Translating Iliad, 21, lines 34-138

From reading Robert Lowell's letters and writing poems with the Southern (SCSU) poets, I have come up with both a summer project and a rebirth of my interest in Greek. I am translating a passage from the Iliad (book 21, lines 34-138, Achilles' encounter with Lycaon in the river), and I am re-learning my Greek. I had two years of Greek in college and graduate school, but had not read Greek for about 25 years. Now I am re-learning Greek by reading Homer's Iliad. I wish I had started with Homer in college.

I am using Pharr's _Homeric Greek_ (Boston: Heath, 1925, 5th edition) and the Perseus project at Tufts. http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/. A bit of the old and the new. And I am using my college text, Luschnig, C.A.E. _An Introduction to Ancient Greek_, Case and Phillips _A New Introduction to Greek_, and Mollin and Williamson _An Introduction to Ancient Greek_.

And I am looking at a number of old and new translations of the passage into English, from Hobbes, Chapman, Pope, and Butler to Lattimore, Fitzgerald, Fagles, and Ian Johnson. That part is fun, too, but that is more important for the 2nd part of my project: writing my own poem based on this passage. I guess that would be my own translation of the passage, but I think of it as my own poem as the english is mine and I separate this section from the whole of the Iliad.

This is delightful, and I am thrilled to be learning to read Greek again.


It is slow going. I have translated the first 5 lines! Ha! We'll see if I can do so much as five lines a day.