Introduction: The focus, and the main event, of this book is the tremendous one-to-one combat between the Trojan prince Hector and the the Greek hero Ajax, son of Telamon, or Ajax the Greater (see ll. 206-282). As in the case of the duel between Paris and Menelaus in Book III, the Greek had the better of the fighting, but neither warrior was significantly wounded. A significant theme of Book VII is the importance attached to the cremation of those killed in the fighting. In making his challenge to the...

Introduction: For information concerning Sabidius' previous translations of books of the "Odyssey", the reader is referred to the introduction to his translation of Book VIII, published on this blog on 22 October 2019. Now, Sabidius has returned to the "Odyssey" in order to translate the whole of Book V, the first book in which Odysseus, himself, actually appears. A brief summary of the content of this book is set out here. After a council of the gods in which Athene pleads to Jupiter that Odysseus should be released from his...

Introduction. Sabidius has previously translated Book I of the "Iliad" (20th March 2010) and Book VI (5th April 2012), and also on this blog is an extract from Book XVI (30th August 2010). Scanning, reading and then translating Homer's verse is invariably a great pleasure, and this particular book is no exception. After the quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon in Book I, and the celebrated catalogue of ships in Book II, in which the various Greek contingents are listed, accompanied by a thumb-nail sketch of their leaders, Book III...

Introduction. Sabidius published on this blog a translation of the First Book of Homer's Iliad on 12th March 2010, and the introduction to that is relevant here also with regard to its general comments about Homer. He now offers a translation of Book Six. This book is one of the most arresting of the twenty-two books, of which the "Iliad" is composed. It includes the meeting between Diomedes and Glaucus, which throws light on the ethics of warfare in the epic age, and line 208 contains the injunction "Ever...

Introduction. Following his translations of books 4 and 6 of Virgil's "Aeneid", Sabidius now offers a translation of the first book of the "Iliad", Homer's epic poem about the fall of Troy. Not only was the the "Iliad" the first poem in European literature, having almost certainly existed for centuries in oral form before being written down in the eighth century BCE, it is one of the most influential works of literature of all time and established the genre of epic poetry. For Greeks and later for Romans it...

Introduction. Readers are invited to look first at Sabidius' introduction to his translation of Book I of the 'Iliad' (see items from March 2010) for initial comments about Homer's great work. These short extracts, telling of the encounter between Achilles' bosom companion Patroclus and Zeus' mortal son, Sarpedon, demonstrate how entertwined are the considerations of the gods with the affairs of the protagonists on both sides. They also provide good examples of Homer's practice of repeating phrases, and sometimes even whole lines, which is a chacteristic of poetry which was initially orally composed. Here lines 455-457 are identical or almost identical to lines 673-675, and the same is the case in relation to lines 668-673 and lines 678-683. In this translation these lines have been italicised to highlight these similarities.