#classics stuff

98 LINES, 80% COMPLETELY NEW MATERIAL

The post in question was an AU idea in the Captive Prince tag based on the 19th century theory that Ancient Greek peoples lacked the genes to perceive the color blue (due to extant Homeric vocabulary lacking a specific term for it). Modern scholars do not believe this is the case, since nearby peoples had specific words for blue (and in fact, Ancient Greek does have some of its own, they simply don't appear in Homeric texts) and the theory seems to have fed into a wider narrative about Eastern Europeans evolving 'slower' than Western ones that was used to validate the exploitation of Greece. What likely is the case is that perception-wise, blue and violet were not perceived as separate colors, but shades of one another. Ancient Greek color descriptions tend to fall on a spectrum of light to dark rather than hue to hue, so that's why you get the classic description of the 'wine dark' sea; the depth and darkness of the color are prioritized.

It depends on what experience you’re looking for! 

For what it’s worth; this is the Greek of the beginning of the Iliad if you want to read it out loud and get a sense of what two lines of the OG dactylic hexameter are like, and what they’re trying to match:

Mēnin aeide thea pēlēiadeō Akhilēos: oulomenēn, he muri' Akhaiois alge' ethēke

Probably Fagles (1990) is the best for everybody, it’s got probably the best flow (his translation of the Oresteia is also v. good). His translation looks like this:

Rage—Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus' son Achilles, murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses,

Fitzgerald (1974) is another popular choice, he has good poetic feel:

Anger be now your song, immortal one, Akhilleus' anger, doomed and ruinous,

Lattimore (1951) is probably the most ~acccurate~ line-for-line translation, I would use it in place of a dictionary if I was in a hurry sometimes haha it’s that loyal to the Greek:

Sing, goddess, the anger of Peleus' son Achilleus and its devastation, which put pains thousandfold upon the Achaians,

Or if you want to feel like Keats, you can go hog wild and hit up some Chapman from the 1600′s: