Translating the Iliad by Andrew Mackay

Writer and musician Andrew Mackay (Trinity, 1970) was educated at Uppingham and at Trinity College, Cambridge, where – the third of four generations of Mackays at Trinity – he read Classics and was a prizewinner. His previous publications include reviews, articles, poetry and short stories.

Well, what would you do if you were a bloke – a retired car mechanic and counter-tenor in fact – who was outclassed by his own family? Let me have your sympathy: I have a wife who is a Professor of Epigenetics, an Anglican priest and a former professional contralto, a daughter who read Greats at Merton, and another daughter who came top of the cohort in English at Cambridge, got a scholarship to do a PhD at Yale, speaks several languages and is also a busy paid soprano and a violinist. What would you do to get even? You would translate Homer, of course, having spotted that no one, unbelievably, has ever thought to write a line-for-line English translation immediately beneath the Greek in order to help modern students who, unlike us oldies, sometimes arrive to study Classics at Oxbridge having not even done any Latin, let alone the dialect of Greek in which Homer wrote.

Until now, the only Iliad translation literal enough to be of use to a student really wanting to get to grips with Homeric language has been Lang, Leaf and Myers, published in 1882 and still the best. Loeb is some use of course, and has been updated, but there is still the eye-strain of constantly having to look across to the next page for the English, there is no commentary, and the translation is by no means line-for-line or even page-for-page. It is often hard to find where you are in the text.

So I have spent the last eight years translating and editing the Iliad, and the two-volume work is now out, published by Machaira Press (machairapress.co.uk). But what is it like, devoting one's life more-or-less entirely to Homer? Does one get bored?

Did you really ask that question? Homer is never, never boring even after one has edited, translated, and written notes on 15,693 lines of dactylic hexameter verse. Admittedly whenever Joe Root and Ben Stokes are taking the opposition to the cleaners I have been inclined to take a short break and listen to Test Match Special, but the games in Book 23 are pretty exciting too. It's just a pity there isn't a cricket match. Achilles, obviously, would be a very fast bowler, and I fancy that huge Aias could be hard to dislodge from the crease. Odysseus "of the many wiles" (need I say?) is a left-arm spinner. As is well known, Schiller wrote: "Wenn man auch nur gelebt hätte um den dreiundzwanzigsten Gesang der Ilias zu lesen, so könnte man sich über sein Dasein nicht beschweren", but if the twenty-third book deserves such extravagant praise, how much more does Book One, with the superb account of the vicious squabble between Agamemnon and Achilles; or Book Six, with the heartbreaking scene between Hektor and Andromache; or Book Eight, with the description of the Trojans' fires on the plain, still sending shivers down the spine after the umpteenth reading? And are not the death of Hektor in Book 22 and the famous reconciliation of Priam and Achilles in Book 24 two of the greatest things in all literature?

And they, contemplating great things, sat on the highways of battle all night, and for them many fires blazed.

As when in the sky the stars around the radiant moon appear very bright, when the upper air is windless,

and all the mountain peaks and the high headlands show out clearly, and the glens; and from heaven the upper air, unutterably great, breaks

open beneath, and all the stars are seen, and the shepherd is glad at heart; in such great numbers between the ships and Xanthos' streams

appeared the fires of the Trojans as they kindled them in front of Ilios.

A thousand fires burned in the plain, and beside each sat fifty men in the bright light of the blazing fire.

And the horses, feeding on white barley and spelt, standing by their chariots, awaited the fair-throned Dawn.

Iliad 8.553–565

Praise for the translation

“I enjoyed reading this translation. It maintains a good balance between closeness to the Greek and natural and readable English … I am very impressed by the attractive appearance of the work.”

James Diggle, Emeritus Professor of Greek and Latin, Cambridge University

“The magnificent two volumes of your Homer have arrived and I’ve been leaping through them with awe-struck pleasure. Your fresh, highly readable literal rendering strikes me as simply marvellous – an impeccable job. Gosh how I wish I had your volumes by my side when I was writing my book Troy ! Congratulations Andrew!”

Sir Stephen Fry