The Iliad

Wesley Callihan’s Iliad is based on the 1883 prose translation by the British classicists and poets Andrew Lang, Walter Leaf, and Ernest Myers. He kept its accuracy and much of its sentence structure, checked the Greek at a great many points, and took out the archaic Elizabethan and Arthurian diction that slows a modern reader down. In his words: “I have aimed to give a reading that is plain, rapid, and direct, but still noble; you will find no attempt at casual, much less slangy, diction. This version of the Iliad is more than just a revision—it is a new version based on that older one.”

Around the poem is the help a first reading needs. The introduction, in eleven parts, covers why Homer matters, how the early Christians read the pagan classics, the history and archaeology behind the story, the whole Trojan War, how oral epic works, the major characters and gods, and how to read the poem aloud. The running heads give the line numbers of the Greek text, so you can follow a lecture or another translation.