Caroline Alexander, a classicist and the first woman to publish a complete English Iliad, keeps long unrhymed verse lines close to the Greek word order and sentence shape. Her diction is modern and plain without sounding casual. The opening keeps "Wrath" as the first word, matching Homer's μῆνιν, and preserves the invocation's syntax instead of smoothing it into English shape. She favors literal renderings of fixed epithets: "gleaming-eyed goddess Athena," "single-hoofed horses." Achilles to Lycaon comes through cold and direct: "Come friend, you die too; why bewail this so?" The leaves passage states the comparison flatly, with no added ornament. This version suits readers who want to know what the Greek actually says, line by line, and who do not need a translator's poetic personality between them and Homer.
Wrath—sing, goddess, of the ruinous wrath of Peleus' son Achilles,
that inflicted woes without number upon the Achaeans,
hurled forth to Hades many strong souls of warriors
and rendered their bodies prey for the dogs,
for all birds, and the will of Zeus was accomplished;
sing from when they two first stood in conflict—
Atreus' son, lord of men, and godlike Achilles.