Robert Fagles, renowned translator of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, among other works, passed away on Wednesday, ensuring that we'll have to wait a while before another really boring text from ancient Greece will be declared once again "fresh and relevant for the contemporary reader," who, for his part, will quit after two pages. Fagles was 74. The cause of death was prostate cancer.
His contributions to world literature will live on, mostly unread, on millions of bookshelves in the United States and beyond. No one has done more to bring the Greek classics to high school and college students, except for the publisher of CliffsNotes.
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