Fitzgerald writes in free verse with variable line lengths and a compressed, contemporary register. His diction stays close to modern English without reaching for archaism. In the Book 21 passage, his Achilles says "face your death, you too" and "Yet death waits for me, / for me as well, in all the power of fate," keeping the syntax tight and the feeling direct. Merrill writes in English hexameters, a long-line verse form that follows the metrical pattern of the Greek, which produces lines like "Yet over me also hangs death, irresistible doomsday." That line lands hard at the end, but the hexameter pulls the syntax into unusual shapes throughout. In the leaves passage (Book 6), Fitzgerald gives "old leaves, cast on the ground by wind, young leaves / the greening forest bears," while Merrill gives "Just as a wind pours some leaves groundward, and others the forest." Fitzgerald reads more naturally spoken; Merrill requires more effort from the reader. Merrill's hexameters are a scholarly commitment: the form mirrors Homer's own meter, and the translation carries all the Greek text's narrative moves, including epithets, repeated formulas, and full grammatical detail. In Book 9, Merrill translates every clause of Achilles' speech, while Fitzgerald cuts the opening reference to Thetis and the framing entirely. Fitzgerald's cuts produce a more emotionally immediate speech, but some of the Greek's structure disappears. In Book 5, Merrill keeps Athena's full rebuke of Diomedes where Fitzgerald gives only her reply to him, omitting her initial approach and the comparison to Tydeus. Merrill's version is closer to a complete rendering of what Homer wrote. Fitzgerald's is a reader's text built for pace.
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.
Sing now, goddess, the wrath of Achilles the scion of Peleus,
ruinous rage which brought the Achaians uncounted afflictions;
many the powerful souls it sent to the dwelling of Hades,
those of the heroes, and spoil for the dogs it made of their bodies,
plunder for all of the birds, and the purpose of Zeus was accomplished—
sing from the time when first stood hostile, starting the conflict,
Atreus' scion, the lord of the people, and noble Achilles.