Thanks for the explanation. That makes more sense, and that's definitely not what Lombardo did with his Iliad. Lombardo stresses clear and accurate intention re

Thanks for the explanation. That makes more sense, and that's definitely not what Lombardo did with his Iliad. Lombardo stresses clear and accurate intention rendered into English. He retains a verse form, but it's blank verse. It's very much a spirit of the verse translation over the letter. For example, he'll drop epithets here and there, assuming you don't need to know for the thirtieth time that Achilles is the son of Peleus, but he doesn't drop all of them so that you get to see them. It is by no means perfect, but I've read multiple translations (Pope, Fitzgerald, Fagles). The Pope is kind of wonderful for what it is, but it's dated and extremely loose in order to fit his verse form, and I would not recommend it as a first translation. I do recommend the Lombardo as a first translation. It's worth noting that no translation truly does justice to the original language, but I don't think that possible or even necessary.