Pope writes in heroic couplets, the dominant English verse form of his era, which gives his translation a consistent, closed rhythm. His lines tend to round off ideas neatly: "Short is my date, but deathless my renown" from Book 9 has a balance and finish that owes more to eighteenth-century English verse convention than to Homer's Greek. His diction runs formal and elevated throughout, using words like "direful," "foredoom'd," and "immortal praise." Green uses a longer, looser line, often running past the natural pause, as in "two contrary spirits go with me until the end that's death." His register is contemporary without being colloquial, and he uses plain modern words where Pope reaches for grandeur. Green also spells Greek names with accent marks, signaling a different relationship to the source. Green keeps close to the Greek line count and word order, and he preserves details Pope removes. In Book 21, Pope condenses Achilles' speech and cuts the physical killing entirely, moving straight to the rhetorical point. Green includes the actual death: "his knees and dear heart gave way," the spear dropped, and the sword through the collarbone. Pope was writing for a literary audience that expected English poetry on its own terms, and his version reads as an independent poem. Green's footnotes and literal name renderings show a scholarly priority: he wants the reader to stay close to what Homer wrote. What Pope gains is a sustained poetic momentum. What Green gains is the texture of the original scene, moment by moment.
Achilles' wrath, to Greece the direful spring
Of woes unnumbered, heavenly goddess, sing!
That wrath which hurled to Pluto's gloomy reign
The souls of mighty chiefs untimely slain;
Whose limbs, unburied on the naked shore,
Devouring dogs and hungry vultures tore.
Since great Achilles and Atrides strove,
Such was the sovereign doom, and such the will of Jove!
Wrath, goddess, sing of Achilles Pēleus's son's
calamitous wrath, which hit the Achaians with countless ills—
many the valiant souls it saw off down to Hādēs,
souls of heroes, their selves1 left as carrion for dogs
and all birds of prey, and the plan of Zeus was fulfilled
from the first moment those two men parted in fury,
Atreus's son, king of men, and the godlike Achilles.