I read that recently too: it's also available at Gutenberg. He makes a persuasive, but not a conclusive, case.

I understand that he died shortly after it was published and scholars still haven't decided whether he was serious or he had his tongue sunk deeply in his cheek making fun of the pretentious.

I remember trying to read the Rouse translation when I was college and couldn't get through it. Fortunately, it was not assigned reading.

Afterthought:

Talk about geeky! Please tell all your friends and neighbors that one of the hottest threads on LQ is about the best translation of the Odyssey!

I'd like us to address the dilemma of translating the Odyssey. Either you make it a poem (as Chapman and Pope did) or tell a story, as most of the others did. I was surprised people like Chapman and Pope: they sacrifice telling an adventure story to force it into an English poem with meter and rhyme.

Because Greek inflects its words one can put its words into any order without changing the meaning of a sentence. This made it much easier to make every line have the same meter. To do this in English compromises getting the same meaning in the same number of words. It's no fun; if I can't have fun reading the Odyssey I don't want to. It's not scripture.

Samples of every (?) English translation of the Iliad & Odyssey:

http://johnstoniatexts.x10host.com/h...anslations.htm

Thanks: this is the most useful response.

Dunno about the Odyssey, but the best I've seen of the Iliad is Stephen Mitchell's translation that came out in 2011.