the iliad

  It was interesting in Book five when the battle troy became a family feud among the gods. Athena helps Diomedes by riding with him in the chariot and wounding Ares. It seems that the gods and the mortals have the same destructive human characteristics. the battle for troy becomes a contest of the favored side among the gods shown especially when Athena empowers Diomedes with heroic strength that are unmatched in the battle field but still unable to compare to the power of Achilles. Athena also convinced the archer Panderus to attack Menelaus. Zeus accepted the plea of Achilles’s mother. It seems that the mortals are puppets in which the gods can toy with any way they want with or without their consent.  

Thetis answered him then, letting the tears fall.  "Ah me,
my child. Your birth was bitterness.  Why did I raise you?
If only you could sit by your ships untroubled, not weeping,
since indeed your lifetime is to be short, of no length.
Now it has befallen that your life must be brief and bitter
beyond all men's.  To a bad destiny I bore you in my chambers.
But I will go to cloud-dark Olympos and ask this
thing of Zeus who delights in the thunder.  Perhaps he will do it.
Do you therefore continuing to sit by your swift ships
be angry at the Achaians and stay away from all fighting."
Iliad 1.413-22  (tr. Lattimore)
 

I saw something that touched my heart today at the Buffalo Greyhound Terminal on Ellicott Street as I was putting my daughter on the bus back to college. A dreary grey day, drenching rain, dark and rather lonely inside the terminal although it was 8 a.m. A soldier in uniform, with a fresh buzz-cut, was in line ahead of my daughter.  He looked fit and had a trusting, friendly face with shining grey eyes; he was extremely polite.  He had 2 pieces of luggage: a huge army-issue duffel bag and a smaller, but obviously very heavy backpack.  In the front pocket of the backpack the heads of two small brown, rather worn stuffed animals poked out, not looking ready for the trip to Afghanistan.  Were they his totem animals from toddlerhood?  Did his younger brother or sister tuck them into his pack when they said good-bye?  Gift from a girlfriend?

Wide-ruling Agamemnon

My son asked me to entreat Zeus:
"Sit beside him and take his knees and remind him of these things
now, if perhaps he might be willing to help the Trojans,
and pin the Achaians back against the ships and the water,
dying, so that thus they may all have profit of their own king,
that Atreus' son wide-ruling Agamemnon may recognize
his madness, that he did no honour to the best of the Achaians."
Iliad 1.407-12 (Lattimore translation)

What hold does Thetis have over Zeus?