Chapman writes in long rhyming couplets with a strong Elizabethan flavor. The opening of the Iliad makes this plain: Chapman gives us "Achilles' baneful wrath resound, O Goddess, that impos'd / Infinite sorrows on the Greeks," where the inversion and the archaic "impos'd" signal a formal, rhetorical style rooted in his own era. Fitzgerald writes in looser blank verse with a modern register. His opening runs "Anger be now your song, immortal one, / Akhilleus' anger, doomed and ruinous," where the direct address and plain adjectives keep the diction close to contemporary speech. Chapman's lines tend to run long and his rhymes pull the syntax into shapes the Greek does not require. Fitzgerald's lines are shorter and sit more quietly on the page. Chapman reads the poem as a Renaissance English poet would, giving his version energy and invention at the cost of fidelity to Homer's word order and tone. In the Book 21 passage, Chapman adds "rarely magnified" where Fitzgerald writes simply "how well-made," which is closer to the Greek. Fitzgerald consistently chooses words that serve a modern reader's comprehension: his Book 6 leaves passage ("old leaves, cast on the ground by wind, young leaves / the greening forest bears when spring comes in") follows the Greek image with little addition. Chapman's version ("The wind in autumn strows / The earth with old leaves") imports a seasonal detail Homer does not specify. Chapman gains literary personality; Fitzgerald gains transparency to the source.
Achilles' baneful wrath resound, O Goddess, that impos'd
Infinite sorrows on the Greeks, and many brave souls loos'd
From breasts heroic; sent them far to that invisible cave
That no light comforts; and their limbs to dogs and vultures gave:
To all which Jove's will gave effect; from whom first strife begun
Betwixt Atrides, king of men, and Thetis' godlike son.
Anger be now your song, immortal one,
Akhilleus' anger, doomed and ruinous,
that caused the Akhaians loss on bitter loss
and crowded brave souls into the undergloom,
leaving so many dead men—carrion
for dogs and birds; and the will of Zeus was done.