Agamemnon Calls Assembly (2.48-55)

ἠὼς μέν ῥα θεὰ προσεβήσετο μακρὸν Ὄλυμπον
Ζηνὶ φόως ἐρέουσα καὶ ἄλλοις ἀθανάτοισιν:
αὐτὰρ ὃ κηρύκεσσι λιγυφθόγγοισι κέλευσε [50]
κηρύσσειν ἀγορὴν δὲ κάρη κομόωντας Ἀχαιούς:
οἳ μὲν ἐκήρυσσον, τοὶ δ' ἠγείροντο μάλ' ὦκα:
βουλὴν δὲ πρῶτον μεγαθύμων ἷζε γερόντων
Νεστορέῃ παρὰ νηῒ Πυλοιγενέος βασιλῆος:
τοὺς ὅ γε συγκαλέσας πυκινὴν ἀρτύνετο βουλήν: [55]

Translation in Iambic Tetrameter
The goddess Dawn arrived at great
Olympus, bringing light to Zeus
and all the other gods. And he,
the son of Atreus, then bid
his clear-voiced heralds call the troops
to council. Call they did, and soon
the troops began to gather there.
But first he held a meeting of
the leading men, hard by the ship
of Nestor, King of sandy Pylos.
He framed a prudent plan and said:

Same Translation, Stripped Down, Not So Iambic
Dawn arrived on Mount Olympus,
bringing light to Zeus
and all the other gods.
So Agamemnon bid his
clear-voiced heralds
call the troops to council.
Call they did and soon
the troops began to gather.
But first he held a meeting
of the leading men,
hard by the ship of Nestor,
the King of sandy Pylos.
He framed his words and said:

Minimalist, Impressionistic Adaptation
Dawn lights the skies.
Clear-voiced heralds
call the troops to muster,
and Agamemnon
holds a meeting
of all the leading men.
He frames his words and says:

Comments
I’ve been experimenting more with different poetic forms and styles of translation. On the whole, I feel that the iambic pentameter has worked pretty well as a compromise between maintaining a high level of literal accuracy in the translation and giving the translation an authentically English poetic feel. And there is a lot more I could still do to improve my handling of this tried and true form; in particular, I could work more on its suppleness and its energy. However, I’m starting to suspect that iambic tetrameter might be a better form. Why? Because the shorter line forces me to whittle the poetry down to its essence, giving it a much tauter and more modern feel. I realize that by doing that I am taking another step away from Homer, for his style, while simple and generally unornamented, is not minimalist. But it is extremely economical. As Parry pointed out, of course, economy is the key attribute of the homeric verse system. So what I am beginning to think is that a very economical style—which in modern terms means a very stripped-down, minimalist style—is the way to go. Rather than aiming for literal accuracy, for example trying to include every traditional epithet, I want to begin aiming to capture the economy, the directness, and the general lively tautness of the homeric line.

But here I’ve provided three increasingly stripped-down versions of today’s short passage. The first one, in iambic tetrameter, is the one I favor. The other two are throw-aways—just for fun. But I do confess to liking the style of the third one. One could imagine doing a section of the poem in that style as a free-standing poetic experiment, but I don’t think it would work well on the large scale because it is too impressionistic to carry the narrative forward convincingly. But then, consider Christopher Logue’s achievement.