Butler writes plain prose without any formal rhythm. His sentences are short and direct: "Men come and go as leaves year by year upon the trees" keeps the image intact and moves on. Pope writes in rhymed heroic couplets, which imposes a regular beat on everything, and his diction sits at a conspicuously elevated register. In the leaves passage, Pope adds "Now green in youth, now withering on the ground" and "They fall successive, and successive rise," lines with no equivalent in the Greek. His Achilles speech in Book 9 gives "Short is my date, but deathless my renown," a phrase that has the snap of an epigram. Butler renders the same moment as "my name will live for ever," which is plain and clear. Neither is archaic in an impenetrable way, but Pope's formal period English creates more distance from a modern reader's everyday speech. Butler prioritizes readability and steady forward movement through the narrative. He compresses and paraphrases where the Greek is expansive, and he drops passages. In the Book 21 speech, he cuts Achilles's lines about the hour of his own death and the weapons that may take him, keeping only the emotional core. Pope expands instead: he adds the line "By night, or day, by force, or by design," which has no single Greek counterpart but conveys the general meaning. Pope's version is shaped for performance and was written for an audience that valued formal English poetry. Butler's was aimed at general readers who wanted the story. A reader who wants Homer's argument to stay in view will find Butler easier to follow; a reader who wants the experience of poetry on the page will find more of that in Pope.
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.
Achilles' wrath, to Greece the direful spring
Of woes unnumbered, heavenly goddess, sing!
That wrath which hurled to Pluto's gloomy reign
The souls of mighty chiefs untimely slain;
Whose limbs, unburied on the naked shore,
Devouring dogs and hungry vultures tore.
Since great Achilles and Atrides strove,
Such was the sovereign doom, and such the will of Jove!