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End of book 4. And so war it is.

Apollo and Athena care because:
• war validates their identities
• rivalry sustains their relevance
• human death gives their actions weight

The gods don’t die.
So they make sure someone does.

And Homer, by naming those deaths one by one, makes sure we never forget the cost of divine games.

End of Book 3 - Gifts of the Goddess

So Paris is an aristocratic Nepo baby. He’s a coward and he’s incompetent. And he’s the one that made this war happen. The men of Troy and Greece worked to avoid the war. But the goddess Aphrodite prohibited the war from stopping. Men tried to stop the war. The gods kept it going.

End of Book 2 - the multitude

Book 1