Which translation?

Finally getting around to the Greeks. Which translation is best for Odyssey and Iliad?

(While I'm at in, though separate again, for Aeneid also?)

HOW LONG IS OEDIPUS REX

>OEDIPUS REX
Ask your mum

Holy fuck this question gets asked every day. LATTIMORE.

And yet it's a constant battle between Fagles, Lattimore, Fitzgerald...

And Frederick Ahl for The Aeneid.

Any respectable classics professor will have Lattimore on the syllabus.

How about you just fucking google it and find some site that offers a translation comparison? Takes literally a few seconds.

Fagles reads nicely.

Alexander Pope BTFO

Lombardo no bully pls

Fagles is fine.

Lattimore for prose
Fitzgerald for verse

Ive read Fagles and Fitzgerald and enjoyed Fitzgerald slightly more

Fagles is good if you aren't writing any papers on it. So, purely casual reading.

If you don't set aside the time and pleasurable effort to learn Greek and Latin in order to read these, you're wasting your life.

Which to learn first?

You go chronologically of course. It goes without saying that you should have learned to read cuneiform,(hieroglyphics can be skipped as they have nothing of value), and Sanskrit before continuing with attic Greek.

you are a poser

How's this?

I have Chapman.

Did I fail?

fuck no
>Cloven-hoofed quadruped clatter kicks clumps, quivers plain at a gallop

Nah.

>translation
Don't bother

Sorry about the orientation.

Keats would like you.

Fitzgerald: too literal, soulless
Fagles: very poetic, but slightly dumbed down
Lattimore: the perfect blend between the two

Anything else is just a waste of time.

what does "slightly dumbed down" and "soulless" even mean

but did I cock up? When people talk of Homer's English translations they never mention Chapman.

Is it a bad translation?

It means that Fitzgerald autistically stuck to translating it literally and didn't give a shit about trying to make it sound pretty.

And Fagles is dumbed down because it was written to be a "modern" translation so people can understand it better. It's why it's the best selling version of it.

You have Fitzgerald and Lattimore backwards.

It means normal people might somehow be able to read it.

Has anyone read the translation by T. E. Lawrence? Is it any good?

I wouldn't know. But it's an old style translation from the 1600s (or 1700s, I forget which off the top of my head), so it might not be the best choice if it's your first time reading it.

The most beautiful translation, which is a classic in its own right, is Pope.

The most modern, easy to read translation (this isn't a bad thing) is Fagles.

The most faithful to the Greek (this isn't necessarily a good thing) is Lattimore.

I've read Shakespeare, Milton and Chaucer before, older style English all three authors.. I haven't yet opened the Chapman Homer (going through Pinecone's books now) though.

>rhyming Homer

IS IT BAD?

My classics professor assigned the Lombardo translation and I really don't like it. It just feels unliterary, like I'm just getting an account of the things happening in the most boring way possible.

It can't be that bad. Keats loved it so much he wrote a sonnet about it.

Maybe you were born that way.