ANDREW LANG WE NEED HOMER AND THE STUDY OF GREEK

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Page 9

This appears pretty bad, and nearly as un-Homeric as a translation could possibly be. But Pope, aided by Broome and Fenton, managed to be much less Homeric, much more absurd, and infinitely more "classical" in the sense in which Pope is classical:

"O race to death devote! with Stygian shade Each destined peer impending fates invade; With tears your wan distorted cheeks are drowned; With sanguine drops the walls are rubied round: Thick swarms the spacious hall with howling ghosts, To people Orcus and the burning coasts! Nor gives the sun his golden orb to roll, But universal night usurps the pole."

Who could have conjectured that even Pope would wander away so far from his matchless original? "Wretches!" cries Theoclymenus, the seer; and that becomes, "O race to death devote!" "Your heads are swathed in night," turns into "With Stygian shade each destined peer" (peer is good!) "impending fates invade," where Homer says nothing about Styx nor peers. The Latin Orcus takes the place of Erebus, and "the burning coasts" are derived from modern popular theology. The very grammar detains or defies the reader; is it the sun that does not give his golden orb to roll, or who, or what?

The only place where the latter-day Broome or Fenton can flatter himself that he rivals Pope at his own game is--

"What pearly drop the ashen cheek bedews!"

This is, if possible, more classical than Pope's own--

"With tears your wan distorted cheeks are drowned."

But Pope nobly revindicates his unparalleled power of translating funnily, when, in place of "the walls drip with blood," he writes--

"With sanguine drops the walls are rubied round."

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The Greek Word Course : Lessons in Ancient Greek

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