Richmond Lattimore

Richmond Alexander Lattimore (May 6, 1906 – February 26, 1984) was an American poet and classicist known for his translations of the Greek classics, especially his versions of the Iliad and Odyssey.

Quotes

I do not think nobility is a quality to directly strive for; you must write as well as you can, and then see, or let others see, whether or not the result is noble.
- Translator's Note to The Iliad of Homer (1951)

I wish to thank...all those friends who have sustained me in the belief that this work was worth doing, and refrained from asking “Why do another translation of Homer?”—a question which has no answer for those who do not know the answer already.
- Translator's Note to The Iliad of Homer (1951)

My forest night is padded soft with paws
and lit with yellow eyes. These monsters move
by stress of sightless leashes. So my bears,
my gentle wolves and leopards, whom I love
as a queen loves her slaves, nuzzle my hand,
move dark and silent up and down my stairs.
The night is full of the soft noise of fur,
and here before my doorstep every dawn
the lions open lazy eyes and yawn,
flex heavy paws, and purr.
- "Notes from the Odyssey: Circe", in The Hudson Review, vol. 21, no. 1 (Spring 1968), pp. 88-89

I wash the ghosts out of my head,
those moths, my moments; the girl-memories,
the tides, the teeth, the dreams are all undone.
Now I shall wash my hands and go to bed.
- "Notes from the Odyssey: Odysseus", in The Hudson Review, vol. 21, no. 1 (Spring 1968), p. 91

Translations

The Iliad of Homer (1951)

Chicago: University of Chicago Press

Sing, goddess, the anger of Peleus’ son Achilleus
and its devastation, which put pains thousandfold upon the Achaians,
hurled in their multitudes to the house of Hades strong souls
of heroes, but gave their bodies to be the delicate feasting
of dogs, of all birds, and the will of Zeus was accomplished
since that time when first there stood in division of conflict
Atreus’ son the lord of men and brilliant Achilleus.
- Book 1, line 1

Fate is the same for the man who holds back, the same if he fights hard.
We are all held in a single honor, the brave with the weaklings.
A man dies still if he has done nothing, as one who has done much.
- Book 9, line 318

But the horses of Aiakides standing apart from the battle
wept, as they had done since they heard how their charioteer
had fallen in the dust at the hands of murderous Hektor.
In truth Automedon, the powerful son of Diores,
hit them over and over again with the stroke of the flying
lash, or talked to them, sometimes entreating them, sometimes threatening.
They were unwilling to go back to the wide passage of Helle
and the ships, or back into the fighting after the Achaians,
but still as stands a grave monument which is set over
the mounded tomb of a dead man or lady, they stood there
holding motionless in its place the fair-wrought chariot,
leaning their heads along the ground, and warm tears were running
earthward from underneath the lids of the mourning horses
who longed for their charioteer, while their bright manes were made dirty
as they streamed down either side of the yoke from under the yoke pad.
As he watched the mourning horses the son of Kronos pitied them,
and stirred his head and spoke to his own spirit: “Poor wretches,
why then did we ever give you to the lord Peleus,
a mortal man, and you yourselves are immortal and ageless?
Only so that among unhappy men you also might be grieved?
Since among all creatures that breathe on earth and crawl on it
there is not anywhere a thing more dismal than man is.”
- Book 17, line 426

The Odyssey of Homer (1965)

New York: Harper & Row

Tell me, Muse, of the man of many ways, who was driven
far journeys, after he had sacked Troy's sacred citadel.
Many were they whose cities he saw, whose minds he learned of,
many the pains he suffered in his spirit on the wide sea,
struggling for his own life and the homecoming of his companions.
Even so he could not save his companions, hard though
he strove to; they were destroyed by their own wild recklessness,
fools, who devoured the oxen of Helios, the Sun God,
and he took away the day of their homecoming. From some point
here, goddess, daughter of Zeus, speak, and begin our story.
- Book 1, line 1

External links

Encyclopedic article on Richmond Lattimore on Wikipedia