Both Chapman and Pope write in rhyming couplets, but their line lengths differ considerably. Chapman uses long fourteeners (lines of fourteen syllables), which gives his verse a rolling, almost breathless quality. Pope uses the tighter heroic couplet in iambic pentameter. The difference shows clearly in the Book 1 opening: Chapman writes "Infinite sorrows on the Greeks, and many brave souls loos'd / From breasts heroic," where the line keeps pushing forward past what a shorter form would allow. Pope writes "That wrath which hurled to Pluto's gloomy reign / The souls of mighty chiefs untimely slain," closing each thought cleanly at the line's end. Chapman's diction is older and rougher, with an Elizabethan register that will feel archaic to most readers today. Pope's diction is elevated but more uniform, the polished English of the early eighteenth century. Chapman read Homer through Renaissance enthusiasm for heroic action, and his translation shows it. He adds energy and personal coloring, sometimes at the cost of precision. In the Book 21 passage, he has Achilles tell Lycaon to "seest thou not beside, / Myself, ev'n I, a fair young man," a phrasing that feels improvised rather than controlled. Pope is more interested in producing a finished literary performance for an educated English audience. His version of the same speech, "Seest thou not me, whom nature's gifts adorn, / Sprung from a hero, from a goddess born?" is shapelier and easier to read aloud, but it adds a rhetorical tidiness the Greek does not have. Chapman gains spontaneity; Pope gains clarity and polish. Each removes something the other keeps.
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.
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!