Whose Translation of "The Iliad" to read?

If you are going to read the book yourself, not as part of a university class,
I suggest the Robert Fagles translation. The poetry is easy to follow, and the introduction by Bernard Knox is superb. I like the Robert Fitzgerald version almost as well, but it lacks an introduction for the general reader. For me, the verse moves faster because it's largely iambic pentameter. Fagles verse is slightly richer, but slower—the verse is freer. The most rewarding and ingenious translation is Alexander Pope's. For poetry it is without peer, but it can be hard to follow if you don't know the story. So it's a "second read." A big plus is that each of the twenty-four books begins with a prose summary. Really the Pope is a must to see what can be done with an epic in modern English. Although it's in heroic couplets (rhymed iambic pentameter), it feels (and is) more contemporary than Milton, Shakespeare, or Chaucer. I have not read the recent Mitchell translation, which is abridged. And for some reason the Lattimore translation has never held much appear for me
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Published on August 28, 2014 13:21
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Michael   Lieberman
As the title indicates, this is my place to post my take on reading and writing. How to read, how to review, how write (oh, if I only knew), how to find a publisher (and how not to find a publisher)an ...more
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