Both are superb, so the real question is what you want from the voyage. Choose Emily Wilson if you want Homer swift, clear, and human; choose Robert Fagles if you want him grand, sweeping, and rhapsodic. Wilson hands you a map; Fagles hands you the open sea.
Read Wilson if you want a fast, lucid, modern Odyssey you can actually finish — and hear every word.
Read Fagles if you want the full orchestral swell of epic, the version classrooms have leaned on for decades.
Emily Wilson is a classics professor at the University of Pennsylvania and, with this 2017 Norton translation, the first woman to publish a complete English translation of the Odyssey from the Greek. Her aim was discipline and clarity: she held herself to the original's length — line for line, 12,110 lines — and rendered the poem in iambic pentameter, the native meter of English verse from Shakespeare to Keats. The result is plain, propulsive, and unmistakably modern.
Robert Fagles (1933–2008) was a Princeton scholar and one of the rare translators to carry all three great epics into English — the Iliad, the Odyssey, and Virgil's Aeneid. His 1996 Odyssey (Viking/Penguin), introduced by the classicist Bernard Knox, runs in long, loose, unrhymed lines of roughly six beats. He set out for grandeur and music: a Homer that sounds like a bard performing, not a text being read.
The first line is the whole translation in miniature, because each translator solves the same untranslatable Greek word — polytropos, the man of many turns — in opposite directions.
Wilson opens: "Tell me about a complicated man." Five plain words, a single beat of pentameter, no ornament. The address is direct and intimate, almost conversational — and "complicated" quietly insists that Odysseus is morally tangled, not merely clever. It signals the whole translation: economy, modern diction, a refusal to inflate.
Fagles opens: "Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns…" The line invokes the Muse, lingers, repeats "the man," and rolls forward with rhetorical sweep. It signals his project too: expansive, performative, built for the speaking voice and the grand gesture.
So the choice is really between two doors into the same myth. Wilson strips the threshold bare so you walk straight into the story; Fagles raises an arch over it so you feel you are entering something vast. Neither is more "Homeric" — the Greek is at once direct and grand, and each translator has chosen which truth to carry across the water.
| Emily Wilson | Robert Fagles | |
|---|---|---|
| Form / meter | Iambic pentameter (regular five-beat line) | Free verse, long loose lines (~6 beats) |
| Tone | Plain, direct, modern, propulsive | Grand, rhapsodic, performative |
| Line economy | Line-for-line with the Greek; 12,110 lines | Expansive; runs noticeably longer |
| For a first-timer | Very high — clear and quick | High, but richer and denser |
| Closeness to the Greek's feel | Its speed and directness | Its grandeur and music |
| Best read… | Aloud or silently; great audiobook | Aloud — built for the speaking voice |
| Year | 2017 | 1996 |
First-time readers — Wilson. Her clarity and steady pentameter let you follow the journey without wrestling the language; you reach Ithaca instead of getting lost at sea.
Students & classrooms — either, leaning Fagles by tradition. Fagles has been assigned for decades and pairs with Bernard Knox's rich introduction; Wilson is increasingly taught for her accessibility and her illuminating translator's notes. Check which your syllabus expects.
Listeners & reading aloud — Fagles (Wilson a close second). His rolling lines were built for performance and carry beautifully in the voice; Wilson's tighter meter also reads aloud cleanly, and her audiobook is widely praised.
Lovers of epic grandeur — Fagles. If you want the full sweep and swell of the heroic tradition — the bard at the hall fire — his is the more sumptuous, orchestral Homer.
If you're new to the poem, start with our recommended translation and read the short companion first — it makes either version easier to follow.
See our recommended Odyssey →
Is Wilson more accurate than Fagles?
Neither is simply "more accurate" — both are the work of serious classicists. Wilson hews closer to the Greek's length and directness, while Fagles takes more freedom with imagery and phrasing to heighten the music. They make different, equally faithful choices.
Which is easier to read?
Wilson, for most readers. Her diction is modern and her lines are short and regular, which keeps the story moving; Fagles is richer and denser — rewarding, but more demanding.
Which is better for students?
Both are widely used. Fagles is a longstanding classroom staple with a substantial introduction by Bernard Knox; Wilson is favored for accessibility and her detailed notes. The best choice is usually whichever your course assigns.
Which is more faithful to the original Greek?
It depends what "faithful" means. Wilson mirrors the poem's compression and forward motion, matching it line for line; Fagles is more faithful to its grandeur and oral, rhapsodic quality. The Greek holds both qualities at once — which is why two excellent translations can feel so different.