Fagles writes in a looser, more contemporary register. His lines are shorter on average and his word choices lean toward the colloquial: in Book 1 he opens with the single word "Rage" and later in Book 21 Achilles says "Come, friend, you too must die. Why moan about it so?" The directness is immediate and spoken. Lattimore uses longer, more end-weighted lines that carry the weight of the Greek hexameter, and his diction is consistently more formal: the same moment in Book 21 reads "So, friend, you die also. Why all this clamour about it?" Both passages translate the same Greek taunt, but Fagles punches it short and Lattimore spreads it across a slower cadence. Neither is archaic in the way of older verse translations, but they occupy different registers: Fagles is closer to a contemporary speaking voice and Lattimore to a studied literary one. Lattimore prioritizes fidelity to Homer's syntax and line structure. His version of the leaves simile in Book 6 stays close to the Greek word order: "The wind scatters the leaves on the ground, but the live timber / burgeons with leaves again." Fagles adds a phrase, "the living timber bursts with the new buds / and spring comes round again," which has no equivalent in the Greek but sharpens the emotional arc for a reader new to the poem. The gain in Fagles is momentum and accessibility; the cost is some distance from the original structure. The gain in Lattimore is precision and a sense of the Greek underneath; the cost is that his lines can feel dense to a reader working without prior knowledge of the poem. Lattimore's translation has been widely used in academic settings partly for this reason.
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.
Sing, goddess, the anger of Peleus' son Achilleus
and its devastation, which puts pains thousandfold upon the Achaians,
hurled in their multitudes to the house of Hades strong souls
of heroes, but gave their bodies to be the delicate feasting
of dogs, of all birds, and the will of Zeus was accomplished
since that time when first there stood in division of conflict
Atreus' son the lord of men and brilliant Achilleus.