Verity's Iliad is set out in long verse lines but reads almost like prose, with no fixed meter and no attempt at the heroic grandeur of older English versions. The diction is plain and current: "delight of my heart," "this two-faced scoundrel," "why lament like this?" He keeps Homeric epithets intact ("Thetis of the silver feet," "grey-eyed Athena") and preserves the line-by-line shape of the Greek, so a reader can track the original closely. One telling choice comes in Book 21, where Achilles' grim "ἀλλὰ φίλος θάνε καὶ σύ" becomes "So, my friend, you too must die," direct and unsoftened, with no added drama. Verity, a classicist who also translated Apollonius and Pindar for Oxford World's Classics, suits readers who want accuracy and clarity for study or first reading, not poetic fireworks.
SING, goddess, the anger of Achilles, Peleus' son,
the accursed anger which brought the Achaeans countless
agonies and hurled many mighty shades of heroes into Hades,
causing them to become the prey of dogs and
all kinds of birds; and the plan of Zeus was fulfilled.
Sing from the time the two men were first divided in strife—
Atreus' son, lord of men, and glorious Achilles.