When I was either in junior high or high school, I spent a summer reading The Iliad and was very taken by it (though, as I think many modern readers feel when they read it, I was more sympathetic to the Trojan side and was disappointed at how easily poor Hektor was dispatched and how cowardly he was made in his next to last moments).

I read the Richard Lattimore translation. Not for any particular reason, it was what I found in, I think it was, A Blue Moon Bookstore in Clearwater.

This LA Review of Books piece looks at the various English translations out there.

After reading it, I’m glad I happened to read Lattimore. It seems like he’d most be my style. It also makes one want to go back, though to be entirely honest, I find it hard to imagine going back and reading The Iliad again, which does not, I admit, reflect so well on me. And if I did, I don’t know. I might read Chapman, just because he comes so high recommended by John Keats.