The Iliad / Homer; translated by Emily Wilson.
I have a confession to make, I was not a classics major and I never read The Iliad or The Odyssey. A couple of months ago I tried to read a seminal 18th century translation into English we have in our collection but hit the wall on the first page. I did not understand anything. Everyone was given a grandiloquent name. For example, if you read "The near-sighted man from the Hills of the Wallkill Valley" - would you have guessed it was a reference to me if I hadn't just told you? The first translation I attempted to read identified every character by way of a lengthy and obscure pedigree or origin story. When I had the good fortune to find someone called by their real name I could not connect the dots back to the "son of whoever" reference to the same person earlier in the text.
But Emily Wilson, a classical professor at the University of Pennsylvania, has published a 21st-century English translation of the Iliad that I can understand. Also of interest, I suggest that you read her introduction and translator's notes. These give you a grounding in the historical and cultural context of the epic as well as provide some helpful background information about the characters.
Not to disrespect the older, highly regarded translations from earlier times, but I found that these require the reader to take a course just to understand them. If you want a translation that retains the poetry and gravitas of the epic and is written so that you can follow the story without the difficulties I described above, read Wilson's translation of the Iliad.
