Troy is a heroic world, centred on the battlefield, where human worth is utmost and measured by the very warriors who dominate it. A place where “the spirits of death stand close beside us/ in their thousands” and the heroes compete with the ultimate risk to win glory, The Iliad is very much a poem about the grimness of mortality. Running along side this and occasionally dabbling in it is the world of the immortal and everything that is divine, the gods ‘who have their homes on Olympos’.

The gods are an integral pert of The Iliad, they not only provide the traditional mythological background but they also dictate the action of the poem. For instance in book fourteen, Hera deceives Zeus into sleep, which causes Trojan successes to be reversed and in book fifteen, Zeus reawakens and causes the Trojans to pursue the Greeks back to the ship once again. Also, scenes such as in book one where we see Zeus and Heras domestic carry on, add a much needed entertaining and comic dimension to the real battle ensuing on the mortal plane.

In general, I agree that superficially, Homer does ‘do his b

Homer uses the epithet ‘godlike’ with regards to a number of men in The Iliad; Achilleus, Polyphemos and Alexandros (Paris) to name but a few. Of course it can be argued that epithets are used by Homer to fit in with the formulaic composition. Perhaps Homer does use and repeat the epithet ‘godlike’ simply because it is a ready-made phrase that fits the meter, dactylic hexameter, of the poem. However, the use of these particular words is significant, suggesting that these men are more ‘godlike’ than others. For instance, this epithet and the fact that Alexandros is clearly a favourite of Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty, implies that his beauty is exceptional compared to other mortals. Also, Achilleus feats, such like in his aristeia in books twenty to twenty two is ‘godlike’ because he shows outstanding strength and valour ‘more than a mortal’.

And so the gods can never win the glory that heroes such as Diomedes and Achilleus do. Although Aphrodite is wounded in book five, she is quickly comforted and ‘the strong pains rested’ by her divine mother, Dione. Although the gods may outwardly look like men, Homer makes the clear distinction that ‘ichor runs in the veins of the blessed divinities;/…therefore they have no blood and are immortal.’ In this way the gods are unageing and they risk nothing, but they can never win themselves any meaningful glory. Zeus even chides Aphrodite, “not for you are the works of warfare’.

However, although the gods can be injured, they can never be killed and so this battle is entirely trivial and entertaining. It proposes a clear and stark contrast that highlights the toil and pain that the men suffer on the battlefield. The placing of this particular battle of the gods in book

Some topics in this essay:
Alexandros Paris, Longinus Discuss, Juxtaposed Achilleus, Pallas Athene, Achilleus Aphrodite, Greeks Trojans, Aristeia Achilleus, Aineias Sarpedon, Trojan War, Zeus Heras, win glory, book five, trojan war gods, war gods gods, risk win, epithet ‘godlike’, injured killed, book zeus, ultimate risk, human condition, gods gods men’, nature human condition, trojan war, achilleus book,