~6 beats) |
| Tone | Grave, exact, faithful | Dramatic, rhapsodic, performative |
| Line economy | Line-for-line with the Greek; epithets kept | Expansive; heightens and dramatizes |
| For a first-timer | Rewarding but demanding | Very high — clear and gripping |
| Closeness to the Greek | Its structure and formulaic texture | Its grandeur and oral force |
| Best read… | Slowly, with the Greek nearby | Aloud — built for the speaking voice |
| Year | 1951 | 1990 |
First-time readers — Fagles. His drama and clarity pull you through the battle books without wrestling the language; you reach the end instead of stalling in the middle.
Students & close readers — Lattimore (with Fagles alongside). When the task is to see what Homer actually wrote — word order, epithets, the shape of a simile — Lattimore is the one to point to. Many courses read Fagles and consult Lattimore.
Listeners & reading aloud — Fagles. His rolling lines were built for performance and carry beautifully in the voice.
Scholars & Greek learners — Lattimore. If you want the English to stay transparent to the original, nothing among the modern verse translations serves you better.
If you're new to the poem, start with our recommended translation and read the short companion first — it makes either version easier to follow.
See our recommended Iliad →
Is Lattimore more accurate than Fagles?
In the literal sense, yes — Lattimore hews closer to the Greek's word order, line count, and epithets. Fagles takes more freedom with phrasing to heighten the drama and the spoken music. Both are the work of serious classicists making different, defensible choices.
Which is easier to read?
Fagles, for most readers. His free verse is dramatic and forward-moving; Lattimore's long, faithful line is rewarding but slower and more demanding.
Which is better for students?
Both are standard. Fagles is the more common assigned reading, with Bernard Knox's introduction; Lattimore is the one to consult when working closely against the Greek. Many courses use them together.
Which is more faithful to the original Greek?
It depends what "faithful" means. Lattimore mirrors the Greek's structure and formulaic texture line by line; Fagles is more faithful to its grandeur and oral quality. The Greek holds both at once — which is why two excellent translations can feel so different.