Fagles writes in free verse with long, breathing lines that expand and contract with the action. The diction is modern and direct, sometimes colloquial: Ares becomes a "double-dealing, lying two-face god," and Achilles tells the dying Lycaon "Come, friend, you too must die." He often adds emphasis the Greek leaves bare. The famous opening compresses fourteen lines to six and stages "Rage" as a single word, isolated, before the invocation arrives. He drops Homer's formulaic patronymics and place-names when they would slow an English reader, and he punches up emotional beats with exclamations and repetition ("my pride, my glory dies"). Robert Fagles taught at Princeton and his Iliad was widely praised on release. Good for first-time readers and for reading aloud.
Rage—Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus' son Achilles,
murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses,
hurling down to the House of Death so many sturdy souls,
great fighters' souls, but made their bodies carrion,
feasts for the dogs and birds,
and the will of Zeus was moving toward its end.