Fagles writes in free verse with long, flowing lines and a contemporary American register that can tip into the colloquial. In the opening lines he leads with the single word "Rage," punching it forward as a declaration, while Green opens with "Wrath" and stacks the grammar more densely: "Achilles Pēleus's son's / calamitous wrath." Fagles's Achilles in Book 21 says "Come, friend, you too must die. Why moan about it so?" — the phrasing is direct, almost conversational. Green's version of the same line, "So, friend, you too must die: why then lament thus?", keeps a slightly more formal word order. Fagles's lines tend to expand with added phrases; Green's are more compressed, and he preserves the Greek line count more consistently. Green is a classical scholar and his translation shows close attention to the Greek syntax and epithets. He keeps "silver-footed Thetis" and "grey-eyed Athēnē" where Fagles often drops or rephrases the standard epithets. Green also marks long vowels in proper names with macrons, which signals a scholarly readership. What Green gains in fidelity to the Greek structure he gives up in spoken momentum; his lines can feel effortful aloud. Fagles, whose translation was widely praised in performance and audio recordings, smooths the Greek into English speech rhythms. In the Book 9 passage, Fagles cuts the opening reference to Thetis entirely to sharpen the speech's emotional drive; Green includes it, keeping the lines closer to what the Greek actually says.
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.
Wrath, goddess, sing of Achilles Pēleus's son's
calamitous wrath, which hit the Achaians with countless ills—
many the valiant souls it saw off down to Hādēs,
souls of heroes, their selves1 left as carrion for dogs
and all birds of prey, and the plan of Zeus was fulfilled
from the first moment those two men parted in fury,
Atreus's son, king of men, and the godlike Achilles.