Lombardo writes in short, punchy lines with a contemporary American register. His opening, "Sing, Goddess, Achilles' rage, / Black and murderous," lands hard and fast, with the adjectives sitting close to the noun. Fitzgerald takes longer strides: "Anger be now your song, immortal one, / Akhilleus' anger, doomed and ruinous" circles the subject twice, building pressure through repetition. Fitzgerald's diction sits slightly above everyday speech, formal without being archaic. Lombardo's often drops lower. In Book 21, his Achilles says "You die too, friend. Don't take it hard," where Fitzgerald gives "Come, friend, face your death, you too." Lombardo's line sounds like something a person might actually say. Fitzgerald's sounds like a set piece from an older literary tradition. Lombardo cuts for speed and impact. In the Book 9 passage, he renders Achilles' dilemma in five clean declarative lines, keeping the emotional weight but removing the original's slightly formal rhetorical balance. Fitzgerald holds closer to the structure of the Greek antithesis: "if on the one hand... on the other" keeps the two-path logic explicit. Lombardo is clearly aimed at performance and oral delivery, and the Book 6 leaves passage shows this: he gives four lines where Fitzgerald gives six, dropping the detail of the wind and the greening forest to move faster. Fitzgerald keeps more of the image. The gain in Fitzgerald is texture; the gain in Lombardo is pace. Neither fills every gap the Greek leaves open.
Sing, Goddess, Achilles' rage,
Black and murderous, that cost the Greeks
Incalculable pain, pitched countless souls
Of heroes into Hades' dark,
And left their bodies to rot as feasts
For dogs and birds, as Zeus' will was done.
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.