The Iliad and the Odyssey have been translated into English again and again over the past several centuries, and about once every two decades a translator emerges as Homer’s standard-bearer for a generation. E. V. Rieu astonished the English-speaking world with his simple, direct prose translation of the Odyssey in 1945, which was to the world of classics what the GI Bill was to a college education: a ticket in for the common man who wanted to know more. Robert Fitzgerald and Richmond Lattimore became the darlings of classics-in-translation syllabi in the 1960s, where they have remained, though challenged for supremacy in the 1990s by Robert Fagles. Excellent translations followed — Lombardo, Alexander, Mitchell, all with virtues — without ever matching the sales numbers of the standard-bearers. Then, in 2018, Emily Wilson issued her Odyssey, which became a sensation.
The Wilson Odyssey was remarkable. It marked a return to metrical regularity, written in ream after ream of glorious iambic pentameter. A page or two of Wilson made it abundantly clear just how much rhythmic drive we lost with the amorphous “five- or six-beat line” that had become de rigueur for modern Homer. She also aimed directly for “contemporary Anglophone speech,” the register of common talk. Whether or not this painted a true picture of Homer — epic poetry in the Greek tradition has generally been understood as exalted rather than common — it certainly fulfilled the need that Rieu and Fagles had sought to meet, for readable epic. Third, Wilson sought to match the Odyssey line for line: She wrote 12,110 verses for Homer’s 12,110 verses.
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