MythologyDelahoyde & Hughes
HOMER'S ILIAD:
BOOK XIV: Hera Outflanks Zeus
Questions for Book XIV:
The first portion of this book might be called "The Arming of Hera," but what does this involve?
Homer includes an etiological myth for why we sleep at night. Explain.
The Greeks are in trouble and Agamemnon is acting bipolar (esp. 14.78ff). The King suggests making a getaway to the sea. Who reproaches Agamemnon?
Hera is disturbed by this and hatches a plan to distract Zeus from his current aid to the Trojans. Sex is her weapon, and the language of sex and war blurs.
She "arms" herself with oils and perfumes and a love potion. Pretending to be going off to visit relatives, Zeus asks her what's her hurry. "Never has such a lust for goddess or mortal woman / flooded my pounding heart and overwhelmed me so. / Not even then, when I made love to Ixion's wife ... / not when I loved Acrisus' daughter ..." (14.379ff) -- and he keeps listing the lusts in his past to which this moment is superior -- not really very politic seduction rhetoric!
The Greeks seem pretty paranoid about women. Zeus, like Paris many books ago, says, "let's lose ourselves in love!" (14.378), and now adds, "irresistible longing lays me low!" (14.393). In other words, sexual passion implies a loss of self and a surrender to superior power, which reads as a grim prospect. Afterwards, Zeus is "conquered by Sleep / the strong assaults of Love" (14.420-421) -- more military language.
Hera asks Aphrodite for her help in this stratagem against Zeus and the Trojans. Why does Aphrodite help Hera when it is clear that the goddess of love and fertility favors the Trojans?
Poseidon always seems to operate best in secret or when Zeus is indisposed.
But fertility results with the grass and flowers on earth from this divine encounter (14.414f), and now the Greeks rally. Hector is hit and nearly killed by Ajax. His comrades sweep him out of the fighting and back to the bank of the river Xanthus The Greeks deal out death to the Trojans whipped in desperate flight.