>>24942552
Richard C Jebb is satisfactory

>>24942552
It depends on what you're looking for in a translation. Are you looking for them to be rendered poetically, or literally? Are you reading for pleasure or for study? I like the Pangle-Ahrensdorf translations, but they're literal and for study, and you might think they're wooden if you're reading for pleasure.

I will say that the Lattimore-Grene editions are hit or miss. I've found the Focus Library editions to be a nice balance.

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>>24942625
Not exactly what I'd call a singing endorsement, but ok.

>>24942690
I'd suppose I'm reading for both greater comprehension of Greek culture and their influence on Western thought, as well as enjoyment (if you're not enjoying the book you're reading to some extent... what's the point?).

I suppose to better answer this question I could tell you how the translations I've read so far have affected me.

>The Iliad (trans. by Lattimore)
With the Iliad, and Lattimore's translation, I felt like I had a really accurate picture of what the Iliad might look like in the original Greek, and for that reason it felt worthwhile. To have some "accurate" semblance of a story that is for all intents and purposes in the Western collective unconscious truly is a sublime feeling. I also greatly appreciated his notes as I'm the kind of reader that likes maximum context. That said, whether it's just the case with the core text itself or Lattimore's translation, there were absolutely sections of the book that felt like "work". The obvious examples would be the Catalogue of Ships, and the long sections of the book that are just the names of men being cut down and their backstories. But I suspect the tediousness of those sections would be present in any translation.

>The Odyssey (trans. by Fagles)
I originally planned to read Lattimore's translation, but as I said, I like having notes to catch all of the references and have maximum clarity. Upon starting, I immediately noticed a greater ease of reading. Whether this is Lattimore's prose, or again just the story of the Odyssey itself, it was markedly more easy and enjoyable to read than Lattimore's translation of the Iliad. No real negative notes. All I will say is with Fagle's translation of the Odyssey, it felt more like I was reading a story, rather than trying to integrate and internalize a foundational piece of Western Canon.

>Herodotus' Histories Landmark Edition (trans. by Purvis)
Equal parts work and play honestly. I LOVED the maps, photographs, notes, and all of the supplementary material. I literally read all of the Appendices (21 I believe) before I even started the core text, and I'm so happy I did. Translation was relatively easy to read get the feel of. It took some adjusting on my part (mentally speaking) to get the hang of Herodotus' ADD style of writing, but when I did make the adjustment, I really enjoyed the text.

>Thucydides' Peloponnesian War (trans. by Martin Hammond, Oxford World Classics)
By far the most tedious work. I was gonna go the Landmark route for Thucydides, but read that it used a super archaic translation. I had heard that Thucydides was a difficult read in Greek, let alone a translation, so I landed on Hammond as a more contemporary translator. This was easily the most academic/scholarly toned work (with both the tone of the translation and the notes). I feel better for reading Thucydides, but it was more work than play.

>>24942822
Hmm, well, let me put before you some of the renderings of the first strophe of the chorus on man from Antigone:

>Pangle-Ahrensdorf
Many are the terrible things, and nothing
More terrible than man!
Across the gray
Sea with winter wind this being
Travels, under surrounding surge
Of passing waves; and of the gods,
The highest--Earth the
Imperishable--he tirelessly wears away,
With plows going back and forth, year in and year out,
Turning the soil with the offspring of horses.

>Blondell
Awesome wonders are many,
But none of them more awesome
Than the human race.
This creature travels the gray sea
Before the stormy winter wind,
Pressing through surging waves that crest about him;
The highest of gods he wears away,
The tireless immortal Earth,
Turning her with the offspring of horses,
As the plow runs to and fro from year to year.

>Fitts-Fitzgerald
Numberless are the world's wonders, but none
More wonderful than man; the stormgray sea
Yields to his prows, the huge crests bear him high;
Earth, holy and inexhaustible, is graven
With shining furrows where his plows have gone
Year after year, the timeless labor of stallions.

>Meineck-Woodruff
Many wonders, many terrors,
But none more wonderful than the human race
Or more dangerous.
This creature travels on a winter gale
Across the silver sea,
Shadowed by high-surging waves,
While on Earth, grandest of the gods,
He grinds the deathless, tireless land away,
Turning and turning the plow
From year to year, behind driven horses.

My Grene edition is in my basement somewhere, and I haven't read the Fagles or Roche Sophocles. Curious abput Slavitt, I remember decent editions of Biblical translations he did.

>>24942937
I don't get it. Is he calling humans good or bad?

>>24943088
The word in Greek is "deinos" (it's the "dino" in "dinosaur"), which has an ambiguous sense to it. Consider the relation between "awesome" and "awful" or "terrific" and "terrible." It's similar to the Bible's "the beginning of wisdom is the fear/awe of the Lord." The chorus of old men may be praising mankind for its sway and ingenuity on the earth, or they may be bemoaning us as a creature with no sense of our proper limits.

>>24943100
Hmm.. Terrible seems better than the rest then.