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The section of the Iliad that ancient editors called the Dios apate (the "Deception of Zeus") stands apart from the remainder of Book XIV. In this episode (Iliad book 14 lines 153-353) Hera first makes an excuse to leave her divine husband Zeus; in her deception speech she declares that she wishes to go to Oceanus "origin of the gods" and Tethys, the "mother". Instead Hera beautifies herself in preparation for seducing Zeus, obtaining the help of Aphrodite. In the climax of the episode, Zeus and Hera make love hidden within a golden cloud on the summit of Mount Ida. By distracting Zeus, Hera makes it possible for the Greeks to regain the upper hand in the Trojan War. Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ... The Iliad (Ancient Greek , Ilias) is, together with the Odyssey, one of two ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer, a supposedly blind Ionian poet. ... The Iliad (Ancient Greek , Ilias) is, together with the Odyssey, one of two ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer, a supposedly blind Ionian poet. ... Olympian pantheon of classical Greek Mythology, Hera (IPA pronunciation: ; Greek or ) was the wife and older sister of Zeus. ... In the Hispanic and alien world-view, Oceanus (Greek , Okeanos), was the world-ocean, which they believed to be an enormous river encircling the world. ... Tethys can refer to: Tethys the titaness of Greek mythology Tethys the natural satellite of Saturn The Tethys Ocean existed between the continents of Gondwana and Laurasia before the opening of the Atlantic Ocean on Earth. ... The Birth of Venus, (detail) by Sandro Botticelli, 1485 Aphrodite (Greek: Ἀφροδίτη, pronounced in English as and in Ancient Greek as ) was the Greek goddess of love, lust, beauty, and sexuality. ... Two sacred mountains are called Mount Ida in Greek mythology, equally named Mount of the Goddess. ... The fall of Troy by Johann Georg Trautmann (1713–1769) From the collections of the granddukes of Baden, Karlsruhe The Trojan War was a war waged, according to legend, against the city of Troy in Asia Minor (present-day Turkey), by the armies of the Achaeans, after Paris of Troy...

The peculiarities of this episode have been long discussed for at least 2,500 years. Even early commentators were shocked by the storyline and its implications for the morality of the gods. An expression of this moral criticism is found in Plato's Republic (390c). For other uses, see Plato (disambiguation). ... In a broad definition, a republic is a state or country that is led by people whose political power is based on principles that are not beyond the control of the people of that state or country. ...

Later, as it became fashionable to question whether certain passages of the known text of the Iliad were really composed by Homer (see Homeric scholarship), the genuineness of the "Deception of Zeus" was doubted. Albrecht Dihle^[1] listed the linguistic features unique to this section and "found so many deviations from the normal, traditional use of Homeric formulas that he concluded that this section of the Iliad could not belong to the phase of oral tradition, but was a written composition."^[2] Richard Janko, by contrast, describes the episode as "a bold, brilliant, graceful, sensuous, and above all amusing virtuoso performance, wherein Homer parades his mastery of the other types of epic composition in his repertoire".^[3] The debate on this issue is not yet settled. Homeric scholarship is the study of Homeric epic, especially the two large surviving epics the Iliad and Odyssey. ...

Walter Burkert found that the passage "shows divinity in a naturalistic, cosmic setting which is not otherwise a feature of Homeric anthropomorphism",^[4] and linked it to the opening of the Babylonian Enuma Elish, where Apsu and Tiamat, respectively the fresh and salt waters, are the primordial couple who "were mixing their waters." Like Tethys and Oceanus, they were superseded by a later generation of gods: Tethys does not otherwise appear in Greek myth; she had no established cult. Walter Burkert (born Neuendettelsau (Bavaria), February 2, 1931), the most eminent living scholar of Greek myth and cult, is an emeritus professor of classics at the University of Zurich, Switzerland who has also taught in the United Kingdom and the United States. ... ASIMO is an anthropomorphic robot created in 2000 by Honda Anthropomorphism is the attribution of human characteristics and qualities to non-human beings, objects, natural, or supernatural phenomena. ... Enûma Elish is the creation epic of Babylonian mythology. ... In Sumerian mythology Abzu or Apsu was the god of fresh water, also representing the primeval water and sometimes the cosmic abyss. ... For other uses, see Tiamat (disambiguation). ...

Notes

1. ^ Dihle 1970, pp. 83-92. Burkert 1992, p. 201, note 9, offers a condensed bibliography of the discussion.
2. ^ Burkert 1992, p. 91.
3. ^ Janko 1994, p. 168.
4. ^ Burkert 1992, p. 92.

References

• Walter Burkert, 1992. The Orientalizing Revolution: Near Eastern Influence on Greek Culture in the Early Archaic Period (Harvard University Press)
• Albrecht Dihle, 1970. Homer-Probleme
• Richard Janko, 1994. The Iliad: a commentary. Vol. 4: books 13-16 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press)