Butler's Iliad is in continuous prose, with no line breaks, no meter, no attempt at heroic cadence. He was a Victorian novelist and classical translator (he also produced an Odyssey), and he treats Homer as a story to be told clearly in the English of his own day. The diction is plain and slightly old-fashioned: "Sing, O goddess, the anger of Achilles," "Jove" for Zeus, "whine" for Achilles' contempt in Book 21. He cuts hard when Greek formulas would slow an English reader. The Book 9 passage compresses eleven lines into one sentence about glory and home, dropping Thetis and the silver feet entirely. Names are Latinized. This suits a reader who wants the plot, the speeches, and the arguments fast, without poetry getting in the way.
Sing, O goddess, the anger of Achilles son of Peleus, that brought countless ills upon the Achaeans. Many a brave soul did it send hurrying down to Hades, and many a hero did it yield a prey to dogs and vultures, for so were the counsels of Jove fulfilled from the day on which the son of Atreus, king of men, and great Achilles, first fell out with one another.