Jove allowed the gods to aid whom they would, in the previous book of the Iliad; now, in Book XXI, they fight with one another. The god of fire attacks a river god; the god of war, the goddess of wisdom. This calls into question the notion of gods as personifications of abstract concepts.
Index to this series | Text of Chapman’s Homer’s Iliad
Note added August 25; edited and augmented, August 27; 2024: In my view, the key events of the Iliad are Achilles’s holding back from
The latter case of self-restraint may be a disaster for Achilles, not to mention Patroclus and the other Greeks who die as a result; but it is also somehow a result of the former case. Not killing on impulse is probably a good thing; otherwise you have the situation of Njal’s Saga, which I took up in writing “On Homer’s Iliad Book I” (November 29, 2022).
Polytropy 