What does the adjective add? And does it perhaps interfere with her choice of iambic pentameter?
Honestly, these seem like proverbial nits at which to pick.
It’s a difference, which I couldn’t help noticing. As I say, Wilson’s translation appears to be the only one missing an adjective or a phrase at this point.
If you think it’s an unimportant nit, then you haven’t done any translating, or haven’t criticized a translation. People get bent out of shape on even smaller issues.
If it were a technical manual, and not a work of art (let alone a poem), I might agree. But it is not a technical manual. I should have thought it was uncontroversial that trade offs must be made in translating a work of art from one language to another, just as there must be in translating from one medium to another (eg: from oral tradition to text to film).
Wilson apparently chose to concern herself with the meter and the spirit of the poem and not merely the literal meaning of the words. If she needed to sacrifice a word here or there to accomplish her goals, so be it.
Moreover, given that academic studies have established that such epic poems were, prior to being committed to writing, liable to some amount of variation in the minutia while still hitting the same main story beats and adhering to the general flow of the verse, I think it is eminently reasonable for a modern day translator to do the same.
I feel like none of those adjectives adds much semantic content beyond “dead”, and i wonder if Homer just threw the word (whatever it is) in for the sake of the meter. If that’s plausible, then dropping it for the sale of the meter also seems like a cromulent choice.
Reading this thread makes me think i might want to pick up a copy of the Wilson translation. Anyone have thoughts on her translation of the Iliad?
Oh wow, the hardcover is out of stock on bookshop org and Norton, and the hardcover is out of print on bookshop org. The e-book is available everywhere, but has drm, so that’s a no-go for me.
The Iliad is free (and DRM-free) from bookshop.com. i guess I’ll pick that one up whether or not y’all recommend it. 
I guess I’ll get the Odyssey from Amazon. This may be my vacation reading on lake Winnipesaukee.
FWIW, Lattimore’s translation for the suitors is:
“They at the moment in front of the doors were amusing their spirits with draughts games,”
And Achilles:
“I would rather follow the plow as thrall to another man, one with no land allotted him and not much to live on, than be a king over all the perished dead.”
And honestly, “perished dead” sounds like a high schooler trying to sneakily pad the word count for a paper he’s writing.