Ep. 61 Homer's "Iliad" Book 4

Athena appears to cause an end to the truce by wounding Menelaus. Brian, Shilo and Jeff look at how "the will of Zeus is fulfilled" through the wrath of Achilles and through Zeus' lying.

In Book 1 we framed the wrath of Achilles in terms of his mortality, and achieving immortal greatness. And we see Zeus, an immortal, using duplicity to continue the conflict so his promise to Thetis is kept.

So we ask "why does Zeus lie?" And is there a parallel between Agamemnon's behavior and Zeus'? Is there also a parallel between Hector chastising his brother in front of the troops and what Agamemnon does in Book 4 to Odysseus?

[Note: we mention in this episode our Xenophon pods, which we were originally recording at the same time as our Iliad pods - but decided to release all the Xenophon pods prior to releasing the Iliad pods. So if you're confused...sorry. You can find all our Xenophon pods in our feed and the next several weeks will be all Iliad pods.]