For more than 650 years, Homer has cast a spell over writers in the English-speaking world. No one is quite sure where or when the poet lived, or even of the origin of his name. But talents and temperaments as diverse as Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare, and Robert Lowell have been inspired to reimagine all or parts of the Iliad and the Odyssey . The power of Homeric plot and sheer narrative drive has made the poems benchmarks for Western literature. For years, a prose translation by E.V. Rieu was publishing's best-selling paperback.
Today there are more English translations of Homer than there are of the Bible.
Steiner's anthology underscores Homer's relentless ability to entertain and enlighten. Homer's language was highly stylized and, even by ancient standards, somewhat archaic. Knowing this transformed our conception of the epics. Matthew Arnold, an apostle of high-Victorian culture, maintained that a proper translation of Homer should be rapid, plain, direct in expression and ideas, and noble in sentiment. While Lattimore's remains the ideal for textual fidelity enlivened by creative interpretation, the recent work of Princeton's Robert Fagles, accompanied by introductions of exquisite cultural sensitivity by Bernard Knox, have subtly and significantly altered how these ancient poems are now appreciated.