The Iliad1951
The scholar’s Iliad. Lattimore keeps a long six-beat line that mirrors the Greek almost verse for verse, preserving the formulas, the epithets, and the word order as far as English allows. The result is less fluid and more demanding than Fagles, and it can feel deliberately strange, but no widely read version stays closer to what Homer actually wrote. The one to read beside the Greek, or when fidelity matters most.