Chapman writes in long rhymed couplets that carry the weight of Elizabethan stage declamation. His diction is archaic even by his own era's standards, and readers today will slow down over constructions like "Infinite sorrows on the Greeks" and "that invisible cave / That no light comforts." Wilson writes in unrhymed contemporary English, with shorter, more uniform lines. Her register is plain and direct. In the Book 9 passage, Chapman gives "much of my fame decays, / But death shall linger his approach," while Wilson gives "I lose my glory but I gain long life." Chapman's line adds a slight theatricality; Wilson's states the choice without ornament. Readers comfortable with older English may find Chapman's rhythm pulling them through the poem; readers who want clear prose meaning quickly will read Wilson more easily. Chapman's version is a free adaptation. He adds material, changes emphases, and occasionally editorializes. In the Book 5 passage, he inserts the judgment "he is inconstant, impious, mad" and renders Athena's speech as a moral argument Chapman constructs himself. Wilson stays close to the Greek syntax and content. In the Book 21 killing, Wilson translates Achilles' taunt with spare, blunt lines; Chapman dramatizes with "Die, die, my friend," which has no equivalent in the Greek. Chapman gives a reader a seventeenth-century English poet's interpretation of Homer. Wilson gives a reader a contemporary scholar's close version of what Homer's Greek says. Each approach 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.
Goddess, sing of the cataclysmic wrath
of great Achilles, son of Peleus,
which caused the Greeks immeasurable pain
and sent so many noble souls of heroes
to Hades, and made men the spoils of dogs,
a banquet for the birds, and so the plan
of Zeus unfolded—starting with the conflict
between great Agamemnon, lord of men,
and glorious Achilles.