Working wonders: Hephaestus and the Armour of Achilles

This is a retitled chapter from The Sacred History of Being (originally titled: 'Being in Homer'). It analyses Book XVIII of The Iliad. It is something of an eye-opener about the intellectual life of what became known as the Greek Heroic Age. Much of the intellectual and tropic detail in this book of The Iliad strongly resembles ideas and themes which can be found in Mesopotamian and Phoenician sources.

It is not much studied in modern times for an understanding of Greek life and thought, sin...