At the end of the first half of the Iliad, as measured by its twenty-four books, the Trojans breech the Achaean defenses, in an assault led by Hector, who smashes through a gate with a stone. Homer describes even the physics involved (lines 457–60, Lattimore translation):
He came and stood very close and taking a strong wide stance threw
at the middle, leaning into the throw, that the cast might not lack
force, and smashed the hinges at either side, and the stone crashed
ponderously in, and the gates groaned deep, and the door-bars …
Before this breakthrough, the two sides have been deadlocked, as in two examples from civilian life.
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In the first example, neighbors are fixing the property line that divides them (lines 421–4):
but as two men with measuring ropes in their hands fight bitterly
about a boundary line at the meeting place of two cornfields,
and the two of them fight in the strait place over the rights of division,
so the battlements held these armies apart, and across them
Above Kireçburnu (Κλειδὴς καὶ κλεῖθρα Πόντου, Lock and key of the Pontus)
Sarıyer, Istanbul, Thursday, February 9, 2023
Polytropy 