Chaos Ensues (2.142-54)

ὣς φάτο, τοῖσι δὲ θυμὸν ἐνὶ στήθεσσιν ὄρινε
πᾶσι μετὰ πληθὺν ὅσοι οὐ βουλῆς ἐπάκουσαν:
κινήθη δ' ἀγορὴ φὴ κύματα μακρὰ θαλάσσης
πόντου Ἰκαρίοιο, τὰ μέν τ' Εὖρός τε Νότος τε [145]
ὤρορ' ἐπαΐξας πατρὸς Διὸς ἐκ νεφελάων.
ὡς δ' ὅτε κινήσῃ Ζέφυρος βαθὺ λήïον ἐλθὼν
λάβρος ἐπαιγίζων, ἐπί τ' ἠμύει ἀσταχύεσσιν,
ὣς τῶν πᾶσ' ἀγορὴ κινήθη: τοὶ δ' ἀλαλητῷ
νῆας ἔπ' ἐσσεύοντο, ποδῶν δ' ὑπένερθε κονίη [150]
ἵστατ' ἀειρομένη: τοὶ δ' ἀλλήλοισι κέλευον
ἅπτεσθαι νηῶν ἠδ' ἑλκέμεν εἰς ἅλα δῖαν,
οὐρούς τ' ἐξεκάθαιρον: ἀϋτὴ δ' οὐρανὸν ἷκεν
οἴκαδε ἱεμένων: ὑπὸ δ' ᾕρεον ἕρματα νηῶν.

Translation
Speaking thus, he roused the hearts
within the common soldiers’ chests—
all those who hadn’t heard the plan.

The crowd surged forward then, just like
some massive ocean swell—one from
the Icarian sea, a swell churned up
and driven on by gales from east
and south, from clouds of Zeus himself.
Or just as when the west wind stirs,
and drives his gusts against rich fields
and makes the wheat there bend and sway.

The crowd seemed thus as it was moved;
the men roared out a thunderous shout;
they raced to reach the ships; clouds
of dust were stirred beneath their feet;
they yelled from man to man, “seize
the ships and drag them to the sea”;
they cleared the course; they quit the blocks
beneath the ships—the din of men so bent
on heading home reached the sky itself.

Initial, Smoother Version of the last 6 lines:
The crowd seemed thus as it began
to move. They shouted their assent
and raced to reach the ships, and clouds
of dust were stirred beneath their feet.
They yelled from man to man to seize
the ships and drag them to the sea,
and as they cleared the course and pulled
the blocks from out beneath the ships,
the din of all these men so bent
on heading home shook the sky itself.

Comments
I’ve given two versions of the last 6 lines to show how it’s sometimes best to rough up the syntax and break the rhythm of a passage in order to reflect what’s going on in the Greek. In the Greek here, the poet seems to want to give an aural impression of the chaos and confusion that he’s describing, so the syntax is more broken up than usual—as Kirk puts it, the image is “enhanced by a sequence of broken verses and strong enjambment.” When I first translated the passage into iambic tetrameter I wasn’t thinking about that closely enough, and as a consequence I smoothed it all over, working hard to yield a smooth and flowing set of iambs. That’s the passage I’ve given second above. After I put that passage together, I reread the Greek and Kirk’s commentary and realized he was right. So I went back through and roughed it up in the little ways that you can see by comparing for yourself.

I also spent a lot of time on the similes. I figure the similes are the product of extra intensive effort on Homer’s part so they might as well be the same for me. I give myself a little extra license to use high-poetic diction and syntax in the similes, as opposed to the less ornamental diction and simpler syntax I use in the regular narrated passages. I’m developing three basic styles: a less ornamented, straightforward style for the passages of third-person narration, a rawer, more colloquial style for the passages of first-person dialogue, and a more ornamented, more obviously poetic style for the similes and for other short passages of narration where it seems that Homer was perhaps more invested than usual in creating poetic effects (as opposed to focusing his energies on the bread and butter of homeric poetry, namely, the advancement of the action through the deft handling of meter and formulae). But even though during the act of composition I’m trying to be conscious of the differences between these three basic styles, I don’t want the differences to be too stark but rather to register with the reader at a less than fully conscious level most of the time (the exception will be similes whose distinctive quality is meant to be obvious).