Homer and the Will of Zeus

Wilson, Joseph P., 1956-

College Literature, 34.2, Spring 2007, pp. 150-173 (Article)

Published by West Chester University

DOI: 10.1353/lit.2007.0025

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http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/lit/summary/v034/34.2wilson.html

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 Homer and the Will of Zeus
Joe Wilson is professor of
Classical Studies at the
University of Scranton. He has
written extensively on Greek
and Latin literature, especially on
Homer and Sophocles. His book,
The Hero and the City
(1997).
Joe Wilson
After reading the Homeric poems, and
indeed after reading interpretations of
them, I cannot help asking about Homer
and wondering what he thought he was
doing. (Ford 1992, 1)
A
ndrew Ford’s question haunts all who
undertake the study of Homer, that
most illusive of figures, endowed with
none of the ordinary predicates of existence,
the putative author, singer, or monumental
composer of the incomparable Iliad and/or
the Odyssey, or neither.1 R. Martin has sug-
gested that, in the midst of the intense revi-
sionism that has beset tragedy and comedy,
Homeric studies are still fairly removed from
critical controversy (1988, 2). Martin seems
optimistic, especially in light of the work
done in the decade subsequent to the publi-
cation of his own book, during which the
split between pure oralists and virtually
everyone else seems to have grown more
extreme.2
Still, Ford’s question, while undeniably
challenging, at least offers those who would
 Joe Wilson 151

attempt to answer it some hope, no matter how faint, of success, as opposed

to questions of authorship and composition, which have raged unresolved
for centuries.After all, as Martin observed, however the Iliad may have come
into existence, it is now a text, “and that has made all of the difference”
(1988, 1). A text can be analyzed, if not to discern the putative will of its
author, at least to disclose its own methodology.3And we can perhaps do
better than that. “In my father’s house there are many rooms.” Even the
densest, least skilled, and most haphazard (and I do not mean to suggest that
the Iliad reflects any such ineptitude) of architects must have included a few
of them in the original plans.4
Like Ford, I would like to examine what Homer was doing when he
composed/wrote the Iliad.5 Yet that question, baldly stated, seems too broad
for the scope of the current discussion. Alas, we possess no detailed notes
from the poet on his methodology. It remains the most axiomatic of axioms
in Homeric studies that the poet never injects himself into his work, and
efforts to uncover a “historical” Homer invariably founder.6 We do, howev-
er, have his poem, and we do have his plot. As Nagy observes (and repeats
often [1979, 35-36, 97-99]), and Nimis (1987, 90) and Richardson (1990)
also confirm, the plot of an epic poem is simply the will of Zeus. An inves-
tigation of Homer’s (or the text’s) own intentions can with profit begin there.
Moreover, as Redfield carefully argues, following the logic of Aristotle’s
Poetics 1451b27-29, the invention of the plot is the invention of a narrative
poem (1994, 58). Homer or the tradition invents the plot of the work; we
may therefore assume that the will of Zeus conforms rather exactly to the
will of the poet—in that the will of Zeus in the Iliad operates to guarantee the
honor of Achilles, the will of the poet must be to do the same. Moreover, the
honoring of Achilles will then condition all of the poet’s decisions on the dis-
tribution of kleos, the glory (from kluein,“to hear”), gained from oral poetry.7
We can carry the discussion still further. To quote the cogent summary
of Mark Edwards:
Fate, of course, is the will of the poet, limited by the major features of the
traditional legends. . . . In an obviously artistic, not religious, motif, Zeus
holds up his scales to determine the decree of fate, and the gods act to
ensure the fulfillment of such a decree; Poseidon rescues Aeneas for this rea-
son, as it is fated that through him Dardanus’ line shall continue (20.300-
308). On two occasions Zeus considers the possibility of saving a hero from
the death that fate has decreed (his son Sarpedon, 16.433ff., and the beloved
Hector, 22.167-81), but both times another deity declares this to be excep-
tional and a bad policy, and Zeus gives up the idea.(Edwards 1987, 136)
I offer a slight refinement to Edwards’s initial observation: fate is not the
will of the poet, but the poetic tradition, to which the poet must in most
152 College Literature 34.2 [Spring 2007]

instances conform, lest he lose all of his authority.8 The poet, however, deter-
mines the plot of the poem, and the poet’s metaphor for that determination
is the will of Zeus. For example, when Zeus must reluctantly allow the deaths
of Sarpedon and Hector, we have a metaphor for the poet acknowledging
his allegiance to a tradition, a tradition to which he must, in crucial specifics,
adhere, in order to maintain his own credibility. Should Sarpedon escape the
onslaught of Patroclus, or Hector fall to Ajax instead of Achilles, the poet
would compromise, perhaps fatally, both his tale and his status as a “Singer of
Tales,” to borrow Lord’s phrase.
Poetic favor, of course, offers no protective talisman to the characters.
Zeus directs his affections precisely to those characters for whom the poet
expresses the greatest interest, and yet, as Griffin observes,“Zeus loves Hector
and Sarpedon, Patroclus and Achilles; but by the end of the Iliad three of the
four are dead, and the fourth will be slain very soon.”(1980, 86). Zeus’s loves
are the crucial figures around whom the poet fashions his tale, the men
whose death in battle will earn them the kleos aphthiton,“undying fame,” that
epic confers.9
These observations still leave us with a technical problem. How does the
will of Zeus actually operate in the poem, and how, specifically, does it relate
to the program of the poet? How does it guarantee that Achilles will be hon-
ored? The will of Zeus makes its memorable first appearance in Book 1:
Sing, Goddess, of the destructive wrath of
Achilles, son of Peleus, which laid pains without
number on the Achaeans, and sent many strong
souls of heroes down to death and rendered their
bodies carrion for the dogs and birds, and the
will of Zeus [boule Dios] was accomplished, from
the time when [ex hou] the son of Atreus, the lord of
men, and godlike Achilles first fought in strife. (Iliad I.1-9)
The boule Dios, and the ex hou, offer the initial difficulty. Some ancient
commentators suggested that ex hou was causal, and should be taken in con-
nection with the Kypria, in which Zeus is blamed (credited?) for starting the
Trojan war in order to relieve the world of excess population.10 Aristarchus
rejected this interpretation of the neoteroi and argued that the boule Dios refers
merely to the promise of Zeus to Thetis in Book I (Kirk 1985, 53).The Iliad,
at first glance, appears to lend support to Aristarchus’s view: the will of Zeus
does not seem to enter into the story until the end of Book I, when Zeus
pledges to Thetis that he will honor Achilles. Indeed, that may explain the
rather independent role of Athena and Apollo in the first book. In subsequent
 Joe Wilson 153

books, the two are sent (or their interference at least tolerated) by Zeus to
intervene on behalf of the Greeks or the Trojans, or, in the case of Athena’s
effort in Book IV to break the truce, on behalf of Zeus himself, (should the
truce endure, the poem would be over). In Book I, however, the prayer of
Chryses motivates Apollo to unleash a plague upon the Greek camp (I.43-
52), while Athena’s intervention in the quarrel between Agamemnon and
Achilles comes at the behest of Hera, “who loves you both,” (I.208-10).11
The other view, however, does find support from both the Iliad and the
Odyssey: Agamemnon claims that Zeus “stole his wits away” in the quarrel
over the girl, and Achilles does not contradict him. Indeed, he had suggest-
ed the very same thing at IX.377. As Dodds observes, this is no mere use of
the gods as a facon de parler (1951, 3-5). Nor can we simply dismiss
Agamemnon’s remark as a facile apology: he does not deny his own respon-
sibility for his actions. Clearly, on Agamemnon’s analysis, Zeus has manufac-
tured this episode in the Trojan War as a function of a general plan to work
havoc on the Greeks.The suggestion that Zeus “started” the Trojan War for
his own purposes finds additional support from the subsequent epic: in the
Odyssey Zeus is described as “conjuring up a great wave of disasters for
Greeks and Trojans alike,” at a time before the action of the Iliad, indeed,
before the Greeks ever left for Troy (8.81-82).12 The same plan is ascribed
to Zeus the summary of the Kypria in Proclus and in the Hesiodic Catalogue
of Women.13
There is a way to reconcile the two possibilities. Homer employs the will
of Zeus as the motivation for the action of the poem because the tradition
of epic, which recorded the afflictions wrought by Zeus on Trojan and Greek
alike, mandated it.14 Thus he affirms his membership in the tradition. At the
same time he claims his own originality by taking the traditional boule Dios
and altering it to fit his own story and provide not merely the plot of his epic,
but a mechanism for the poet to enter into the story.15 The poet never
departs from the traditional view that Zeus wants to kill Greeks and Trojans
alike, but he demonstrates his mastery over that tradition by changing the
terms under which the slaughter takes place. As Scodel notes:
Since, in his Iliad, the plan of Zeus is in effect the plan of Achilles, the tra-
ditional theme of the Trojan War as the cause of many deaths has been
adapted to the wrath. Homer is not ignorant of the Cyclic and Hesiodic
explanations of the war, but he turns them to his own purpose. (Scodel
1982, 47)16
Lynn-George, for his part, reminds us of just how open the entire boule
Dios is. “In all its possibilities this plan of Zeus possesses a powerful indeter-
minacy, a might which is a function of its mystery” (1988, 38).As he goes on
to observe, there seems to be a boule already at work at the outset of the
154 College Literature 34.2 [Spring 2007]

poem, yet at the beginning of Book II we see Zeus still considering what
that boule might be. Hence,“Throughout the structuring of epic there is dis-
continuity and yet also an unpredictable indissociability of irreconcilable
positions.All is both predetermined and open to choice in a narrative which
is fixed forever and constantly refashioned” (41).What else accounts for such
determined indeterminacy but Homer’s decision to work within the Cyclic
tradition and coordinate it with the specific plan of the honoring of Achilles?
The logical upshot of such coordination is that nothing within the
work can truly lie outside the plan of Zeus. Zeus himself allows the delay
of the accomplishment of his promise to Thetis, both when he permits the
interference of Athena in Book VIII, to keep the rout of the Greeks from
happening too quickly, and again when he tacitly permits Poseidon’s inter-
ference, by going off to the land of the Thracians at the beginning of Book
XIII, and in the apate Dios (the deception and seduction of Zeus by Hera)
of Book XIV. In each instance, the Iliadic plan seems derailed; but the gen-
eral epic plan, the slaughter of Greek and Trojan alike, moves forward when
the Achaeans rally and prolong the battle. Hence, nothing in the Iliad dif-
fers from the Plan of Zeus, and thus the plan of Zeus stands revealed as the
will of the poet. As a consequence of this, we should pay very close atten-
tion to the will of Zeus, since the poet has invested the metaphor with the
claim to his own authority.17 Indeed, Morrison sees just this type of oper-
ation in the Iliad. On 18 of 33 occasions in which Homer’s plot might have
gone off in a different direction, a god intervenes to keep the story on
track—and the gods are very often working for Zeus (1992, 62-71). Even
when they seem to be working against Zeus’s plan to honor Achilles, as
when Poseidon rallies the Greek troops in Books XIII-XIV, they are in fact
serving Zeus’s other plan, to slaughter Greeks and Trojans alike. Quite sim-
ply, Homer lays claim to both “plans” to structure the plot of his poem
(Richardson 1990, 187f).
Whether we accept that argument and see the will of Zeus acting on
events from a time prior to the Iliad, or only posterior to the initial quar-
rel between Achilles and Agamemnon, the will of Zeus guides most of the
action from the end of Book I on to the ransoming of Hector’s body by
Priam in Book XXIV.We can see how closely Zeus’s will conforms to the
poetic program of honoring Achilles by examining those initial passages in
which Zeus consents to the desires of that hero. (The Iliad does honor
Achilles, and Achilles alone, and does so rather unambiguously. He alone,
in Homer’s account, is responsible for the destruction of Troy, by killing
Hector, the man on whose life the fate of Troy rests. He speaks the most
lines in the poem. His dominance is absolute, from his repeated humilia-
tions of Agamemnon to the assertion of his authority over all of the Greeks
 Joe Wilson 155

at the funeral games of Patroclus, and to his final mastery over the van-
quished Priam.)
After the quarrel between Agamemnon and Achilles over Briseis, a
humiliated Achilles demands the help of his mother in gaining revenge over
the Greeks. He cites the fact that Zeus is indebted to Thetis for her help in
rescuing the king of the gods from an ignominious imprisonment at the
hands of the other Olympian deities (I.348-406).18 He continues:
Persuade him to aid the Trojans, to pin
the Achaeans back against their ships, trap
them around the bay and mow them down. (Iliad I.408-10)
Thetis relays the request in terms that are somewhat more ambiguous and
less bloodthirsty:
Father Zeus, if among the immortals
I have aided you by word or deed, fulfill
this prayer. Honor my son, doomed to
meet his fate more quickly than all
other. But now the lord of men Agamemnon
has dishonored him. For he has taken
and kept his prize. But you honor him,
Wise Zeus of Olympus. Give strength to
the Trojans, until the Achaeans honor
my son and even increase his honor. (Iliad I.503-10)
The request of Achilles to Thetis specified slaughter: tous de kata prumnas
te kai amph’ hala elsai Achaious kteinomenous,“push back the dying Achaeans to
their ships and to the sea.”19 Thetis, however, suggests only that Zeus tithei
kratos,“give strength” to the Trojans, until the Greeks restore his honor (Kirk
1985, 96).20 In theory, the terms of Thetis’s more general request may be
considered fulfilled by the action of Books VIII-IX; the Trojans have won a
substantial victory and the Greeks have selected delegates to offer Achilles
more than adequate compensation. But Thetis’s version of the story is not the
one that carries authority: Zeus’a own plan agrees with Achilles’s initial
request, rather than the mediated version of his mother.21 The poet depicts
Zeus’s rather bloodthirsty intent at the beginning of Book II:
Sweet sleep did not hold Zeus, but rather
he weighed in his mind how he might honor
Achilles and destroy many of the Achaeans
next to their ships (Iliad II.2-4)
156 College Literature 34.2 [Spring 2007]

The will of Zeus is identical with the will of Achilles himself. Zeus conjures
up a plan by which olese{i} de poleas epi neusin Achaion, “he might destroy
many of the Achaeans by the ships,” (II.4). Moreover, we should note that the
plan of Zeus will operate in its own good time.The first day of battle (Books
II-VII), does not lead directly to the slaughter of the Greeks among their
ships. If anything, the long day achieves nothing and ends in a draw.To derive
poetic intent from the apparent gap between Zeus’s conception of the spe-
cific plan to honor Achilles and its operation, which does not truly begin
until the beginning of Book VIII, Homer wants us to understand that the will
of Zeus encompasses the action of the entire poem, for without the first day
of battle, with the aristeia of Diomedes, his fights with the gods, the
Catalogue, the Teichoskopia, and the intimate portrayals of family and city
life in Troy, the Iliad would lose much of its force and nearly all of its appeal.
Books II through VII recapitulate the long and bloody stalemate of the first
ten years of the war. Homer introduces the Greek and Trojan forces in the
Catalogue and frames the actual day of battle with two inconclusive duels:
Menelaus and Paris (perhaps to demonstrate that Homer’s war is a poetic
construct, and like any poetic construct, not accountable to practical consid-
erations), and Hector and Ajax, whose inconclusive brawling marks the mid-
dle books, before Patroclus, the ritual substitute of Achilles, and then Achilles
himself take the field.All things, even those that do not immediately work to
Zeus’s desire, work to the god’s advantage, as the poet condenses the futility
of ten years into the space of a single day.
Zeus elects to send the dream in the form of Nestor to Agamemnon,
a dream that initiates the first day of battle described in the work. The
choice of Nestor is hardly coincidental: Nestor, besides being the great
counselor of the Greeks, occupies a prominent role as a quasi-poet in the
work, providing, along with Phoenix, Priam, and a few other characters
(Glaucus, for example) a deeper poetic tradition from which the poet can
draw material.22 What better way for the poet (Homer) to assert the poet-
ic authority of Zeus’s deception than by using a character who is a virtual
aoidos himself (Nestor) to convey the information that will deceive the
clueless Agamemnon.
Only the third day of battle, from Books XI-XVII, in which the Greek
wall is pierced and the fighting takes place along the ships, actually fulfills
the will of Zeus as stated in its rather limited form (and thus accounts for
Achilles’s final rejection of the embassy in Book IX—should Achilles have
accepted the offer of the Achaeans, the will of Zeus, as well as his own,
would have been left unfulfilled).23 Zeus makes clear his own will in coun-
sel with the Olympians and subsequently confirms it at the beginning of
Book IV. After the Greeks and Trojans agree to settle the quarrel over
 Joe Wilson 157

Helen by single combat between Paris and Menelaus (a battle that we

know will be inconclusive, since such an outcome would contradict the
promise of Zeus in Book I—hence, the interference of Aphrodite to save
Paris is not really germane to the plot), Zeus asks his fellow divinities if the
war should end:
Let us consider how this work will be,
whether we stir up evil war and the din
of battle, or we bring both sides together
in friendship. If this seems good and
pleasant to all, then the city of Priam
might remain inhabited, and Menelaus
might take back Argive Helen. (Iliad IV.14-19)
The goddesses are not pleased, but only Hera raises her voice against the
divine plan. Zeus states quite definitely that he holds no personal grudge
against the Trojans, and he compels Hera to surrender one of her favorite
cities of the Greeks to him at some future time (recalling once more the
divine plan suggested in the Kypria: the destruction of the Greeks as well as
the Trojans seems to be an ineluctable part of the plan of Zeus). He then
employs Athena, now as his own agent, to attempt to break the truce:
Go quickly among the Trojans and the
Greeks, and attempt to make the Trojans
first violate their oaths and attack
the Achaeans. (Iliad IV.70-72)
So Zeus rejects (or more properly, fails to seize) an opportunity to end
the war and instead instructs Athena to encourage the Trojans to become
oath breakers. Homer could not make his point more clearly: Zeus’s real
interests are served by more slaughter, as are the poet’s (times of peace being
notoriously difficult to distill into good epic). Zeus, by accepting from Hera
the right to destroy Argos, Mycenae, or Sparta at some future date, seems
determined to continue the slaughter of the Greeks, as the Kypria suggests.24
However, he is equally willing to accept the destruction of Troy, a city that
he finds quite innocent of wrongdoing, for Zeus in Book IV evaluates the
behavior of the Trojans not by a standard of human justice, but by a standard
of divine expedient.The crimes of stealing and then keeping Helen concern
him not at all.The Trojans are, in his view, a just people:
Never has my altar lacked a fair feast,
or drink, or burnt-offering.We have
always received our due. (Iliad IV.48-49)25
158 College Literature 34.2 [Spring 2007]

Zeus desires not peace, just or otherwise, but war; he is not swayed by the
counsels of others.26 Rather, he employs the gods to justify the continuation
of the war, in the absence of which the poet has no story, and Zeus cannot
keep his initial promise to Thetis.
Confirmation of Zeus’s emotional investment in continuing the war can
be detected in the numerous instances in which Zeus is shown as “delight-
ing in war.” One of the most striking instances occurs in Book XX, as Zeus
unleashes all the gods to fight on whatever side they choose:
I still care about those who are going
to die. But I will remain on a cliff of
Olympus, from which I will look on and
take pleasure in my heart (phrena terpsomai).
The rest of you may go and enter into
the midst of the Trojans and Greeks,
bearing aid to either side, as the
mind of each of you desires. (Iliad XX.21-30)
The detached concern evinced by Zeus here accords well with the notion
that his will is not merely the plot of the poem, but also a metonymy for the
will of the poet. For what else has the poet evinced throughout the work but
this same paradoxical attitude—an unflinching description of the worst hor-
rors of war, offset to a certain extent by the brilliant similes that restore
humanity, if ever so briefly, to those who have been brutalized and slain in
the course of the poem.
Indeed, the proper way of relating the line in the Kypria that claims that
Zeus engineers the Trojan War to rid the world of excess population is to
read it as metaphor for the poets’ choice of war as the subject for the works
in the epic cycle.The Cycle, which almost certainly began as oral poetry, may
take war, with its varied fortunes and routine changes in circumstance, as a
metaphor for oral poetry itself?
After Pandarus breaks the truce, the two armies prepare for battle.
Homer devotes Book V primarily to the great aristeia of Diomedes, which
culminates in the wounding of Ares at the hands of Diomedes and Athena.
Zeus is content to let events take their course, as befits the general action of
Books II-VII, books which serve as a kind of synopsis of events that logical-
ly should have taken place before the 10th year of the war. Only at one point,
Diomedes’s aristeia of Book V, do we see some conclusive fighting; as befits
the action of a true aristeia, a divinity assists the hero.27 Indeed, the presence
of the god at an action simply gives divine sanction to that action, and by
extension, guarantees that a significant action has occurred as part of the
 Joe Wilson 159

poetic will. Diomedes’s aristeia demonstrates what a hero can accomplish

with a god on his side: nothing less than the ability to break the lethal stale-
mate encapsulated in Books II-VII and symbolized in the two futile single
combats (Paris and Menelaus in Book II, Ajax and Hector in Book VII) that
begin and end the day of battle. But Diomedes is not destined to slay Hector,
as Achilles is, so he must be content with wounding not one but two gods.28
In effect, he serves as a sort of demonstration blast for the poet, a preparation
for Achilles.29 Diomedes and Achilles lead strangely parallel existences in the
Iliad, and in the epic tradition. Both fight with gods; both are wounded by
Paris; both fight with Aeneas. In the Iliad we can see that Diomedes is, in
effect, poetry’s first hero, placed on the Iliadic stage by Homer to demon-
strate to his audience a model for poetic heroism, in which the mortal war-
rior finds confirmation for his actions by the help and presence of the gods.
The gods who assist the mortal warriors in their aristeiai must therefore be
taken as metaphors for the poets themselves, who assign to the select war-
riors the kleos appropriate to their deeds. Indeed, the same pattern can be dis-
cerned in the subsequent aristeiai of Hector (who has been inspired, literally,
by Apollo), Patroclus (who has been inspired by Achilles himself), and
Achilles, who is assisted by Athena herself.
In Book VIII, the poet, having used his first day of battle to telescope the
war to date, and having alerted his audience to the possibilities inherent in
the poet-god-hero nexus, opts to change the war from a futile stalemate to
the first stage of the honoring of Achilles. Predictably, Zeus calls the gods into
conference and administers orders that none of them are to interfere in the
battle on either side—he himself will employ force, if necessary, to see that
his orders are obeyed:
No goddess nor god should attempt to
contravene my instructions, but let all
pay attention, in order that I accomplish
[teleuteso] these things as quickly
as possible. Anyone I see wishing to
defy heaven and aid the Trojans or the
Greeks will return to Olympus stricken,
or I will hurl him into murky Tartarus . . .
(Iliad VIII.7-13)
In theory, the will of Zeus, the wholesale slaughter of the Greek troops,
should begin today. But we also see how thoroughly the will of Zeus is iden-
tified with that of the poet when Zeus relents slightly when Athena com-
plains: the poet has hardly shown everything he wants to, so he allows Zeus
160 College Literature 34.2 [Spring 2007]

to appear to change his mind a bit, thereby providing a rationale for a more
protracted accomplishment of the boule Dios. Zeus will allow a bit of inter-
vention by the goddess:
Take heart,Tritogeneia, my dear child.
I do not speak fully what is in my mind
or heart, and I wish to be kind to you. (Iliad VIII.43-45)
The phrase ou nu ti thumo{i} prophroni mutheomai, literally, “I do not now
speak with full forethought of my purpose,” as ever reveals that the will of
Zeus stands too closely allied to the interests of the poet to be merely the
bare outline of the poetic tradition. Homer construes the Plan of Zeus
broadly enough to encompass the encouraging omens that Agamemnon and
Ajax receive, as well as the interference of Athena and, later, Poseidon. The
war must continue and the Greeks must not abandon Troy, or both parts of
Zeus’s plan, the general slaughter of men, particularly the race of Homeric
heroes (the hemitheoi of Book XII), and the honoring of Achilles, will come
to naught.
In Book VIII, the process by which he will honor Achilles has now been
activated. Lest any of the poet’s audience miss the point, Homer makes it
abundantly clear when Zeus employs his thunderbolts to terminate the furi-
ous attack of Diomedes, the first poetic hero (i.e., the first recipient of an aris-
teia), and drive him from the field:
And now they would have been forced back
to Ilium, penned in like lambs, if the
father of gods and men had not quickly
realized what was happening.
Thundering terribly he let loose his fearsome
silvery thunderbolt, and he struck the earth
in front of the horses of Diomedes. (Iliad VIII.131-34)
Nestor persuades Diomedes to withdraw, but Hector’s taunting proves too
much for the son of Tydeus to endure, so he wheels his horses again to re-
engage in battle. But Zeus “thunders three times from Ida,” signaling once
and for all to Diomedes that his time as poetic hero has ended (VIII.139-71).
When next we see him in battle, he is doing nothing more heroic than
slaughtering sleeping Thracians.
Zeus, having encouraged the Trojans, obliges the desperate Agamemnon
with an omen of his own: an eagle drops a fawn on the altar on which the
Greeks sacrifice. Zeus’s will lies not in ending the war in Book VIII, but
rather in continuing it as long as possible, allowing slaughter to mount up on
both sides before he unleashes Achilles. Indeed, although he will let the
 Joe Wilson 161

Greeks regroup, he will not permit Athena and Hera to turn the tide of bat-
tle, sending Iris to the recalcitrant pair to inform them of the punishment,
should they attempt to drive the Trojans back to their city:
I will maim their swift horses before their
chariots, and I will knock them from the car,
and I will shatter their chariot. Nor will
they recover from their wounds for ten years,
if my thunderbolt strikes them. (Iliad VIII.402-05)
Let me reiterate: Book VIII could, in theory, have been sufficient for the ful-
fillment of Thetis’s request to Zeus—however, Zeus’s plan exceeds the
request made by Thetis, and conforms to the original request of Achilles and
to the tradition of the Cycle: not merely to allow the death of many Greeks,
but to create havoc sufficient to make a poem. Nor could Zeus allow the
Trojan successes to come to naught because of a timely intervention by
Athena: he would, on the next day, make matter far worse for the Greeks:
At dawn, ox-eyed queen Hera, you will see,
if you wish, the mighty son of Cronos
destroy more of the army of the Achaean
spearmen. For terrible Hector will not
leave off from war until the swift son
of Peleus rouses from his ships, on the day
that they battle with the deadliest force
by the prows of the ships over the fallen
Patroclus. For so it is decreed by heaven
[thesphaton]. (Iliad VIII.470-77)
Thesphaton, literally, “god-spoken,” confirms that the most important action
of the plot is solely the will of Zeus, far more so than the will of Achilles,
who certainly did not want his best friend killed.
In Book XI the will of Zeus takes a slightly different turn, as he sends
Iris to discourage Hector from engaging Agamemnon during the Achaean
king’s aristeia:
Go, swift Iris, and tell this to Hector:
As long as he sees Agamemnon, shepherd
of the host, fighting in the forefront,
slaying rank after rank of men, so
long hold off from engaging him, and
162 College Literature 34.2 [Spring 2007]

let the rest of your army battle with

him with their spears. But after he
has withdrawn in his chariot, wounded by
spear or arrow, then I will give him
strength to slay, until he comes to
the well-benched ships and the sun
sets and holy night comes on. (Iliad XI.186-94)
This passage may seem, at first glance, to represent the traditional use of the
gods as facon de parler: after all, it is only good sense to avoid a fighter who is
having a particularly good day. But the warning (or advice) cuts deeper on a
poetic level. Zeus warns Hector, in effect, not to ruin the plot of the poem.
A premature death, before he has led the Trojans in firing the ships, violates
the promise of Zeus and hence the plot of the poem.30
Agamemnon eventually leaves the field after receiving a painful but
hardly lethal wound from Coon. Paris wounds Diomedes with an arrow to
the foot, while Odysseus is skewered in the latissimus dorsi by Socus.We also
see in Book XI the beginning of the role of Ajax as the personal foil to the
will of Zeus. Gradually, all the great warriors of the Achaeans leave the field,
save Ajax, who will battle, often alone, against the onslaught of the Trojans to
save his comrades and their ships.31Ajax receives no wound: he is rather taken
out of the battle directly by Zeus, a peculiar “erasure” of the hero. After all,
as Nestor says later, “the best (aristoi) of the Achaeans have been wounded,”
(XI.658-59), but Ajax, who certainly ought to be among the best of the
Achaeans, given that he is the second best after Achilles (II.768-69) is not
wounded, nor does Nestor mention him in his subsequent list of those who
have fallen to the Trojans (XI.660-64). As Nimis observes, he has been
replaced here by Eurypylus (1987, 53-54).32 Zeus forces only one Achaean,
Ajax, to withdraw from the field directly; all the others, even Eurypylus and
Machaon, retire only after being wounded.33
The identity of interest between Zeus and the poet and their metony-
mous existence seems clear.Two test cases will demonstrate the extent of the
identification.

Zeus and the Tradition 1: The Wall of the Achaeans

The battle becomes increasingly more desperate for the Greek side in
Book XII, as the Trojans break the wall around the Greek camp. The wall
merits and has received much discussion.34 The Greeks build the wall at the
end of Book VII: tacit acknowledgment that the inconclusive day of battle
has rendered them equal to the Trojans.The poet demonstrates how futile the
day has been by assigning virtually the same verses to the Greeks and the
 Joe Wilson 163

Trojans when he describes the collecting of the dead and the mass funerals
held by either side:
Then they [Trojans and Dardanians] prepared
themselves, quickly, for either task, some
to collect the dead, and some to gather wood.
And the Argives on their side hastened from
their ships, some to collect the dead, some
to gather wood.
The sun was now striking the fields, climbing
the heavens from the deeps of the soft-gliding
Ocean.The two sides met face-to-face.Then
it was a difficult thing to recognize the
face of each man. But washing away the clotted
blood with water, and shedding hot tears,
they loaded them on wagons. But great Priam
allowed no crying; so in silence, sick at
heart, they heaped the corpses on the fire.
And when they had burned them all, they
went away to holy Ilium. And in the same
way the well-greaved Achaeans, sick at heart,
heaped the corpses on the fire. And when
they had burned them all they went to the
hollow ships. (Iliad VII.417-32)
To accent the equivalence that had developed between the Greek and
Trojan forces now that Achilles was no longer on the field, Homer has
Nestor, “weaving a metis” (uphainein metin), recommend that a wall be built
from the funeral mound to protect the camp (VII.324-43).35 The wall is
clearly a poetic construct. The wall gives structure to the day of battle and
marks the equivalence between the two sides. Moreover, the existence of the
wall enables Homer to emphasize the superiority of the Trojans, backed by
Zeus, when they break through the fortifications in Book XII.The besiegers
have become the besieged.
Moreover, as Poseidon complains, the wall gives a variety of kleos, in
competition with the fame of his own deed, when he and Apollo built the
walls of Troy for Laomedon (VII.446-53). But Zeus is the final arbiter of
kleos, just as the poet is the final arbiter of poetry. Kleos cannot be earned; it
164 College Literature 34.2 [Spring 2007]

must be given.And Zeus will not permit the kleos of the wall to remain. Zeus
answers Poseidon’s complaint:
Wide-ruling Earthshaker, what are you
saying. Another god might fear this
device, but only one who is weaker than
you by far in strength of hand and
might. But your kleos will extend
as far as the dawn. Come.When the long
haired Achaeans have gone home with
their swift ships to their dear homeland,
then break the wall and carry it into
the sea, and cover the beach with
sand, so that the wall of the Achaeans
may be brought to naught. (Iliad VII.455-63)
The defensive wall of Troy shall be remembered, the kleos of Poseidon
honored.The defensive wall of the Greeks shall be obliterated. Homer does
not like defense; Hector fails when he retreats. Defense stands in the way of
poetry, and stationary fortifications, like static texts, hold no interest for the
oral poet. It is hardly coincidental that his real hero, Achilles, earns the fre-
quent epithet “swift-footed,” while Diomedes, Patroclus, and Hector, all fly
about the battlefield in chariots.The hero of the later epic wins the footrace
in Book XXIII, to forewarn Homer’s audience that the swiftness of
Odysseus’s mind is nearly matched by that of his feet.
In Book XII, Homer steps outside of his narrative to describe the even-
tual destruction of the wall at some time posterior to the Trojan War, but
prior to Homer’s own time.The positioning of the account cannot be coin-
cidental; it stands almost at the dead middle of the text.The whole passage has
been much discussed, but the last part is most significant for my purposes:
Zeus rained continuously, in order to
overwhelm the wall with the salt sea.
The Earthshaker, carrying the trident in
his hands, led the way, and swept
away in the waves the foundations of
wooden beams and stones that the Achaeans
had constructed with such toil, and made
all smooth again along the stream of the
Hellespont, and again covered the beach
 Joe Wilson 165

with sand, when he had swept away the

wall. (Iliad XII.25-32)
The works of man are rendered obscured by the processes of weather
and time (the turning post for the chariot race in Book XXIII affords anoth-
er instance), unless they are elucidated by the poet.What the poet chooses to
ignore we forget, or never learn; like the wall, which is destroyed by the nat-
ural processes of rain, wind, and earthquake, that which the poets decrees suf-
fers oblivion. Men, affairs, events, all will be memorable only so long as poets
choose to remember them. The poet shows Zeus, the poet’s metonym, tak-
ing an active part in demonstrating the impermanence of human endeavor.
Even Schliemann, perhaps, was defying the will of Zeus: Troy the city was
less important than Troy the city of poetry, and, as it has worked out, some-
what less impressive.
Ford has written eloquently about the wall, suggesting that Homer here
renders a judgment on the impermanence of the written text.Writing is ulti-
mately an unintelligent sema, without the oral poet to elucidate the contents
and contexts, and the flimsy new technology of writing cannot match the
wisdom of the oral poet (192, 152-57). A written text, like the wall, is prey
to any mischance, and no match for the collective wisdom of the traditions
of oral poetry.

Zeus and the Tradition 2: The Death of Sarpedon

In Book XII, Homer puts in the mouth of Sarpedon the famous ration-
ale for the hero’s life:
Glaucus, why are we two honored above all
with seats and meat and full cups in Lycia,
and why do all look upon us as gods?
We possess a great tract of by the Xanthus,
a lovely orchard, and wheat fields.We must
now stand among the first ranks of the
Lycians and take our part in the blazing
battle, so that one of the Lycians may
say, “our kings that rule us are not
without fame [aklees], who eat fat sheep
and drink the select, honeyed wine.Their
might is most noble, since they fight among
the foremost of the Lycians.” Friend, if
166 College Literature 34.2 [Spring 2007]

we could escape from the battle and live

forever, ageless and immortal, then I
myself would neither fight among the foremost
nor would I send you into the battle for
glory. But the myriad fates lead us to
death, which no mortal can escape or avoid,
so let us go, either to give glory
to another, or to gain it for ourselves. (Iliad XII.310-28)
Kleos is the compensation for death, the kleos aphthiton of poetry that
those who die in battle earn.Telamonian Ajax stabs at Sarpedon, piercing his
shield and driving him back. But “Zeus kept death from his son, that he not
be killed at the prows of the ships,” (XII.402-03). Homer instead reserves the
glory of killing Sarpedon for Patroclus, the “ritual substitute,” as Nagy terms
it, of Achilles, killing the man who best expresses the rationale for the mar-
tial ethos in his speech to Glaucus in Book XII; Tlepolemos, the son of
Heracles, had been denied the chance to kill Sarpedon earlier, and now Ajax
will be denied the same glory, which instead will go to the son of Menoitius:
if Achilles’s is the poem’s hero, Patroclus is poetry’s substitute.
The death of Sarpedon is traditionally considered one of the most mov-
ing scenes in the poem. He has best articulated the “heroic code” in his
speech to Glaucus in Book XII, and his willingness to embrace the risks of
life and death later guarantees him heroic status, cult worship, and of course
poetry itself.
As Patroclus advances towards Sarpedon, Zeus addresses Hera:
My heart is divided in two as I consider, do
I save him still alive, snatching him up and
removing him from the tearful war and place
him in the rich land of Lycia, or do I
slay him now at the hands of the son of
Menoitius? (Iliad XVI.435-38)
At one level, Zeus merely confronts the question that other divinities who
spare favorites must confront. There are additional considerations, however.
When Aphrodite saves Paris in Book III, or Aeneas in Book V, we do not see
merely a goddess saving a fallen favorite: rather, the maintenance of the poet-
ic tradition, or even the poem itself. If Paris falls to Menelaus, the Iliad may
end too soon. Similarly, if Achilles kills Hector when they first meet in Book
XX, the aristeia of Achilles will end too quickly. Zeus has tolerated the inter-
ventions of the gods in order to protract the action of the work, so he finds
 Joe Wilson 167

the intervention of the gods in saving a favorite here and there acceptable.
Moreover, Aeneas, saved again in Book XX, must live to carry on the Trojan
name. Hence, there must have been a tradition in which Aeneas survived, a
tradition that the monumental composer of the Iliad feels bound to respect.
Similarly, when Apollo stops Patroclus from storming the walls of Troy, or
Athena helps Achilles to kill Hector, the issue is not one of the gods unfair-
ly favoring one side or another, but the poet’s use of the presence of a god
(each a messenger from Zeus to the Trojans and Greeks, respectively) to rat-
ify the maintenance of the poetic tradition, within the boundaries of which
the poet operates.
For Zeus, however, the situation is not quite so simple.When Zeus faces
the decision to save Sarpedon, we see how closely governed by the tradition
the poet is. As Hera points out to him, if Zeus decides to rescue Sarpedon,
consequences will abound.
I will tell you this, and you lay it up
in your heart. If you send Sarpedon home,
beware lest someone of the gods should wish
to send his own son away from the fierce
battle. For their are many sons of gods
fighting around the city of Priam. (Iliad XVI.444-49)
Should Zeus rescue Sarpedon, it will become open season for the gods to
intervene.The right way to read this passage, I contend, is simply this. Should
Zeus, as metaphor for the poet, exercise his right to save Sarpedon, any other
poet may in turn save any other character. Should this happen, the tradition
itself, which has not been substantially threatened by the other rescues of
mortals in the work (instead, the tradition has been maintained and the poem
itself has been enhanced), would collapse.36 The tradition itself apparently
saves Aeneas, not once but twice. Homer understands himself to be working
within a tradition upon which he substantially improves, but upon which he
is in no small part dependent. He has no interest in seeing the tradition col-
lapse entirely.
Hera offers Zeus an alternative to saving his son. It is the alternative, well
discussed by Nagy, of the glorious death of a hero:
If he is dear to you, and your heart is
heavy with grief, allow him to die in
the fierce battle at the hands of Patroclus
the son of Menoitius. But when his soul
and his life have left him, send Death
and sweet Sleep to bear him until they come
168 College Literature 34.2 [Spring 2007]

to the wide land of Lycia.There his kin

will bury him with a mound and a stele:
for this is the reward of the dead. (Iliad XVI.450-57)
As Nagy observes, Sarpedon will now attain the status and receive the wor-
ship of a cult-hero (1992, 122-42).This in no way precludes, but rather com-
plements, Sarpedon’s status as a hero of epic, for he has achieved the kleos aph-
thiton of death in battle. Sarpedon has, in effect, lived the perfect poetic life,
and Zeus/Homer, having rewarded him with poetry already, now guarantees
the consequent award of cult. Most heroes who appear in the Iliad can expect
cult-hero status, whether they die at Troy or not. But the memorial of a stele
alone does not suffice; without the aid of the poet, who gives the warriors
kleos, a stele may not communicate anything.37

Notes
1For a synopsis of the ancient opinion on Homer’s date and provenance, see
Kirk (1985, 2-4).
2 A careful reading of Nagy (1996, 13-63) will give a good idea of the depth of
the split. Clay (1983, 3) usefully argued that the argument over orality had improp-
erly overwhelmed matters of interpretation. Pucci (1987, 27) outflanks the oralists by
employing deconstructive techniques to assert that, whatever the manner of com-
position, the Odyssey and the Iliad are to be taken as texts. And Ahl and Roisman
(1996, 12) have reaffirmed the essential position of Clay. Lloyd-Jones makes the best
suggestion of all, that “Without a detailed re-examination of the text of the two great
poems, summary treatments of the complicated problems of Homeric scholarship are
of very limited value” (1990, 19). His comparison of the disputes between Analysts,
Neo-Analysts, Unitarians, and the rest, to Passchendaele is characteristically colorful
and apt.
3 Ford (1992, 3) offers a memorable formulation of the theoretical objections
that New Critics, structuralists, and deconstructionists would raise against any
attempt to discover authorial intent. All those have been outdone by Nagy (1996,
19-27), who lays on any discussion of Homer as author a catachetical list of stric-
tures so severe that it would have gladdened the heart of Fr. Furniss.
4 Taplin (1992, 5ff.), performs an admirable service by reminding us of the
extent to which the poet maintains control over his story, although he also consid-
ers the role of Homer’s putative audience in the creation of the work. He does well
to note that the characters in the work have no court of appeal—their actions do
not guarantee that the poet will grant them poetry.
5 I am intrigued by the possibility that literacy never disappeared from Greece
and the attendant impact of such a possibility on the Homeric poems. On this, see
Ullmann (1927), Bernal (1990, 1-26), and Ahl and Roisman (1996, 4-8). Powell
(1992) has raised excellent points on Homer and his relationship to written Greek.
 Joe Wilson 169

6 There is no need to detail them all, but I would note that Scott, who argues
for Smyrna as Homer’s birthplace, sometime around 850 B.C., is still a fairly cogent
and novel argument that is now largely overlooked (1921, 3-8).
7 As Rabel observes, “The poet’s ambiguous reference to Zeus’s intentions is
intended to offer a measure of legitimacy in advance to the stories told within the
Iliad that conflict with what is said by the Muse-Narrator” (1997, 37).
8 Leaf referring to the scales of Zeus that weigh the fate of Hector (XXII.209ff),
states that “The poet has to acknowledge that there are certain data which he regards
as historical, as things done, with which he himself must not tamper” (1915, 18).
Given that the deaths of the characters were most likely the firmest element imbed-
ded in the tradition, Zeus’s connection to moira and aisa clearly suggests an analogy
between Zeus and the poet.
9 The matter of kleos apthiton has no doubt been too much discussed, but in the
long run, I find Nagy’s basic argument, made most famously in Nagy 1979 (244-55),
and reiterated often since, most persuasive—kleos apthiton brought by death in battle
is the prize of epic poetry itself.
10 The reading is not impossible: Monro (1891, 191-92), allows that ex as causal
with the genitive is possible, citing IX.566 and 3.135 and 5.468; Pagliaro (1963, 16ff),
syntactically relates ex hou to the boule dios. I owe this observation to Redfield (1994,
272).
11 It is not out of place here to note the work of Bremer (1987, 32-45), that the
Gotterapparat in Homer are essentially poetic devices, rather than theological or
philosophical commentary.
12 This quarrel between Achilles and Odysseus has been much discussed by
Nagy (1979, 15-25), and other places. Nagy also observes that Hesiodic poetry
attributes the tale of the destructive wars at Troy and Thebes, both subjects of epic,
to the will of Zeus itself. It seems evident that the will of Zeus is simply the basis for
epic poetry and the trope by which the epic poets named their own activities.
13 Hesiod, Catalogue of Women, fr.204,, 95-104; for a discussion, see Nagy (1979,
219-20); For the relationship between this fragment and the plan at the beginning
of the Kypria, see Scodel (1982, 39ff).
14 For the connection of Dios boule to the tradition of the Kypria, see, in addi-
tion to those mentioned below, Kullmann (1956, 132-33), and Slatkin (1995, 118ff).
15 On the determination of Homer to create an original work within the exist-
ing tradition, see Kakridas (1971, 65-68).
16 Scodel errs unconscionably, though, when she suggests that Homer “is not
confirming this [the Cyclic] tradition” (Scodel 1982, 39) in passages like XIV.84-87,
in which of course Homer is doing exactly that.Authority comes from membership
in a tradition.
17 Nimis (1987, 90) mentions the difficulty of reconciling Achilles’s prayer for
the victory of the Trojans with his prayer for the success and safe return of Patroclus,
and with Zeus’s intention of honoring both requests. It is indeed difficult to recon-
cile the two, unless one realizes that Homer uses the figure of Zeus to access both
plans in the Iliad.
170 College Literature 34.2 [Spring 2007]

18 For the importance (somewhat overstated) of Thetis’s rescue of Zeus, see

Slatkin (1991, especially 53-84).
19 As Kirk observes, Achilles is not unduly disturbed by the inevitable conse-
quences of his request, that is, the death of friends and allies (1985, 96). Zanker
(1994, 76-77), sees the passage largely in terms of Achilles’ conflict with
Agamemnon, a reading which ignores the consequences of Achilles’s prayer for the
Greek army in general.
20 Kirk observes the inconsistency here and suggests that Thetis has left the
details of “honoring Achilles” to Zeus’ discretion.
21 As Achilles, enjoying the benefit of hindsight, later observes, (and Dodds
[1951, 3-4], usefully cautions us against reading this as a polite absolution of
Agamemnon and the other Greeks),“Perhaps Zeus wished death upon many of the
Greeks,” (XIX.273-74).
22 For Nestor as a singer, see MacLeod (1983, 3), and Dickson (1995, esp. 44-
91).
23 Redfield (1994, 139), errs completely when he suggests that the boule Dios is
completed in Book VIII; no Achaean has died “alongside the sterns of their swift
ships,” since the wall around the camp is not breached until Book XII.
24 Redfield interprets Zeus’s somewhat relaxed attitude:“Men and cities are the
counters in a game played between the gods.The game can become absorbing, but
it is never really worth a quarrel. The gods can always repair their differences by
allowing the destruction of another ephemeral human thing” (1994, 132).
25 Lloyd-Jones (1971, 5) notes that Agamemnon claims that Zeus will punish
the Trojans for breaking the truce, and uses the king’s remark, among others, to argue
that Zeus has a genuine moral role in the Iliad; the text would suggest otherwise.The
Greeks may want Zeus to punish the Trojans for abducting Helen and other assort-
ed crimes, but Zeus does not appear to be punishing the Trojans for any particular
offense.The paradox that troubles Lloyd-Jones, that the all-powerful king of the gods
yields to the demands of his queen and his daughter, while at the same time, on a
human level, he affirms basic principles of justice, disappears when we realize that
Zeus’s decision is a metaphor for the will of the poet.
26 Zeus, then, should not be seen as a kind of frustrated Prime Minister dealing
with an exceptionally recalcitrant cabinet, as he is sometimes portrayed. See Redfield
(1994, 137).
27 For the value of the aid of a god in battle, see usefully Edwards (1987, 137),
and Griffin (1980, 144-78). In the long run, Athena and Apollo are both agents of
the Will of Zeus. Nagy (1979, 142-50) emphasizes the role that Athena plays as spe-
cial antagonist to Hector, paralleling Apollo’s relationship to Achilles.
28 Nagy (1979, 30-31) discusses the fact that in Book V, Diomedes is called aris-
tos Achaion twice. The instance at V.103, when Diomedes is wounded by Pandarus,
emphasizes the parallel between Diomedes and Achilles, who was killed by an arrow
shot by Paris.
29 Indeed, Diomedes’s aristeia has, on this day at least, made him greater than
Achilles has ever been, as the Trojans themselves acknowledge (VI.98-100). Homer
 Joe Wilson 171

may have included these verses to distinguish his work from the previous epics. Kirk
(1990, 168) suggests that Helenus’s grimly flattering remarks exceeds what Homer
himself was doing, i.e., making Diomedes the equal to Achilles.
30 It is just possible that the advice is meant to cut the other way. It is general-
ly taken to be a warning to Hector that he will be killed or at least seriously injured
if he engages Agamemnon during the king’s aristeia. Another possibility might be
considered: Hector might kill Agamemnon and ruin the full honoring of Achilles,
since Achilles is quite prepared to humiliate a chastened Agamemnon not once but
twice, first in Book XIX, in which he disregards Agamemnon’s gifts, and again in
Book XXIII, when, under the guise of awarding the king a prize, he prevents him
from displaying his prowess in the spear-throw; see the cogent analysis of
Postlethwaite (1995).
31 It is just worth recalling that Vico argued that Ajax was not alone when he
defended the ships, but alone with his vassals (1984, 1.559, 4.1033).
32 Nimis in general provides a valuable discussion of the relationship of the sim-
iles to the action in Book XI.
33 Possibly we see here an echo of the story of Ajax’s invulnerability, but as all
our sources for this are post-Homeric, and Ajax, far from being unafraid of being
wounded, is very directly concerned over the possibility, as in XV.727 (repeated at
XVI.102); it seems more likely that this is poetic intervention: Zeus is explicitly
doing something that the poet wants done. He will do it again.
34 It will be obvious how much I owe to Ford (1992, 147-57) who reminds us
that the wall is certainly more than a collection of stones. Scodel (1982, 33-53) use-
fully connects the flooding and the subsequent destruction of the wall to the plan of
Zeus in the Kypria to destroy the race of heroes. For doubts about the wall, see Page
(1959, 315ff), who cites in support Jacoby (1944, 37ff.). Kirk (1990, 276-80) defends
both Nestor’s speech in Book VII (although he allows, following Jacoby, that VII.334-
35 must be an Attic interpolation) and the wall itself. Hainsworth (1993, 317) makes
the most cogent remark against Thucydides (Page, et al.) when he points out that the
Iliad is, after all, a work of fiction.
35 On the equivalence of weaving to the making of poetry, see Clader (1976, 7-
8), Suzuki (1989, 40), on metis as a possible category encompassing the poet’s craft,
see Ford (1992, 35).
36 It is just tempting to read Hera’s remark that “the other gods will not agree
with you,” as a coded way of saying, “break the tradition, and other poets will be
unhappy with you.”
37 Ford (1992, 144-45) remarks upon the stele that serves as the turning post in
the funeral games of Patroclus.That stele failed its purpose, since the Greeks had no
way of knowing whose marker it was, or even if it was a funeral monument.

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