Pope writes in rhyming heroic couplets, a verse form standard to his era. Every line pairs with a rhyme and holds roughly the same length, which gives the whole poem a formal, ceremonial weight. His diction is consciously elevated: "direful spring," "gloomy reign," "foredoom'd to die." Johnston writes in free verse with lines that vary considerably in length and carry no rhyme scheme. His register is contemporary: "that murderous anger," "you fill my heart with joy," "that fickle god." Compare both translations at the Book 21 death speech. Pope writes "The great, the good Patroclus is no more," a polished, symmetrical phrase. Johnston writes "Patroclus died, a better man than you," plain and blunt. The tonal gap between those two renderings is representative of the gap between the two translations throughout. Pope was not translating so much as rewriting Homer for an eighteenth-century English readership that expected verse to sound a certain way. His Book 6 leaves passage adds "Now green in youth, now withering on the ground," a line with no equivalent in the Greek, which speaks only of wind scattering leaves and new growth returning in spring. Johnston removes that addition and keeps close to the Greek sequence of images. What Pope gains is rhetorical force and memorability. What Johnston gains is fidelity to what Homer actually wrote. Johnston's Book 9 passage follows the Greek structure of the two fates almost clause by clause. Pope compresses the same passage to a crisp antithesis: "Short is my date, but deathless my renown." The Greek supports that reading, but Johnston spells the choice out more fully.
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!
Sing, Goddess, sing the rage of Achilles, son of Peleus—
that murderous anger which condemned Achaeans
to countless agonies and threw many warrior souls
deep into Hades, leaving their dead bodies
carrion food for dogs and birds—
all in fulfilment of the will of Zeus.