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Does anyone have favorite translations of the Odyssey/Iliad/other classical stuff? I've been really wanting to read more of that kind of stuff, but I have roughly zero idea of which translations are good or terrible. (This is a lie, i know of one 100% totally terrible translation of the Odyssey, and it is the reason i am asking this question.)

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My professors routinely assigned Fagles and Fitzgerald.

But never fear! The internet has a quiz for everything: http://knightowls.org/odyssey/.

omg thank you you are the best

I studied with the Lattimore Iliad, so I have a soft spot for it. I remember it being rich and easy to read, but not at all modernized. I feel like I should check out the Fagles because that's the other translation folks I know love; I feel like from the bits I've read, his work is more colloquial and translated and... emotional, maybe? Anyway. I need to check out that quiz!

Seconding the Fitzgerald rec.

I vote Lattimore, but even better, if you can, get it on audiobook. It's oral epic poetry, and it's awesome hearing it. The Recorded Books version read by Norman Dietz is what got me obsessed at the tender age of 7. I think Audible had that one.

Ooh, that sounds wonderful! One of my teachers did take great pains to impress upon us that Greek epic poetry is made to be heard. I'll see if i can get a hold of it.

I'm another vote for Fagles for Iliad/Odyssey.

For other (Greek) classical stuff, though: both Robert Fagles and Philip Vellacott are great for Oresteia. Fagles is more forceful and dramatic, but Vellacott's language is gorgeous. Vellacott has also done all of Aeschylus's other surviving plays: The Suppliants, The Persians, Seven Against Thebes, and Prometheus Bound, which are all bundled into one convenient Penguin edition that I think is still in print. Aeschylus is my favorite playwright, and I recommend everything of his that survives.

Fagles, again, has done the entire Oedipus cycle (Antigone, Oedipus the King, and Oedipus at Colonus), and his translation of Antigone, in particular, made me fall so far in love with Antigone that she was living in my head for months. For all of the Sophocles plays, though, not just the Oedipus ones, the collaborative David Grene/Lattimore translations (there might be other translators, but the two of them were in charge of the project) are both good and very trustworthy. Sophocles I is the Oedipus cycle, Sophocles II is all the rest.

Uh. I don't personally recommend Euripides, because I think he "humanizes" mythic figures by making them vicious, small-minded, and cruel, but that is my own grump; many people love him! Vellacott, again, has a Penguin translation, Medea and Other Plays, which is beautifully done, and Medea is the one Euripides play I unreservedly recommend.

All of the above are very literary translations, which is to say, they're made to be read rather than performed. If you're looking for something a bit more performative or reminiscent of modern poetry, the "Greek Tragedy in New Translations" series is very good. I love their Seven Against Thebes, for example, and The Suppliants. The problem here is that they're expensive (more for a single play than for a Vellacott four-play collection), and libraries are less likely to have them.

...but, really, if no other classical Greek play, read the Oresteia! Cassandra and Clytemnestra are both amazing (as are the Furies, actually--I love Aeschylus's women), Orestes is the sweetest, most screwed-up darling ever, Agamemnon and Apollo are both dicks and the plays know it, and Athena has leadership charisma that comes off the page. You can't go wrong with either the Fagles or the Vellacott translation.

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