Emily Wilson’s Sack of Homer

In 2017, the classicist Emily Wilson became famous for her translation of Homer’s Odyssey, the opening line of which described Odysseus as “a complicated man.” It was a bold choice that telegraphed a contemporary, colloquial style and intimated that we might be taking the Greek hero down a peg. Now Wilson has returned with a version of Homer’s other epic, which has already drawn plenty of early accolades—but has also been denounced as a “woke Iliad” and even “a crime against the classics.” The reaction is predictable but misses the point. Wilson does lay waste to the Iliad, even as she also gropes toward some of its deeper truths. But since her version is likely to be championed by leading cultural institutions for years to come, her distortions are a tragedy.