Photo courtesy of Aishaabdel via Wikimedia Commons.
A picture of a scene from Homer’s “The Illiad” which depicts the fall of Patroclus, a famous figure of the Trojan War and rumored lover of the hero Achilles, on the battlefield. Patroclus has often been a subject of fascination for translators of “The Illiad.”
By Lora Jushchenko ’25
Contributing Writer
Content warning: This article discusses sexual abuse.
Emily Wilson previously made a name for herself as the first woman to release an English translation of Homer’s “The Odyssey.” Now, with the recent release of her translation of “The Iliad,” she has once again braved the works of Homer to bring readers a new translation of the epic.
“The Iliad,” regarded as one of the most famous epic poems of all time, centers on the Trojan War. It is the story of a decade-long war indirectly started by Helen of Troy, the most beautiful woman in the world, which changed the Greek world forever. “The Odyssey” tackles its aftermath and the obstacles that then hinder the hero Odysseus’s journey home.
While Wilson was the first female translator to release an English translation of “The Odyssey,” the accomplishment is not a title by which she wishes her career to be defined. “The stylistic and hermeneutic choices I make as a translator aren’t predetermined by my gender identity,” Wilson said in an interview with the Los Angeles Review of Books. “Other female translators of Homer ... have made extremely different choices from mine.”
A classical studies professor at the University of Pennsylvania, Wilson has devoted her life to classical literature, from her elementary school performance in “The Odyssey” as Athena — whom she has called “the most kick-ass goddess of them all” — to her numerous classics-themed tattoos acquired over the years, according to OMNIA magazine. Although her translation of “The Odyssey” may have been the work that rocketed her to literary stardom, she had previously found success — albeit less mainstream — with her translations of the philosopher Seneca, as well as several Greek plays, according to Wilson’s official website.
In comparison, Wilson’s work on “The Odyssey” gained attention for her efforts to “scrape away all the centuries of verbal and ideological buildup — the Christianizing (Homer predates Christianity), the nostalgia, the added sexism (the epics are sexist enough as they are), and the Victorian euphemisms — to reveal something fresh and clean,” according to NPR.
According to Vox, while translating “The Odyssey,” Wilson discovered that previous translators had not used the most accurate terms when describing women in the epic, using the words “domestic servant” or “maid” when describing those who worked in Odysseus’ household. Wilson chose to translate these titles as “slave” to expose the slavery that had been unaddressed and ignored by previous translators, which Vox said she explained in her translator’s notes.
To use any other term would imply that they were free, according to Wilson. This word choice was meant to show readers that the society in which the story takes place is “one where slavery is shockingly taken for granted, [which] seems to me to outweigh the need to specify, in every instance, the type of slave,” Wilson wrote in her translator’s notes, as Vox reported.
Her major deviations in word choice don’t end there. For example, other translators chose to use the words “slut” and “whore” when describing young enslaved women who were forced into sex. The choice to use terms like these when they “don’t figure in the Greek,” Wilson told The New Yorker, is why she used the more accurate word “house girls.” According to the literary journal Ploughshares, this wording highlights their age to the audience rather than the sexual acts to which they did not consent.
Film Media Theater major Max Paster ’25 had their first encounter with “The Odyssey” in high school and was initially bored by the epic until they read Emily Wilson’s translation in a classics course at Mount Holyoke College.
“The humor, the timing, and the prose kept me hooked the entire time I was reading. … I wouldn’t necessarily call hers a feminist reading of the story, but I do believe that the way she wrote it was more aware of different societal constructs and customs, both modern and ancient,” Paster said. “I am very excited to read her translation of The Iliad. … I am sure this translation will be a riveting and fun read.”
Much like how Wilson read passages of “The Odyssey” for audiences years ago, she once again took to stages around the world, from New York City to London, to perform sections of “The Iliad.” Her translation’s structure — composed, like the original, in unrhymed iambic pentameter — was originally crafted to be read aloud. “I hope my translation ... will convey to English readers that these are metrical poems designed for oral performance,” Wilson said in a TikTok from The New Yorker.
The New Yorker reported that “The Iliad” has given Wilson a chance to defend herself against those who doubt her abilities and who “have questioned a woman’s fitness to do Homer justice.”
“Any woman who has lived with male rage at close range has a better chance of understanding the vulnerability that fuels it than your average bro. She learns firsthand how the ways in which men are damaged determine their need to wreak damage on others,” Wilson told The New Yorker.
Wilson may have her gender placed before her profession when discussed in the media, but this does not diminish her talents as a translator who has completely reinvented the major Greek epics of Homer, making them perfect for our current generation while staying faithful to their message.