PRINCETON, N.J. (AP) – Princeton University professor emeritus Robert Fagles, acclaimed for his translations of Homer’s “The Iliad” and “The Odyssey,” has died. He was 74.

Fagles died Wednesday in Princeton of prostate cancer, the university said Friday.

“He was a quiet man, diligent and decorous, yet one who was unexpectedly equal to the swagger and savagery of Homer’s ‘Iliad’ and ‘Odyssey’ in a way no one had managed before him,” Princeton humanities professor and Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Paul Muldoon said in a statement.

Born in Philadelphia, Fagles earned his bachelor’s degree in English at Amherst College in 1955, and his doctorate in English literature from Yale University in 1959.

He joined the Princeton faculty in the Department of English in 1960. Starting in 1966, Fagles was director of Princeton’s Program in Comparative Literature, which attained department status in 1975. He served as founding chair of the department until 1994.

He received numerous awards, including the National Humanities Medal and the Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Besides his translations of Homer, he also created English renditions of “The Oresteia” by Aeschylus and “The Three Theban Plays” by Sophocles, as well as “The Aeneid” by the Roman poet Virgil.

“No translator of major writers in the Western literary tradition has ever met with the kind of success that Robert Fagles has enjoyed. His ‘trilogy,’ both epics of Homer and that of Virgil, has brought these texts to life for over a million readers,” said Robert Hollander, professor of European literature and a Princeton colleague for 40 years.

Fagles retired from the faculty in 2002. In June 2007, Princeton awarded him an honorary doctor of humane letters for “four decades of feats on behalf of Princeton, as the founding father of comparative literature, as a gracious and wise colleague and as an inspiring mentor and teacher.”

He is survived by his wife of 51 years, Lynne, and their two grown daughters.