Fagles writes in free verse with a contemporary register. His lines are irregular in length but move quickly, and he favors direct, punchy phrasing: "Rage" opens the whole poem as a single word, and his Achilles tells a pleading man "Come, friend, you too must die." The tone is urgent and colloquial without being crude. Chapman, writing in 1611, uses a stricter form: rhyming couplets of long lines, roughly fourteen syllables each. His diction is Elizabethan, which means phrases like "that invisible cave / That no light comforts" and "Patroclus died, that far pass'd thee." Those constructions require the modern reader to slow down and sometimes reread. The rhythmic pressure of Chapman's couplets is constant, and it shapes how individual lines land. Fagles prioritizes readability and forward momentum. His Book 9 passage strips Achilles's speech to its bare emotional stakes: "my glory never dies" against "my pride, my glory dies." The repetition is clean and pointed. Chapman prioritizes the complete thought over the single striking phrase, and he adds explanatory material the Greek does not contain. In Book 9 he ends Achilles's speech with "t' abridge my life for praise," a moral gloss that has no equivalent in the Greek. His translation rewards readers who want contact with an older literary tradition and are willing to work through the verse form to get it. Fagles gives a reader who wants immediate access to the story a fast, clear path through the poem.
Rage—Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus' son Achilles,
murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses,
hurling down to the House of Death so many sturdy souls,
great fighters' souls, but made their bodies carrion,
feasts for the dogs and birds,
and the will of Zeus was moving toward its end.
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.