Adrian Buck’s Reviews > The Iliad > Status Update

"You will never kill me [Phoibos Apollo] - I am no creature of fate" - the Gods are merely immortal, not omniscient, nor omnipotent. But what does this say about fate?

"And at your pyre I [Achilles] shall cut the throats of twelve splendid Trojan children, in my anger for your killings" - so not only was ancient Greek history a litany of war crimes, their literature was too - you have to wonder why we give the Aztecs such a hard time.

"She put strength in his shoulders and knees, and set in his heart the daring of a mosquito, which although constantly brushed away from a man's skin, still insists on biting him for the pleasure of human blood." - Homer, the last poet to have something positive to say about mosquitoes.

"The bronze spear passed right through and up under the brain, smashing the white bones. His teeth were knocked out and both his eyes flooded with blood: wide-mouthed he spurted a well of blood through nostrils and mouth: and the black cloud of death covered him over" - the graphic depiction of injury is ubiquitos as the genealogical notes.

"When the lots were cast, I [Poseidon] drew the grey sea as my domain for ever, and Hades drew the murky darkness below, and Zeus drew the broad sky among the clouds and the upper air: but the earth and high Olympos were left common to us all." - so how did Zeus become no. 1?

"Towards the land of Troy now [Zeus] did not turn his shining eyes at all - he did not think in his heart that any of the immortals would come to bring help to either Trojans or Danaans" - all seeing, but not all knowing?

"And Athene and Apollo, god of the silver bow, settled down too, in the form of vultures, on a tall oak-tree sacred to father Zeus who holds the aegis, taking their pleasure in the doings of men" - it's religion, Jim, but not as we know it.

"Like the air which spouts black from the clouds, when heat is burning and a violent wind blows up, such was the sight to Diomedes...as brazen Ares whirled up to the wide heaven wrapped in cloud. Quickly he reached the gods' home, steep Olympos..." - it's an 8 hour drive, or you could fly straight across the Aegean. How quickly do the gods travel?