Fitzgerald writes in loose iambic verse, with lines that vary in length and occasionally contract or expand to follow the weight of a moment. His diction sits in a mid-register, neither archaic nor conversational, and he is willing to reshape syntax for sound. In the leaves passage from Book 6, he writes "old leaves, cast on the ground by wind, young leaves / the greening forest bears when spring comes in," adding "old" and "young" that have no equivalent in the Greek but give the lines a felt rhythm. Alexander writes in long, end-stopped lines that run closer to the Greek sentence structure. Her version of the same passage reads "As a generation of leaves, so is the generation of men," keeping the simile direct and unadorned. Fitzgerald's lines move; Alexander's settle. Fitzgerald prioritises the reading experience on the page, shaping each speech for pace and compression. In the Achilles passage from Book 21, he cuts the catalogue of Achilles' self-description, giving the reader "Yet death waits for me, / for me as well, in all the power of fate," where Alexander keeps the parallel structure intact: "yet death and powerful fate is upon me too." Alexander, who is a classicist, stays close to the Greek syntax and preserves formulaic repetitions that Fitzgerald tends to smooth away. In Book 9, she keeps "outstanding glory will be lost to me" where Fitzgerald simply has "my glory / fails." That fidelity costs some momentum but gives the reader more of what Homer actually wrote.
Anger be now your song, immortal one,
Akhilleus' anger, doomed and ruinous,
that caused the Akhaians loss on bitter loss
and crowded brave souls into the undergloom,
leaving so many dead men—carrion
for dogs and birds; and the will of Zeus was done.
Wrath—sing, goddess, of the ruinous wrath of Peleus' son Achilles,
that inflicted woes without number upon the Achaeans,
hurled forth to Hades many strong souls of warriors
and rendered their bodies prey for the dogs,
for all birds, and the will of Zeus was accomplished;
sing from when they two first stood in conflict—
Atreus' son, lord of men, and godlike Achilles.