Robert Fagles

Robert Fagles, the Arthur Marks ’19 Professor of Comparative Literature emeritus and a renowned translator of Greek classics, died March 26 in Princeton of prostate cancer. He was 74. Fagles was a member of the faculty from 1960 until 2002. He was director of the Program in Comparative Literature starting in 1966 and, after it became a department in 1975, served as department chairman until 1994. He was best known for his translations of The Iliad and The Odyssey. Poet C.K. Williams, lecturer with the rank of professor in creative writing, said Fagles was “the most widely read and widely celebrated poet translator of his time, indeed of any time.”