Butler writes in plain Victorian prose, with no line breaks and a somewhat formal but not archaic register. His sentences run long and smooth, and he often compresses where Homer expands. In Book 9, Achilles' whole agonizing two-fate speech becomes a single sentence: "If I stay here and fight, I shall not return alive but my name will live for ever." Green works in verse, keeping rough line integrity with the Greek. His diction sits closer to contemporary speech: "a sick piece of work, a two-faced / liar" in Book 5 is blunter than anything Butler writes. Green also marks long vowels in proper names, a visual signal that his text cares about how the poem sounds when read aloud. Butler prioritizes a readable continuous narrative. He often drops lines: the full seven lines of the Book 9 speech in Greek become two clauses in his version, losing Thetis, the two fates, and the detail about Achilles encouraging others to sail home. Green keeps those elements. His footnote numbering in Book 1 ("their selves1") points to an apparatus aimed at readers who want to follow the scholarship. Butler's prose gives a reader uninterrupted forward motion through the story. Green's verse, with its line-by-line attention, slows the pace and keeps more of the texture of the Greek, including the repetition of "generation" in the leaves passage, where Butler paraphrases the simile rather than rendering it closely.
Sing, O goddess, the anger of Achilles son of Peleus, that brought countless ills upon the Achaeans. Many a brave soul did it send hurrying down to Hades, and many a hero did it yield a prey to dogs and vultures, for so were the counsels of Jove fulfilled from the day on which the son of Atreus, king of men, and great Achilles, first fell out with one another.
Wrath, goddess, sing of Achilles Pēleus's son's
calamitous wrath, which hit the Achaians with countless ills—
many the valiant souls it saw off down to Hādēs,
souls of heroes, their selves1 left as carrion for dogs
and all birds of prey, and the plan of Zeus was fulfilled
from the first moment those two men parted in fury,
Atreus's son, king of men, and the godlike Achilles.