Lattimore works in long, loose free verse lines that carry a formal but readable English register. His diction stays slightly elevated without reaching for deliberate archaism. In the Book 9 passage he writes "my glory shall be everlasting," a phrase that is plain and serious at once. Graves is harder to place because he switches between rhyming verse and prose depending on the passage. His Book 1 opening uses tight rhyming couplets ("Sing, Mountain Goddess, sing through me / That anger which most ruinously"), while his Book 21 speech from Achilles turns conversational prose: "And look at me! Did you ever see so strong or so handsome a man?" The register shifts noticeably between passages, which gives Graves a less uniform texture than Lattimore's sustained free verse line. Lattimore keeps close to the Greek's sequence of ideas and its repeated epithets. In Book 5, Athena calls Ares "that thing of fury, evil-wrought, that double-faced liar," running Homer's string of descriptors into English with minimal compression. Graves reorganizes and paraphrases. His Book 6 "leaves" passage adds four additional lines of moralizing verse that have no equivalent in the Greek, and his Book 5 Athena drops Lattimore's near-literal rendering in favor of "that mad, raving fellow, that universal curse, that renegade." Lattimore's choices suit a reader who wants to track the Greek thought and formula. Graves's choices suit a reader who wants the material moving quickly, even if that means the translation adds and removes content freely.
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.
Sing, Mountain Goddess, sing through me
That anger which most ruinously
Inflamed Achilles, Peleus' son,
And which, before the tale was done,
Had glutted Hell with champions—bold,
Stern spirits by the thousandfold;
Ravens and dogs their corpses ate
For thus did Zeus, who watched their fate,
See his resolve, first taken when
Proud Agamemnon, King of men,
An insult on Achilles cast,
Achieve accomplishment at last.