On the day recounted in Book VIII of the Iliad,
- on earth, the Achaeans are twice driven behind their new walls;
- during the first rout,
- Odysseus does not hear when Diomedes urges him to come to the aid of Nestor;
- Hector thinks he will be able to burn the Achaean ships and kill all the men;
- Agamemnon prays for mere survival;
- the second time, Hector calls for fires to be lit, lest the Greeks try to escape in the night;
- during the first rout,
- in heaven, Zeus
- weighs out a heavier fate for the Achaeans;
- declares that it shall be so until Achilles is roused by the death of Patroclus;
- warns Hera and Athena not to interfere (though they try to anyway).
I wrote a fuller summary in 2017. Because I was reading it, I also talked about Huysmans, Against Nature, and the belief of the main character that the prose poem could
contain within its small compass, like beef essence, the power of a novel, while eliminating its tedious analyses and superfluous descriptions.
Now I shall find reason to bring up Herodotus, Plato, Aristotle, Thoreau, and Freud, and especially William James and Collingwood on the subject of emotion.