Zeus Rants (40)

However, I should like to know what it was of Homer’s that convinced you most. What he says about Zeus, how his daughter and his brother and his wife made a plot to fetter him?[*] If Thetis had not summoned Briareus, our excellent Zeus would have been caught and put in chains. For this he returned thanks to Thetis by deceiving Agamemnon, sending a false vision to him, in order that many of the Achaeans might lose their lives.[*] Don’t you see, it was impossible for him to hurl a thunderbolt and burn. up Agamemnon himself without making himself out a liar? Or perhaps you were most inclined to believe when you heard how Diomed wounded Aphrodite and then even Ares himself at the suggestion of Athena,[*] and how shortly afterwards the gods themselves fell to and began duelling promiscuously, males and females;[*] Athena defeated Ares, already overtaxed, no doubt by the wound he had received from Diomed,[*] and "Leto fought against Hermes, the stalwart god of good fortune.”[*] Or perhaps you thought the tale about Artemis credible, that, being a fault-finding person, she got angry when she was not invited to a feast by Oeneus and so turned loose on his land a monstrous boar of irresistible strength.[*] Did Homer convince you by saying that sort of thing?