Crossing the Wine-Dark Sea: Journeys Through Ancient Literature

by Emily Wilson

"An enthralling and profoundly relevant book." ―Salman Rushdie

"I adored reading these joyful, illuminating, and engrossing journeys through ancient literature." ―Madeline Miller

From the most celebrated translator of our time comes a visionary exploration of how translation reshapes and enriches our understanding of the ancient world.

In this sharp and often entertaining tour through antiquity, Emily Wilson―whose renditions of Homer's Odyssey and Iliad have captured a generation's imagination―explores the complicated terrain of reading and writing about the ancient past. Drawing on twenty years of scholarship and teaching, Wilson explores the difficult choices that translators must make, the pleasures of finding new solutions to old problems, and the inevitable frustrations of never fully capturing what is in the original work. Across chapters that range from the politics of Helen of Troy to the obscenities of Aristophanes, from Roman imitation of Greek models to contemporary debates over "foreignizing" and "domesticizing" styles, Wilson examines how modern norms of gender, sexuality, violence, humor, and power complicate our readings of ancient works, and how translation always risks denaturing what is unique and strange about the ancient world. Brilliant, erudite, and yet accessible to listeners with no classical background, Crossing the Wine-Dark Sea is at once an introduction to the wonders of Greek and Roman literature, a manifesto for the value of translation in a rapidly changing world, and an invitation to encounter ancient cultures anew.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Mythology, Essays, Classics, Greek Mythology, Literary Criticism

Audible Audio

First published June 4, 2026

About the author

Emily R. Wilson (b. 1971) is a Professor in the Department of Classical Studies and Chair of the Program in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory. She has a BA from Oxford in Classics, an M. Phil., also from Oxford, in English Literature (1500-1660), and a Ph.D. from Yale in Classics and Comparative Literature. Her first book was Mocked with Death: Tragic overliving from Sophocles to Milton (Johns Hopkins, 2004). Her second book was The Death of Socrates: Hero, Villain, Chatterbox, Saint (Harvard UP 2007). Her third was "Seneca: A Life" (also published in the US as "The Greatest Empire": Penguin/ OUP USA, 2015). She has published verse translations of Seneca's tragedies (Oxford World's Classics), Euripides ("The Greek Plays", Modern Library Random House), and The Odyssey (Norton, fall 2017). Other publications include various chapters and articles on the reception of classical literature in English literature, and reviews in the TLS and LRB. She is the classics editor for the revised Norton Anthology of World Literature, and Western Literature.

Reviews

[Chloe]

3.5, and I really, really wanted to like this more than I did. With the provision that this is no commentary on Wilson’s translation work, this specific piece of work strayed off the point far too often to be cohesive and thoughtful. There were sections where the author would stray off to make what was an attempt at witty political or socio-economic commentary that just came out awkward and aggressive - even if I did agree with the point being made.

The good, however, was that when this was good, it was really good. Wilson’s strengths shined through when discussing topics she was comfortable with and deeply knowledgeable of - like translations of Homer and the Iliad, and Greek history. Those were the parts I found not only the most interesting but the most well constructed.

[Tumblyhome (Caroline)]

I think my review is marked as a review of an advanced copy. This isn’t correct. I bought the book in the UK after the UK release.

First let me say that I am a huge fan of Emily Wilson’s translations of The Iliad and The Odyssey. I have read these by a few different translators and always come back to Wilson’s because of the beautiful way she makes the stories sound, her excellent notes about translation choices and because it was her The Odyssey that got me reading these classic texts, for which I will be eternally grateful.

So I bought this book with some excitement about reading it. I really enjoyed the first chapter about Sappho. The parts about translation were really interesting and helpful. BUT..

My ebbing enthusiasm is partly my fault because I thought the book was just about the huge subject of translation.. but it sort of lost that theme in places. It probably never set out to be only about that, except the notes on the front flap are a little deceiving in that case.

My main reason for 1 star, (and as time has passed since reading this book, my annoyance has grown… ) is that I felt she was far too scathing about other writers and readers too in some cases. For example, as a none academic reader, I much enjoyed Bettany Hughes book about Helen of Troy. E.g. Wilson claims Hughes has a dollop of ‘naïveté’ by suggesting a …

‘biography of a mythical character from 3,000 years ago could possibly be reconstructed’.

This is not an impression I took away from Hughes book. In fact I thought Hughes constantly spoke of how Helen as a historical figure was in fact a pure concept. Rather, Hughes was saying that that view of Helen can tell us much indirectly about how the people viewed women and have done through history. Hughes book isn’t deeply scholarly, it was written for a general public who are interested, as such it felt unfair of Wilson to disparage it in the way she did.

Books like that give people like me a grounding that they can then expand on and start learning more. I disliked that Hughes is described as ‘television presenter Bettany Hughes’ … it felt demeaning, I felt it was meant to be.

So I came to the essay entitled Ancient Worlds. Again there is a tone I definitely didn’t enjoy. Ok Edith Hamilton might not be a perfect example of how to ‘accurately’ tell ancient stories (whatever that means), but the tone regarding e.g. Mary Beard, Stephen Fry etc was patronising.
The comment that translators Fagles, Rieu, Fitzgerald, Fry, Holland having ‘no training in the field’.. was harsh…and she comments that the success of Holland, like Fry being ‘especially in the UK’… maybe I am sensitive but that felt like a loaded comment…ummmm i am in the UK….I was unsure how to take that!

Wilson goes on to say

‘Armchair classicists often lay claim to a radically simplified and distorted version of the ancient world shaped by modern ideological projections and constructions of ‘tradition’ that map suspiciously well onto contemporary right wing values and contemporary Catholic or evangelical beliefs’

If simplification is the problem in all this then that needed examples and expanding. I believe that statement maybe be true of maybe a small minority, but Wilson didn’t give a single example despite her going on to say that ‘public perceptions are very often….simplified thanks in no small part to Hamilton as well as Fry, Haynes and others’. So a more nuanced essay might have stepped away from sweeping statements with no examples and clarified precisely what she meant.. and I would argue that Fry, Haynes and others have done marvellous work in prompting people to discover more about classics..

I really HATED the term armchair classicist. How demeaning of people like me who probably are just that. I have a background as a scientist, not a classicist but have come to ancient texts late… I initially read simplified books, some of the translations Wilson speaks of by Holland etc. I grew more and more interested and have delved deeper and deeper with works by Dodds and more recent writers. It was those books by Fry etc that initially peaked my curiosity.

People who come to classics like me, are not so stupid that we don’t recognise the ‘simplified, domesticated and outdated nature’ of some books but we have to start somewhere and those very popular writers have done incredible jobs in reeling in readers who discover a love of classics enough to want to learn ancient languages and read much more deeply… (despite scholarly books on the subject being soooooo flippin’ expensive and being unable to access more academic papers).
I am 100% certain that even the young Emily Wilson had something that made her interested in Classics and I bet it was not initially academic writings.

Armchair classicists often have more passion than many a classics student… we can find the way to more in-depth books. I study classics from my ‘armchair’ … step from original texts to more academic analysis with no academic guidance other than curiosity and suggestions referenced within books like Wilson’s own and others. I


Wilson ends the chapter by saying


‘we must show members of the intelligent reading public the respect they deserve, by offering nuanced, clear, interesting analysis of antiquity in all its glorious alien complexity’.

I hope she doesn’t mean that there is a subset of ‘intelligent ’ readers… I will assume that is not what is meant.. i firmly believe that readers are readers… whatever they get fulfilment from reading..BUT….. often in order to come to some of the more nuanced and scholarly texts, we, the reading public, need an introduction and something to make us realise that classical studies are INCREDIBLE. For me that came via Fry, Wilson’s Odyssey and Tom Hollands Herodotus… and I don’t care that Holland has ‘no training in the field…’ I have gone on to read other translations and am working my way through anything I can get my hands on, classic texts, reviews, analyses and anything and everything I can afford…I am well into learning Attic Greek but it came from simple and much enjoyed beginnings..but then again I am in the UK 🙄

Really that sentence, focusing on ‘WE must show’ to the ‘public’ really does smack nastily of superiority..I have met this attitude in academic science , it rankled then.. it does here too. The public are not dim…
I would say to Wilson ‘go on, underestimate me, that will be fun’

And if Mary Beard is commented on by Wilson in a slightly sneering way for attaining a ‘soap box’ on all things from ‘Brexit to global history of culture and the Internet’ I wondered how it was ok then for her, Wilson, to do the same… but I guess it is her book and therefore her soapbox.

BUT

I agree that Alice Oswalds Memorial was incredible…. But as Wilson points out in that superior way, she does have ‘a BA in classics from Oxford’ ..for goodness sake.

And if I have misunderstood the nature of Wilson’s comments in this book I am happy to be challenged on what I have said… it is just that I increasingly got the feeling of almost elitism and belittling.

[Grace Btrs (Catching Up!! - semi ia-work)]

Pre-read:
Not me waiting for ages to get a physical copy of an Emily Wilson, but managing to get my hands on an ARC AND ALC before that.🤷🏻‍♀️

[emily]

‘I like the Lavigne lyrics for ‘Complicated’ as a text with a kind of resonance with the Odyssey: ‘acting like you’re somebody else’ is a central feature of Odysseus’s polytropia, and it’s essential to how and why he survives. If you do hear the song in the line, maybe it helps suggest the connotations of ‘many guises’ that are there in the original word. Sometimes you do have to make everything so complicated, sometimes you gotta wear your preppy clothes and strike a pose (or at least get your multiple goddess makeovers) if you want to survive as the warrior king of Ithaca.’

‘Samuel L. Jackson would make a great Odysseus—I sometimes worry that ‘complicated man’ suggests something too internal, too psychological. But I also know that one can’t avoid anachronistic connotations, in the inherently anachronistic process of translating from Homeric Greek to English, or indeed any modern language. It’s a compromise, as is every translation choice ever. The question is how to choose the least bad compromise.’

‘If I live another twenty years, and retain the capacity to read, and if the world is still habitable by humans, I hope to see younger people come up with much better solutions than mine. I also suspect that we will have more important things to worry about by then.’

[Oliver Maynard]

Marketed as Wilson’s personal reflections on the art of translation and her own experiences wrestling with Homer’s texts, I approached her new book with a real sense of excitement. I adore her Odyssey and Iliad, and often find the translator’s notes the most rewarding part of the experience. They not only illuminate misconceptions born of centuries of retranslations, but also encourage the reader to think more deeply about communication itself, and about the ways an ancient text can speak directly to our own times.

I was somewhat disappointed, then, to discover that the book feels more like a patchwork of ideas than a sustained argument, stitched together into something eminently marketable. If I were being cynical, it feels as though an agent asked for another book, perhaps to ride the wave of renewed interest surrounding Nolan’s Odyssey, and the solution was not to write something substantially new but to weave together a rough tapestry of Wilson’s London Review of Books essays, lectures and social media threads. Almost every chapter follows a familiar formula: introduce an ancient text or concept, discuss it in an accessible, lightly scholarly way, touch briefly on translation, then conclude with a twee link to a contemporary political or social issue.

In the vein of her recent article critiquing Nolan’s Odyssey, there are genuinely stimulating ideas interspersed with more questionable ones. Her attempts to engage with questions of intersectionality are admirable, but can feel tokenistic rather than deeply interrogated. Her criticisms of fellow classicists and translators occasionally come across as unnecessarily sharp, while her chapter on outreach left me oddly unconvinced. Ironically, it reads as though it were written by someone who has spent little time speaking with school teachers, students or the wider public, and in trying to dismantle the ivory tower, it sometimes seems instead to reinforce the impression that she is writing from within it.

That said, the final chapter is genuinely excellent and finally delivers on the promise of the book’s marketing: “Emily Wilson has spent a lifetime wrestling with these questions…”. Here we are given exactly what many readers will have been hoping for. Wilson compares earlier translations, analyses the Greek with characteristic clarity, and explains the reasoning behind her own choices. I learned more about the nuanced mythological resonances of the opening of Book 5, Homer’s careful language in presenting the Cyclops as recognisably human rather than simply monstrous, the ethical complications surrounding passages involving enslaved people, and, perhaps most satisfyingly, the long-debated decision to render polytropos as “complicated”. It is insightful, generous, and intellectually invigorating.

I only wish the rest of the book had trusted this material enough to make it the focus. When Wilson writes about translation itself, she remains one of the finest classicists writing today. Too often, however, the book wanders away from its greatest strength.

[Umbar]

If like me, you find Wilson's introductions alone to be worth the price of admission, you will enjoy this. Very refreshing to read her comparative analysis of different approaches to translation. I could and will read several books about this in my lifetime.

I'm also not across the comedies, and certainly not Roman comedies, so some chapters in the middle provided a very interesting crash course. TBR list accordingly updated.

[Luna and Co]

This book is a true journey through ancient literature. I live with a translator, so I'm used to hearing about the complexity of translating certain texts, but this book opened a new window into this world. We read translations of ancient texts without thinking about the original or the choices that were made, but now I kinda want to read multiple translations of the Odyssey and compare them. I learned so much. I listened to the audiobook and I wasn't sure about her narration but after about 45 minutes I started loving it.

Thank you, Netgalley and Highbridge Audio, for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review

[Ella-Mae Campling]

Bloody brilliant. No notes, aside from the fact that my copy is LITTERED IN THEM. A rare find. A book that reminds me the absolute passion and joy you can find hidden inside something you already love. Urgh so many thoughts and excavations I need to drum up into an official review but woah.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yes, THAT Emily Wilson, first woman to translate the Odyssey into English, and only the second in terms of the Iliad, also known as: a total bad***
Genuinely one of the most fascinating, engrossing non fiction books I’ve had the pleasure of reading in recent years. Investigating the trials and tribulations that accompanies classical translation as well as the art of translation and how it is an eternal battle of fighting own societal contexts and beliefs in what is being said. From studies on particular fragments (with the ancient Greek to accompany), Wilson dissects translators choices, as well as highlights how many of the current editions of the foundational texts of the Iliad and the Odyssey are written not by those who prioritise authenticity in translation, but instead prioritize the story and it’s function as a piece of fiction, and by doing so, often create new beliefs and assumptions into the general public’s understanding of these classics. One example -that I, as someone who has read 5+ translations, had no idea about- was that the original Greek translation does not label Polyphemus as a Cyclops, this othering of crafting Odysseus’ villain into a ‘monstrous’ form through the translations that have been passed down and reiterated creates fascinating debates on a central characteristic Odysseus has of being known in canon, to lie.
I genuinely could go on for hours about how glad I am to have read this incredibly erudite, passionate read that is filled with useful sources, examples and even a simple guide placed at the end on Wilson’s own personal rules of investigating released translations and a recommended reading list that filled me with joy.
Frankly, the purpose of this book and what it investigates is best summed by this quote by Wilson:
‘The idioms, connotations, syntax and assumptions of language are always entertwined with a specific set of social contexts, none of which can be replicated in translation.’

[Marc Lamot]

I was very curious about this book, as I was already familiar with Emily Wilson through her acclaimed translations of the *Iliad* and the *Odyssey*—works I had read myself. I knew from that experience that she isn't afraid to make bold choices and put her own unique stamp on the text. This book collects thirteen of her previously published articles; they include a detailed account of her translation process for the *Odyssey*, as well as pieces on Sappho, Greek and Latin comedy and tragedy, and more. While the focus is naturally on translation, the broader context inevitably comes into play, making the book—to some extent—an introduction to the culture of the ancient world. Wilson also holds strong views on the state of the world; while this is certainly refreshing, the downside is that the book (published in 2023) risks becoming dated quite quickly. I read it with great interest and enjoyment, though there is one odd misstep where she launches a rather elitist tirade against the "armchair classicists" who venture into translation.
Read more on my History account on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show....

[Mimi Schweid]

Take my money NOW.

[Edie]

You know how there are some kids who are obsessed with mythology? That wasn't me. I was first introduced to fantasy and then discovered science fiction in grade school and never looked back. I was fascinated with the future, not that interested in the past. For me, this collection of essays by Emily Wilson is interesting not for the insights into mythology but for the discussion surrounding translation. I am, honestly, not that familiar with the different translations compared and contrasted here. However, I am very invested in the adjacent field of Bible translation. I found it completely engrossing to read about issues surrounding translation because they mirror the same encountered in translating Biblical texts. Rhythm, rhyme, meaning, word choice, all of it impacts the reader's experience. There is a popular tshirt in certain Bible circles which says, "All translation is interpretation." I think Emily Wilson demonstrates that in Crossing the Wine-Dark Sea. Who do I think would enjoy this book? Anyone who likes smart, academic explorations written for popular consumption. People who enjoy the current mythology retellings - from Percy Jackson to dark romantasy. And those, like me, who spend time pondering the complexities of making an old text sing in modern contexts. Thank you to everyone involved in this production for the audioARC, including Highbridge Audio and NetGalley.

[Abigail]

Emily Wilson's writing is, as ever, engaging, informative, and persuasive. While I enjoyed some essays more than others (Tongue Breaks, Sparrows and Scrubbers, and Translating the Odyssey were particular favourites), this collection is well-structured and wide-ranging. Wilson always takes care to link her discussions to the problems of the modern age, allowing her to fearlessly criticise Trump, Boris Johnson, and more. She takes no prisoners in pointing out how the classics have been a means of exclusion and justification of imperialism, especially in the last century, and she finishes with an exhortation to all classicists to ultimately Do Better in making the subject accessible to everyone.

[kat]

4.5 stars love her always. got an early copy and she is just the best. if you’ve read a lot of her papers, much of the book will sound familiar to you, but I think a very worthwhile read even so!!

[Chris]

For some reason the program decided that this book was by an unknown author but of course it was written by Emily Wilson as shown on the cover. Good reads doesn't enable me to edit this to credit her as the author. I have already read her translation of the Illead so these essays are a great supplement to understand her craft and her thinking behind the translations. I particularly respected her view that there are no correct versions but a spectrum of possibilities. She is often critical of some translations, but also recognises where there are cultural or social issues which underline the approaches from translators. The book is really only for those who like to lift the bonnet of the vehicle and see how it actually works, and I was enormously impressed and enjoyed her scholarship and ideas.

[Sense of History]

Naturally, this book—a collection of thirteen essays—focuses primarily on the craft of translation, specifically the translation of literary texts from Greek and Roman antiquity. Through her years of experience, Emily Wilson has inevitably gained deeper insights into the nature of that ancient world, and these are reflected here and there throughout the text. I found the essays on Sappho, on how Rome created its own literature from Greek models, on the shifting perceptions of Helen of Troy, and on Stoicism to be particularly interesting.
I will limit myself here to the last of these. Wilson holds a very strong, rather negative view of Stoicism: “It is a philosophical and psychological system designed to comfort the rich and powerful for any perceived limits on their power, by assuring them that they are, after all, in control of everything that matters. It also conveniently promotes an idea of ​​‘virtue’ that is compatible with ignoring or enabling the suffering of everyone else in the world.” Control is the central theme of this philosophical-ethical school of thought, according to her, and she does not hesitate to link this to its popularity in our own time: “Stoicism is not designed to make the world a better place, nor even to nurture kindness in the individual Stoic. Rather, it is a philosophy designed to help individuals, especially very privileged individuals, align themselves with the universe as it already exists, and thereby shore up their sense of their own unassailable strength and importance, even in the face of pain, trouble and death.” That sounds highly disparaging, yet there is certainly a grain of truth to it: Stoicism revolves primarily around the “Self,” as Wilson rightly notes—a concept that contrasts sharply with monotheistic systems, where the relationship with others takes center stage (though Wilson does not discuss the latter).
The author is certainly not afraid to express herself bluntly. However, this sometimes leads to missteps. In her article on the American schoolteacher Edith Hamilton (1868–1963), she tears apart the amateurism with which Hamilton—from the 1930s onwards—released translations of Greek works and presented an idealized vision of Greek culture. In the same breath, she vents her scorn on the many “armchair classicists,” such as Tom Holland and Stephen Fry, who popularize classical antiquity today. While her criticism is undoubtedly not entirely unfounded, the manner in which she expresses it is undeniably a reprehensible form of academic elitism. It is a blemish on an otherwise very interesting book.

[Brittany Luebbert]

I did this as an immersive read, and I normally really REALLY enjoy when an author narrates their own book. But oh my God, every time she quoted someone, she did the goofiest-ass voice!! I genuinely could not take her seriously 😂 And I mean this with the utmost respect because she is incredibly intelligent and knowledgeable, but if I sat in her class and she started reading aloud in those voices, I would be laughing so hard I would have to excuse myself and probably never come back. I don't know how anyone is supposed to keep a straight face through those impersonations.

And I had a similar problem with the writing itself. I understand that someone this educated and knowledgeable has to make their work accessible to the lowest common denominator....well that sure wasn't me. So much of this book had me thinking, "Well, no shit." I kept waiting for it to challenge me more, and instead I, more often than not, felt like I was being walked through things I already understood.

I learned from it, not as much as I wanted, and I can absolutely appreciate how much knowledge went into it. But those voices dude...a kindergarten class may enjoy her male voice impressions more than I did...I'm sorry 😭

[Jim]

Christopher Nolan used Emily Wilson's translation of The Odyssey for his recent film, which she wasn't extremely fond of. This, her most recent book, was written before the film was released and so doesn't deal with that. Instead, she discusses her views over a wide range of topics concerning translations of literature. I came across this book by accident, but because I enjoy languages and linguistics and have taken a translation course myself (for German), I thought I'd read it. Anyone interested in ancient literature and how one tries to convey an ancient culture and "dead" language into modern, living ones should enjoy this book.

[trish]

It feels like every piece of media I’ve ever consumed culminated during my reading of this. In another life I’m bothering Dr. Wilson at office hours to pick her brain on whatever nonsense I’m into at the moment. She just has a mesmerizing and endlessly entertaining way of presenting an argument.

Favorites: Tongue Breaks, Punishment by Radish, Slut-Shaming Helen of Troy

Also loved the “Translating the Odyssey” section, which was similar to her translator’s note published with her Odyssey translation in 2017. Genuinely, I think I could read an entire book where she breaks down every section of the original text, what other translators did that she does or does not agree with, and ultimately why/how she came to her own translation decisions.

[Vaughn Lach]

I need to digest this a bit

[Fiona]

This is a collection of essays and like most collections, it is a mixed bag. The bits about ancient texts and giving them historical context are very interesting, most notably Web of Rome. There were two essays, namely War Music and Translating the Odyssey, I largely skipped over because they were almost aggressively uninteresting (TTO is two entire hours of nitpicking). Ancient Worlds: Edith Hamilton and the Popularization of the Classics is when she loses her authority imo; the way she shits on Mary Beard, Stephen Fry, and Edith Hamilton for their lack of “classical education“ while simultaneously claiming that classical scholars “don’t gatekeep” and would welcome more diversity is laughable for its lack of self awareness.

Usually, I’m a fan of authors narrating their own books, but sadly, Wilson has a voice that is unconcerned with clear diction and her attempts to vocally differentiate when someone is quoted are oddly cartoonish.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for early access to the audiobook.

[Victoria Hsieh]

This is the time where I really wish there were half stars…

Translator and academic Emily Wilson covers a multitude of topics throughout this essay collection, including her theories of translation, delves into others' translations of Greek classics and more, and examines the tension translated works hold with maintaining and perpetuating certain status hierarchies. However, this multitude is what I found most faulty with the book itself.

While Wilson discloses her core thesis and themes in her introduction, it felt like the essays for the most part strayed away and felt discordant with one another. I struggled at times to see how her essay conveyed her thoughts on translation beyond the generic proposition that translations matter and an interpretation can reinforce stereotypes, etc. Her strongest essays were by far when she dove in deeper into her process of translating a classic or began evaluating others' translations of classics, while providing critical context from the classic itself.

For this reason, I found the last essay, her essay on Sapphos, and the focus on the classics in some of the essays most compelling. I wish the book were more coherently like these essays so I could see more of her thoughts on the classics themselves. Sometimes, when the book referenced more modern works, it felt very forced and attenuated (ex. referencing Cardi B did not make sense in the sequence) nor did I understand the ordering of the essays, which echoes some of the reflections held in the other reviews.

'The book felt more cobbled together at the last second. I will however continued reading Wilson's essays on translation, particularly if she continues to translate any new Greek or Roman works, because her study of the Greek to Roman literary environment is highly informative (which is why she gained so much acclaim for Odysseus!).

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an advance copy!

[lollypopz]

I really enjoyed this! I’m probably not the target audience but I learned lots I didn’t know and felt nice to connect with things I’m more familiar with. Books like this are never quite what I expect, and I thought this would be more on translation and reception specifically, but all interesting. Really enjoyed her analysis of translations of the Odyssey and wish I’d been able to read that specifically, along with her guides for translation, when I was an undergrad! That chapter contained the Greek alongside English, which does make me think this book is pitched at a mixed audience, but also fun to realise I can still read it :)
She doesn’t hold back on her opinions and makes it clear if she dislikes someone haha.

[Alf Broadbean]

This was excellent. Truly. Fascinating to think about the power and responsibility in the hands of the translator - Wilson clearly gives her work, and the work of others a lot of careful thought and consideration. Keen to read more of Wilson’s translations, and maybe she’s even changed my mind on her choice of “complicated”…

A very fun and engaging set of essays - Wilson has her finger on the pulse for sure!

[Irene]

Wilson has a lot of opinions about translation and I tend to agree with her on most things. Either way, it's a valuable perspective on translation in general and Ancient Greek translation in particular.

[Joules]

rtc

[Adam Fitzwalter]

αὐτὰρ Ἀχιλλεὺς
δακρύσας ἑτάρων ἄφαρ ἕζετο νόσφι λιασθείς,
θῖν᾽ ἐφ᾽ ἁλὸς πολιῆς, ὁρόων ἐπὶ οἴνοπα πόντον·
⁃ Homer. The Iliad, 1.349-350.

Then Achilles, weeping, sat apart, away from his companions, on the beach beside the grey sea, looking out across the endless ocean.
⁃ Wilson. The Iliad, 1.349-350. (2023).

In a strop, Achilles sat away from his pals on the beach, pouting across the winey sea.
⁃ Fitzwalter. The Iliad, 1.349-350. (2026).



What is a Wine-Dark Sea?

———————

In his 1858 book ‘Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age’, future four-time Prime Minister of the United Kingdom William Gladstone observed a total absence of the colour blue in Homer. The word kyanós does appear, which in later Greek came to mean blue (giving us the word ‘cyan’), but in Homeric poetry it exclusively connotes the darkness of Zeus’ eyebrows. More common is the word oînops, from oînos (“wine”) and óps (“eye”; “face”), often joined with póntos (“sea”) to form the recurring epithet oînops póntos — most famously translated as “wine-dark sea”.

Oînops póntos formulaically fits into Homer’s oral, dactylic hexameter verse. It is attested five times in the Iliad and twelve times in the Odyssey, often used to describe rough, stormy seas. Yet this may seem strange…. as we know, wine and the sea are not the same colour… even if the Greeks did dilute their vino to create an opaque, more purple-toned liquid. Did Homer muddle his colours? Were the Ancient Greeks colourblind? Unlikely… rather, Homeric Greek describes the visual world more synaesthetically than modern English, often prioritising luminosity, shade, and texture over hue, particularly when describing what we have since termed ‘blue’.

Yet “wine-dark sea” is by no means a ‘correct’ translation. Must oînops póntos be translated as a colour-term? Think of ‘metallic’ in English — it can denote things that are silver-ish or bronze-y or golden, but it does not exclusively refer to colour. It can also imply taste, smell, gloss, texture, and even feeling. Then imagine the Greeks, huddled in a dimly-lit room, stirring a huge mixing bowl, a claret sheen reflecting in the flickering candlelight, pondering the libations they will make when pouring this mood-altering, unsteadying, violence-inducing tonic into the unfathomably endless and unpredictably turbulent ocean… might they wonder if something mysteriously divine or potently thirsty lurks in those depths? Could Homeric poetry have used oînops póntos to allude to the sea’s intoxicating power?

In trying to convey the potential meanings, metaphors, and sociolinguistic contexts all enveloped within oînops póntos, different translators have tried different ideas. Alexander Pope’s melodious translations of the Iliad (1720) and Odyssey (1726) refer to the sea as “the purple main”. Lattimore’s verbose unmetrical lines (Iliad, 1951; Odyssey, 1965) go for “wine-blue”. Fitzgerald’s elegant verse (Iliad, 1974; Odyssey 1961) suggests a collapsed “winedark”, while Fagles’ loud and chatty free-verse (Iliad, 1990; Odyssey 1996) has helped entrench a hyphenated “wine-dark”. Butler (Iliad, 1898; Odyssey, 1900) prefers “wine-looking”, Lombardo (Iliad, 1997; Odyssey, 2000) experiments with “the sea’s grey wine”, while Kline (Iliad, 2009; Odyssey, 2004) notes oînops shared register with aithops (“fiery”; “flashing”) to consider “wine-bright”. Mitchell (Iliad, 2011; Odyssey, 2013) simplifies with merely “the sea”, whereas Wilson (Iliad, 2023; Odyssey, 2017) complicates things, with oînops póntos variously becoming “the stormy sea”, “the wine-blue sea”, “the purple sea”, and “the dark water”.


Crossing the Wine-Dark Sea

———————

This exercise has, I hope, exemplified some of the complexities of translating Homer. I also hope it has captured some of the complex politics of translation more generally. Language is never a neutral tool by which we represent the world. Every word or phrase carries with it a tangle of connotations and cultural assumptions. It is therefore less pertinent to theorise why the Greeks might have lacked a word for blue. Moreover, critical translation studies considers how whenever someone queries why Homer called the sea ‘wine-dark’, they are really asking some much bigger questions:

Do we see the world as it is, or as our language has trained us to describe it?

What role does the translator have in mediating between the world as the ancients conceptualised it, and the world as we do?

How may translators present the ancient past as a mirror in which we find our own culture reflected back at us, while equally confronting us with a disconcerting blur through which we can only try gauge glimpses of an alien culture from long ago?

And how, then, should we remain critical of the decisions and sacrifices made by translators to render the strange world of antiquity according to our own familiar terms and logic?

In “Crossing the Wine-Dark Sea”, Emily Wilson addresses these questions through a series of essays. She explores the strangeness and radical difficulty of knowing antiquity, and how modern interpreters must make precisely deliberate choices and compromises in deciding how to assimilate the ancient past into the present-day. Her investigations are wide-ranging and multifaceted: such as exploring the fragmentary poetry of Sappho, the crass comedy of Aristophanes, the lively love poems of Catullus, the many possible readings of Helen of Troy, and the themes of power and justice within Aeschylus’ Oresteia. Altogether, they make for an engaging and accessible introduction to some important themes within the study of the translation of ancient literature and its relationship to modernity.


Emily Wilson and Reception Studies

———————

Wilson’s analysis of contemporary moments of classical reception are especially interesting. She critiques popular misunderstandings of stoicism, rejecting commercial efforts to promote it as a philosophy centred upon selfish ideals of ‘virtue’ attained through emotional repression — as advocated by Holiday and Hanselman’s The Daily Stoic (2016), for example. She instead explains that the ancient stoics were employed to maintain the public image of the aristocratic, elite man, thereby shoring up already-privileged individuals’ sense of unassailable righteousness. Stoicism may help some modern people cope with the annoyance and boredom of daily life, but Wilson argues that historical reality dictates it can offer only offer so much in the way of moral and ethical self-improvement, and that it is conceptually opposed to ideas of community-building. Accordingly, stoicism is a poor remedy to the ails of the contemporary world.

Yet does it especially matter how much contemporary notions of stoicism resemble their ancient namesake? Misunderstandings notwithstanding, texts like The Daily Stoic mobilise the stoics and their philosophies as self-legitimising, classical precedents. In focussing on questions of historical accuracy, Wilson doesn’t quite address how overarching (mis)conceptions of ancient stoicism have been so enthusiastically mined and exploited by these intensely masculine and individualistic philosophies of modern self-help, and why this rebrand has sold so well. I think the reasons lie somewhere in the nexus of chronic online male loneliness, even overlapping with the phenomenon of classical reception within far/alt-right misogyny. Wilson hesitates to pursue this link, even if she could have easily cited the work of scholars such as Donna Zuckerberg without needing to delve deep down the rabbit-hole of the ‘manosphere’ herself.

Wilson furthermore explores the wonderfully idiosyncratic and ramshackle Iliad of Christopher Logue — ‘War Music’ — a creation of “poetic theft” that displays the horror of war and the brevity of human life, albeit in ways that strip Homer of any real emotional resonance. I have long loved War Music for its jazzy rhythm, improvisatory feel, visual cinematics, awkwardness, incoherent attitude towards violence, fetishistic love of detail, eccentric punchlines, and pure silliness. Yet Wilson rightly elucidates how Logue, who had no Greek himself, sometimes uses Homer’s plot merely as a hanger on which to dangle his own lyrical descriptions and fragrantly anachronistic similes. War Music’s confusing, invented syntax therefore tells us more about Logue’s unique creative process and troubled life than it does about the grief of Homer’s characters.

It therefore seems a slightly counterintuitive approach to prioritise examining the Homeric influences of War Music, only to argue that they are just one constituent part of a much wider eccentric matrix. Rather than dismissing Logue’s stylistic inconsistencies, jarring anachronisms, and cinematic violence as distractions from Homeric grief, Wilson might have explored why those choices continue to resonate with readers, and how they create a distinct emotional landscape of their own. She could have explicitly used Logue’s radical methods of “poetic theft” to interrogate her own translator's toolkit, exploring what a loose, experimental adaptation can capture about the chaos of war that a strict, line-by-line translation might miss. She might also have situated War Music within its actual literary lineage; namely, mid-century avant-garde poetry, cinematic montage techniques, and post-war anti-epic sentiment.

Wilson then moves to investigate false notions of a common ‘Western’ civilisational heritage grounded in the mythical origin story of Ancient Greece, specifically connecting this bogus ‘grand narrative’ with Edith Hamilton’s hugely popularised ‘Classics’ book series. She highlights how Hamilton unabashedly linked the Ancient Greeks to modern White Americans with an unfettered sense of authority and an evocatively enthusiastic writing style — one that blatantly and consistently disregarded historical reality. Yet despite her prejudices and distortions, Hamilton successfully engrossed the reading public with her idealised, ‘utopian’ fabrications of classical civilisation. Hamilton’s legacy thus demonstrates the enduring appetite for accessible popular engagement with the ancient world — from which Wilson draws an important lesson that while scholars should continue to train students to be thoughtful and generative, they should also show more respect to “armchair” readers by offering clear and nuanced interpretations of ancient literature in all its glorious complexity.

My only real critique here would be that Wilson somewhat underemphasises the greater context that Hamilton was often merely regurgitating. Hamilton did not singlehandedly conjure-up ideas of Western civilisational exceptionalism and its supposed Hellenic connection. Rather, she was operating within a deeply entrenched nineteenth-century intellectual mode of thinking that had long coopted Ancient Greece as a Eurocentric mirror for White Western superiority, before then writing this philhellenic fiction into the imagined cultural genealogy of an imagined ‘West’ (as detailed elsewhere by the likes of Jo Quinn and Naoise MacSweeney). By isolating Hamilton's distortions, Wilson risks framing a centuries-old, institutionalised ideological apparatus as merely the fantasies of a single populariser. Hamilton's success relied precisely on her ability to package long-standing imperial myths into a digestible, middlebrow consumer product for twentieth-century America, a strategy that validated existing cultural prejudices under the guise of accessible classical education. Wilson slightly misjudges where to place the onus here, in places overemphasising one fiction writer over an entire intellectual-imperial machine and its invented traditions.


Emily Wilson and Translation Studies

———————

Wilson concludes by reflecting on her own experience of translating Homer — or, as she puts it, “the pleasures and perils of translation”. She summarises the complexities involved when the translator must reconcile the familiar and the strange, confirm expectations and/or challenge prejudices, and thereby decide how to allow the ancient world to exist within our contemporary moment. Wilson’s own method has been to employ a regular iambic pentameter traditional to English. She endeavours to avoid complex literary allusions and instead reflect what she sees in the Greek; namely, a plain register, multiple perspectives (both killers and killed), a relative starkness, and an invitation for the reader/listener to dwell in the ambiguities.

This is perhaps best exemplified by her now infamous translation of the Odyssey’s opening proem, in which she translates Odysseus’ epithet polŭ́tropos (“of many turns”; “twisty”; “versatile”; “perverted”; “circuitous”; “meandering”; “zigzag”; “topsy-turvy”; “translated”, etc.) simply as “complicated”. I continue to think this is very clever. It suggests something of the imagery (folding layers or ‘turns’), has the same syllable count as the Greek and thus naturally fits the metre, is ostensibly straightforward yet is actually appropriately multiple (almost disguising it’s true meanings), and hints at later revelations to come.

Wilson is keen to spotlight polŭ́tropos as an example of how the methods and modes for translating Homer have adopted different forms relative to their respective historical contexts. Yet it is equally imperative to recognise that her own decisions have provoked immense debate and even hostile reactions from the contemporary media, as epitomised by the ‘complicated’ fiasco. This has been compounded by Wilson having been both rightly praised and unfairly belittled for being a significant female translator. I felt that she was somewhat unwilling to address that controversy here (perhaps not wanting to repeat herself yet again), but it has nonetheless become a key factor within her own politics of translation.

Ultimately, Wilson demonstrates that our efforts to get to know the ancient world tell us less about antiquity itself than they do about the shifting desires, biases, and anxieties of the translators who work to reconstruct it — and, perhaps even more so, those who reconstruct their own versions of antiquity from the already-politicised reconstructions of translators. She evidently recognises this when analysing the translations and receptions of other thinkers, artists, and writers. But Wilson’s apparent reluctance to fully apply this same criticality to her own work may suggest she also believes that more profoundly beautiful and informed interpretations of Homer can be achieved if only more time and energy can be devoted to translation. Therefore, while I do think it is an incredible feat that she is currently translating the Odyssey for a second time, my priority here would not be to assess how Homer’s words will have transformed in Wilson’s mind since her first complete attempt. Rather, I think the critical translation student must instead focus their analysis onto how the responses to Wilson’s initial translation will have unavoidably influenced the decision-making processes involved in the production of her second.

Even if unwittingly, Wilson’s next Odyssey will be inherently defensive and responsive. Every stylistic pivot will contain something of the tension between her commitment to strive for accessibility and her reaction to the external pressures of contemporary expectation and bigotry. It is Wilson’s analysis of such themes within the works of others that propels “Wine-Dark” onward, so it is entirely fitting that she herself will sail across this meta-translational horizon even further — indeed, probably further than anybody has voyaged across the wine-dark sea before… What an adventure!

[Tim Preston]

'Poesie [poetry] is of so subtle a spirit that in pouring out of one language into another, it will all evaporate....there being certain graces and happinesses peculiar to every language, which give life and energy to the words' - Sir John Denham, 17th Century writer quoted in this book.

The book's title 'Crossing the Wine Dark Sea' refers to a famous English translation of Homer's recurring phrase 'epi oinopa ponton' , literally 'on the wine-faced [or wine-eyed] sea', printed in Greek around the margin of the covers of this book. Charcteristically of Ancient Greek colour (color to Americans) terms, it is more concerned with depth and intensity of colour than its position on the spectrum. Hence it is more important in Ancient Greek that the colour of the sea is as dark and intense as the colour of red wine than that wine is dark red while sea is deep blue. This is an example of a theme of this book: the difficulty of translating between two languages is not just finding equivalent vocabulary, but different ways of thinking about the World.

For example: the word may have the same meaning but the wrong associations. For a modern English reader the word 'oak' has associations of strength, solidity, England and Nelson's Navy; to the Romans the associations of the equivalent Latin word 'quercus' were of a tree sacred to the God Jupiter, prophecy, the Roman army and the strength of the Roman people.

This is an interesting collection of essays, some new, some revised and extended versions of the previously published articles, about Ancient Greece and Rome and the art of translation, by Emily Wilson, famous for translating Homer from Ancient Greek to modern English.

Do not confuse this Emily Wilson (Professor Emily RC Wilson) with Emily H Wilson, former editor of the New Scientist, whose Sumerian historical novel Inanna I have also favourably reviewed.

Professor Emily RC Wilson both grew up and attended University in Oxford in England. She still sounds English in her many interviews and lectures on YouTube, but has lived a long time in the USA and is Professor of Classical Studies at Pennsylvania ('Penn') University. Seemingly to her own surprise, she burst from academic obscurity when her 2017 translation of Homer's Odyssey, a work of which there were already numerous competing translations in English, became a World bestseller. So did her Iliad in 2023. I find them easily the most natural and readable translation of either work, which are part of the foundations of Western culture.

For some reason, perhaps marketing strategy by Emily Wilson's publishers, rather than use the success of her Homer translations to boost interest in her other published works (e.g. The Death of Socrates, which I have also reviewed) and the many other things she has to say about Ancient Greece, Rome, and wider culture, she is mostly seen as 'the lady who translated Homer'.

Hence Emily W is almost never called on by broadcasters to comment on wider issues about the Ancient World or culture more generally, as e.g. Mary Beard and Bettany Hughes are, although I believe Emily Wilson has as much, probably more to say of interest and importance about Classics and culture as Mary Beard, and more than Bettany Hughes.

'Crossing the Wine Dark Sea' includes interesting sections on the art of translation in general and translating the Odyssey in particular (less about the Iliad). However, it also allows her to range more widely over the Ancient World, including Ancient Greek theatre, Stoic Philosophy, Catullus's Latin love poetry, Demosthenes the orator, Roman Comedy, portrayals of Helen of Troy, Christopher Logue's reimaging of the Iliad, and Edith Hamilton and popularising Ancient Greece.

I am not an uncritical fan of Professor Wilson. I believe e.g. she is only half right about the execution of the 12 slave women towards the end of the Odyssey. (If you want to know why and are already familiar with her argument, as stated in this book, the Introduction to her Odyssey translation and various lectures, then Google 'Domingo Aviles Are the Suitors Guilty of R-')

While only a very small aspect of this book, Professor Wilson is more open here than in previous writings on what she thinks of divisive modern political issues like 'Brexit' and Donald Trump. Her opinions are the ones you would expect from someone who has got on in today's liberal-left, politically correct, academia, but I forgive her, as she is interesting, very intelligent and comes across as a likeable person.

Things I learned from this book include:

-The Oxford English Dictionary defines over 600,000 words, while the Oxford Latin dictionary has entries for only one-fifteenth of that, 40,000 words. It does not follow that English speakers can express fifteen times the number of thoughts and emotions that the Romans could. In Latin, as in Ancient Greek, one word often covered a range of different meanings.

-A shrine to Helen of Troy at Sparta had pieces of the shell of the swan's egg from which Helen supposedly hatched, after Zeus turned himself and Helen's mother into swans, so they could mate without Zeus's wife Hera noticing.

--Almost all surviving Ancient Greek plays were written in 5th Century BC Athens, the Comedies mostly for performance at the Lemea Festival, held early in the year when the weather made long-distance sailing unsafe, so mostly for a local audience. Hence they have many 'in jokes' about events and people in contemporary Athens. The Tragedies were mostly written for the Great Dionysia Festival, later in the year when the seas were open, so the audience included many visitors from other parts of the Greek World. Perhaps because of this, the tragedies deal more with universal themes and with myths known across the Greek World.

-The 4th Century BC orator Demosthenes'
speeches inspired Athens to resist domination by Phillip of Macedon, ultimately unsuccessfully. It is said Demosthenes practiced making speeches over the roar of the sea, preparation for the roar of the crowd. When finally captured by the Macedonians, Demosthenes persuaded them to let him write a last letter, and committed suicide by biting the end off his pen, in which he had concealed poison, thus not only living by his pen, but dying by it.

-In Ancient Athens, prominent citizens were not embarrassed to act and dance before the public in the theatre. In Rome, actors were mostly slaves.

-Although our modern word 'lesbian' comes from the Greek island of Lesbos and its 6th Century BC poetess Sappho, the use of the word to mean female homosexuality is not recorded until 1870. In Ancient times the popular sexual association of Lesbos was with women performing oral sex on men, the Greek verb for which is lesbiazein.

Emily Wilson is now revising her 2017 translation of the Odyssey, and includes here her new revised translation of the beginning of the poem. Two key differences in her approach this time:

1. Rather than confine herself to the same number of lines as the original, Professor Wilson allows herself extra lines where appropriate e.g. as the grammatical structure of Ancient Greek is more compressed and complicated than English, a translation may need more words. Also, to keep to the original line count in her earlier translation, she had to use short words where a longer word would sound better. However, I think Emily Wilson still intends to maintain the pace of the original which is lost in some translations.

2. Several years of further reflection, and reader reactions to her original Odyssey made her rethink various things.

I compare the new version with her previously published version below. I have to say, in this extract, I prefer her original version, even if the new one is more literally accurate to the original Greek in places, which sometimes matters and sometimes dosen't. However, she does not expect to complete the new version for publication for some time. Even if her earlier translation is withdrawn from sale then, having already sold a million copies, it will live on in Second Hand Book Shops for a long time.

Her original translation of lines 1-11:

'Tell me about a complicated man.
Muse, tell me how he wandered and was lost
when he had wrecked the holy town of Troy,
and where he went, and who he met, the pain
he suffered on the sea, and how he worked
to save his life and bring his men back home.
He failed, and for their own mistakes, they died.
They ate the Sun God's cattle, and the god
kept them from home. Now, goddess, child of Zeus,
tell the old story for our modern times.
Find the beginning.'

This is her revised version, quoted in 'Crossing the Wine Dark Sea':

'Tell me about a complicated man,
Muse, who was lost so long and fled so far,
when he had sacked the sacred citadel
of Troy - and how he saw and understood
so many people and so many places,
and suffered so much in his heart at sea,
as he was struggling to save his life and bring his men back home. But even so, despite his efforts, he did not protect them. Poor fools! They died by their own wilfulness-
They ate the cattle of Hyperion,
the Sun, who took away their chance of home.
Of these events now tell us also, goddess,
daughter of Zeus. Begin from anywhere.'

I find e.g.

her earlier version:

'how he wandered and was lost....the pain he suffered on the sea'

more effective than the revised:

'who was lost so long and fled so far....and suffered so much in his heart at sea'

even if the latter may be truer to the Ancient notion that the heart rather than the brain was the literal home of feeling and emotion.

Likewise I find the earlier version:

'Now goddess, child of Zeus, tell the old story for our modern times, find the beginning'

more evocative and more natural English than the revised:

'Of these events now tell us also, goddess, daughter of Zeus. Begin from anywhere.'

She has also changed her more unusual original translation 'wrecked' Troy to what has become the conventional English translation 'sacked' Troy.

I think 'wrecked' was more accurate to the original Greek verb pertho, which suggested laying waste, and also, as a less expected word in context in makes the reader think about it more. The English expression 'Sacked' a city (originally from the French 'saccer') is based on an image not present in the Greek, of a soldier carrying a sack he is filling with loot. That puts the emphasis on plundering, which was certainly part of what happened, but underemphasises the other aspects, destruction, killing and enslaving, which to those on the receiving end must have been even worse than being robbed of possessions.

[Richard Thompson]

The writing is very good, but I always have a small resentment against books that are collections of essays seemingly rushed out by the publishing industry to meet a perceived commercial opportunity when the author doesn't have time to write a new full-length book before the commercial opportunity expires. As good as this book sometimes is, it's a publishing decision that could have been made by AI.

But moving past the griping, I found plenty of interesting observations on the art of translation. How do translators convey the sense of the original without straying from the original text? How do you solve the impossible challenges of translating poetry? Why do we even need new translations of 2000 year plus old books?

I have been thinking about revisiting Catullus, and she convinced me that it is a worthy thing to do. When I read Catullus in Latin in high school, I am quite sure that I must have had a Bowdlerized edition. My Latin is no longer good enough to read the original but maybe I could make out most of it in a version that has facing pages of Latin and English like the Loeb edition though she says that the original Loeb editions had weak translations and major editing of the Latin to meet the moral requirements of their era.

One of my favorite essays was the one on Stoicism, in which she explains the current vogue for Stoicism among Tech and Finance Bros and then articulates far better than I could why Stoicism works for establishment types who don't want to fight injustice but only to get comfortable in a world where injustice is rampant. Interestingly, the discussion focuses on Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, who I have always liked but now must reconsider. It's more of a challenge to make her points with those two than it would have been with Seneca, who she avoids, as Seneca was Nero's toady, a usurer and a B level philosopher. I first encountered Epictetus in reading Tom Wolfe's book "A Man In Full" where the protagonist, a shallow, busted real estate developer, discovers Epictetus as jail cell reading. Perhaps there was a level of irony there that I was missing at the time.

[David]

I bought this book just before Emily Wilson hit the headlines recently following what, at first sight, appeared to be an unjust and unnecessarily ill-mannered criticism of Christopher Nolan's 'The Odyssey'. However, having now read it, I would suggest that the tone of her critique shouldn't be read in that way. What comes across is her passionate and protective commitment to the faithful adaptation of classical literature, tempered by an irreverent humour.
This is a fascinating collection of essays in which, amongst other things, Wilson compares and explains the different approaches taken across the centuries to present classical literature to the reading public. The longest essay in the collection, 'Translating the Odyssey' is particularly interesting in this regard and the chapter on the literary mistreatment of Helen of Troy was eye-opening.
The book includes a handy explanation of the true meaning of Stoicism and the section on Catullus certainly makes me want to investigate the Roman poet's work.
What sealed my admiration of the author was her no nonsense descriptions of two current/recent world leaders, Donald Trump and Boris Johnson; respectively "..a laughably unqualified perpetrator of sexual assault..." and "...an incompetent drunkard whose social privilege has enabled him to... hold the highest office in the land...and... maintain the illusion of being an intellectual...on the basis of his ability to parrot a few garbled lines of homeric Greek"! Ouch!
An example of her forthright wit comes towards the end of the final chapter on 'The Odyssey' when, in defence of her choice of the word 'complicated' to describe Odysseus, Wilson suggests 'If people want 'heroes' who are entirely sympathetic, or ethically uncomplicated... daytime soap operas may be a better bet than Homer".
A really fascinating book which I highly recommend.

[p.]

3.5☆ rounded up as I feel like I would like to read more of Dr Wilson's essays and thoughts

I wish this had a lot more of Dr Wilson's own reflections on translation and bias in translation than it ended up having - it is why the final essay, the one on translating "The Odyssey" was so fascinating. (I am not surprised she is now re-translating it again, from scratch. Even the excerpts featured within her essay were already edited. And a central point to her closing argument is that she looks forward to people doing better than her and improving on the work done to bring the classics to contemporary audiences). However, the essays often strayed more into descriptions of the cultural and historic context from which the works originate.

I understand the point of this approach which is to help the reader fully grasp the wording of the original work when they might not speak Ancient Greek or Latin. But with someone as experienced and knowledgeable as Dr Wilson, I had hoped we'd get something more in-depth about the process and mechanics of translation itself.

Still a very valuable read - just not quite what I wanted from it.