Book 5:

<<5:21-26>> (Fagles) "Idaeus leapt, abandoned the handsome car but did not dare to stand and defend his dead brothe--and not even so would he have fled his black death but the god of fire swept him off and saved him."

In Iliad, the gods function in part as providing reasons, even if capricious and unsatisfying ones, for the unfolding of events. Homer often explains some unusual plot point--such as in this case as Idaeus makes his escape from the raging wrath of Diomedes--by reference to divine intervention. In this case, it is not luck or chance or even "fate" which saves Idaeus, but the fact that his father Dares was a priest of the god of fire Hephaestus, and this priest's regular supplication of the god gives us some explanation, some reason for this otherwise unlikely escape. Compare with 5:175-177, as Diomedes kills Abas and Polyidus, with no reference whatsoever to the gods. This use of the gods in Homer's poem underscores that they function, among other things, as means for explaining the otherwise mysterious or unknown aspects of reality.

<<5:93-104>> Homer gives us another poweful example of simile, as he compares the brutal onslaught of Diomedes to a rushing torrent of water sweeping away all before it, again utilizing images of nature to give the listener a sense of dread at the great power of these champions.

<<5:293-304>> (Fagles) "They are the very strain farseeing Zeus gave Tros, payment in full for stealing Ganymede, Tros' son: the purest, strongest breed of all the stallions under the dawn and light of day... Would to god we'd take them both--we'd win ourselves great fame."

In this otherwise inconspicuous passage, Diomedes exhorts Sthenelus to attempt to capture Aeneas' stallions, and here we see the depth of the archaic Greek reverence for nobility. Even among the beasts, noble blood counts for a great deal, and one is expected to live up to the dignity of one's bloodline and ancestry, just as it is expected that springing from low stock and ill breeding will almost inevitably yield the opposite result. Though all the major characters in Iliad are of some degree of aristocratic birth, when all the fighting is said and done a tally of the kills for each character in the poem will show a marked trend whereby the most noble of characters are also the most murderous, or more charitably, the bravest and most serviceable to their country. This is fully expected though, and exceptions such as in the case of Paris who is much less effective in and apprehensive about battle than is his brother Hector, make him out to be an example of what is low and worthless, highlighting the importance of honour as well as dignity and good breeding.

5:338 (Fagles) "Just as Diomedes hefted a boulder in his hands, a tremendous feat--no two men could hoist it, weak as men are now..." (Butler) "But the son of Tydeus caught up a mighty stone, so huge and great that as men are now it would take two to lift it..."

Throughout the poem a particular phrase occurs repeatedly, and this fragment illustrates a belief among ancient Greeks of all times and places which is so basic as to be almost transparent to them. This belief is that men of previous ages were of an entirely other and superior cast than are men of the current age, and the phrase (in the Fagles translation) is "weak as men are now". This belief is demonstrated in the way that Greeks of the classical age viewed the Greeks who are the subject of Iliad, as heroic, almost demi-gods, to whom they could scarcely compare in terms of valour, bravery and even physical strength. This same sentiment will be made explicit by the poet Hesiod as he gives us the myth of the ages of man, where the history of the world can be split in to four distinct periods; a golden age when men were of the highest nobility and excellence, a silver age, a bronze age, and an iron age, each playing host to men of descending character and virtue. In this sense, ancient Greek culture should be seen as deeply conservative; that, despite being arguably the most radically forward-looking and innovative culture to exist in all of classical times, they saw their role as essentially preservative, the best they could to was to slow rather than hasten an inevitable decline, since it was taken as a fact that men of the past were so much greater than men of today.

<<5:380-384>> (Fagles) "He gouged her just where the wristbone joins the palm and immortal blood came flowing quickly from the goddess, the ichor that courses through their veins, the blessed gods--they eat no bread, they drink no shining wine, and so the gods are bloodless, so we call them deathless." (Butler) "The point tore through the ambrosial robe which the Graces had woven for her, and pierced the skin between her wrist and the palm of her hand, so that the immortal blood, or ichor, that flows in the veins of the blessed gods, came pouring from the wound; for the gods do not eat bread nor drink wine, hence they have no blood such as ours, and are immortal."

<<5:477-479>> (Fagles) "Soothing words, and with both her hands Dione gently wiped the ichor from Aphrodite's arm and her wrist healed at once, her stark pain ebbed away." (Butler) "So saying, she wiped the ichor from the wrist of her daughter with both hands, whereon the pain left her, and she was healed."

As Diomedes rages with a barely restrained fury he does perhaps the rashest thing one can imagine; he lashes out in the midst of battle (with Athena's blessing mind you) and strikes the wrist nothing less than a goddess, injuring her, whereupon Aphrodite, smarting from her encounter with this mortal, runs quickly to her mother Dione and implores her to heal the wound. Perhaps more than any other episode in the Homer's entire account of the Trojan war and its aftermath, this episode illustrates the vast gulf between the human sphere and that of the divine. Whereas such a wound for a mortal would (and on unnumerable occasions in Iliad does) have fatal consequences, for Aphrodite or any of the deathless gods, the consequences are not even remotely comparable, the gap between them unbridgeable; the difference between something and nothing, between life and death, is simply infinite. For human beings, there is no secret handshake or magic spell that will re-attach a hacked limb or will set aright any of the ghoulish wounds that the Greeks and Trojans inflict upon each other in the course of this war; once you've met the business end of a spear, there is only one destination for you. For Aphrodite, by constrast, though she might feel pain and experience strife, the stakes that she or any other deity faces in battle just cannot be compared against those that men face; she has little if anything ultimately to lose, whereas they have everything--everything, that is, except their virtue, which is the one thing that cannot be taken from them. The gods do not bleed blood, they have ichor coursing through their veins. They are of an entirely different order of existence than are human beings, and while the two may participate together in some events, they live in different spheres, these two spheres are utterly irreconcilable, and the distance between them cannot possibly be measured.