In Homer's Iliad, when Alcmene was about to give birth to Heracles, Zeus announced to all the gods that on that day a child, descended from Zeus himself, would be born who would rule all those around him.

In the Iliad his father Zeus tells him that he is the god most hateful to him.

Ares was one of the Twelve Olympians in the archaic tradition represented by the Iliad and Odyssey, but Zeus expresses a recurring Greek revulsion toward the god when Ares returns wounded and complaining from the battlefield at Troy:

The Aegis (), as stated in the Iliad, is the shield or buckler or breastplate, of Athena or Zeus, which, according to Homer was fashioned by Hephaestus.

" Aegis-bearing Zeus ", as he is in the Iliad, sometimes lends the fearsome goatskin to Athena.

In the Iliad when Zeus sends Apollo to revive the wounded Hector of Troy, Apollo, holding the aegis, charges the Achaeans, pushing them back to their ships drawn up on the shore.

The Iliad reduced the figure of the dread goddess to that of a girl, who, having been thrashed by Hera, climbs weeping into the lap of Zeus.

Unlike later writers, Homeric lines more commonly employ the feminine caesura ; an example occurs in Iliad I. 5 “... and every bird ; thus the plan of Zeus came to fulfillment ”:

The other Strife is presumably she who appears in Homer's Iliad Book IV ; equated with Enyo as sister of Ares and so presumably daughter of Zeus and Hera:

Homer expressed her relationship with Zeus delicately in the Iliad, in which she declares to Zeus, " I am Cronus ' eldest daughter, and am honourable not on this ground only, but also because I am your wife, and you are king of the gods.

From Homer's Odyssey, the Iliad, and some Attic vase paintings, we know that Hephaestus was born of the union of Zeus and Hera.

According to a single reference in the Iliad, when the world was divided by lot in three, Zeus received the sky, Hades the underworld and Poseidon the sea.

Achilles sacrificing to Zeus ( Ambrosian Iliad )

In Iliad I, Achilles recalls to his mother her role in defending, and thus legitimizing, the reign of Zeus against an incipient rebellion by three Olympians, each of whom has pre-Olympian roots:

When Hephaestus was thrown from Olympus, whether cast out by Hera for his lameness or evicted by Zeus for taking Hera's side, the Oceanid Eurynome and the Nereid Thetis caught him and cared for him on the volcanic isle of Lemnos, while he labored for them as a smith, " working there in the hollow of the cave, and the stream of Okeanos around us went on forever with its foam and its murmur " ( Iliad 18. 369 ).

Thetis is not successful in her role protecting and nurturing a hero ( the theme of kourotrophos ), but her role in succouring deities is emphatically repeated by Homer, in three Iliad episodes: as well as her rescue of Zeus ( 1. 396ff ) and Hephaestus ( 18. 369 )

In Homer's Iliad, the Lycian contingent was said to have been led by two esteemed warriors: Sarpedon ( son of Zeus and Laodamia ) and Glaucus ( son of Hippolochus ).

In The Iliad ( c. 700 BC ), Zeus asserts that Tartarus is " as far beneath Hades as heaven is high above the earth.

In most sources, including the Iliad and the Odyssey, Helen is the daughter of Zeus and Leda, the wife of the Spartan king Tyndareus ( no reference given for Helen as the daughter of Leda ).

According to a legend, when Phidias was asked what inspired him — whether he climbed Mount Olympus to see Zeus, or whether Zeus came down from Olympus so that Pheidias could see him — the artist answered that he portrayed Zeus according to Book One, verses 528 – 530 of Homer's Iliad:

In Orphic tradition, Persephone was the mother of Zagreus ( Dionysus ) by Zeus ; in the Iliad, Persephone's consort Hades, king of the underworld, is called Zeus Katachthonios, " Underground Zeus ".

* In the Iliad xvi, Apollo washes the black blood from the corpse of Sarpedon and anoints it with ambrosia, readying it for its dreamlike return to Sarpedon's native Lycia.

Tlepolemus was killed by Sarpedon on the first day of fighting in the Iliad.

The Trojan War heroes, Lycian leaders Glaucus and Sarpedon, are described in the Iliad as coming from the land of the Xanthos River.

Homer also confirmed Hypnos and Thanatos as twin brothers in his epic poem, the Iliad, where they were charged by Zeus via Apollo with the swift delivery of the slain hero Sarpedon to his homeland of Lycia.

He was so weak that the Under-Secretary, Robert Wood, author of an essay on The Original Genius of Homer, would have postponed the business, but Granville said that it " could not prolong his life to neglect his duty ", and quoted the speech of Sarpedon from Iliad xii.

He encountered Sarpedon on the first day of fighting recounted in the Iliad and taunted him saying that he lacked courage and could not really be the son of Zeus.

Homer in the Iliad seems to refer to two Lycias ( in 2. 876-77, 5. 479 ; Sarpedon is a leader of " distant Lycia " while in 2. 824ff.

Neither Homer nor Virgil gives the reader any foreshadowing of Diomedes's death except for a passage in the Iliad in which Dione, Aphrodite's mother, comforts the goddess of love ( after she has been injured by Diomedes ), telling her daughter that " the man who fights the gods does not live long " and will not be welcomed home from war by his children on his lap ( 5. 407-409 ).

Socrates rebuffs the report, saying he has had a dream-a vision of a woman in a white cloak telling him that on the third day hence he will go to Phthia, which is a reference to Achilles ' threat in the Iliad that he — the mightiest of Greek warriors — might just leave for his home in " fertile " Phthia and be there in " just three days " if the Greeks fail to show him due respect.

Odysseus, who is a recurrent figure of interest in the Little Iliad, ambushes the Trojan prophet Helenus and captures him ; Helenus then reveals three new prophecies concerning the preconditions for the Greeks ' conquest of Troy, notably, that the city will not fall while it harbours the Palladium.

Any reading of the Kypria will show it preparing for events for ( specifically ) the Iliad in order to refer back to them, for instance the sale of Lykaon to Lemnos or the kitting out of Achilles with Briseis and Agamemnon with Chryseis ".

On these pillars rested that solid basis for life and thought which was soon to be manifested in the remarkably unlimited ken of the Iliad.

One of the greatest Homerists of our time, Frederick M. Combellack, argues that when it is assumed The Iliad and The Odyssey are oral poems, the postulated single redactor called Homer cannot be either credited with or denied originality in choice of phrasing.

no individual word in The Iliad or The Odyssey can be credited to any one man ; ;

Thus one line in five from The Iliad and The Odyssey is to be found somewhere else in the two poems.

They later had two children, Andromache and Agamemnon Schliemann ; he reluctantly allowed them to be baptized, but solemnized the ceremony in his own way by placing a copy of the Iliad on the children's heads and reciting one hundred hexameters.

The Batrachomyomachia, Homeric Hymns and cyclic epics are generally agreed to be later than the Iliad and the Odyssey.

Thus Ξ 200 would be shorthand for Iliad book 14, line 200, while ξ 200 would be Odyssey 14. 200.

The importance of this can be seen throughout Greek mythology — in particular, Homer's Iliad and Odyssey.

There is also mention of an Alaksandu, suggested to be Paris Alexander ( King Priam's son from the Iliad ), a later ruler of the city of Wilusa who established peace between Wilusa and Hatti ( see the Alaksandu treaty ).

It was widely held to be the pinnacle of Latin literature, much in the same way that the Iliad was seen to be supreme in Greek literature.

* c. 1279 BC — Troy VI, speculated to be the city mentioned in Homer's Iliad, is presumed to have been destroyed by Greek armies.

In the Iliad, the rich iconography of Achilles ' shield, which was fashioned by Hephaestus, is enclosed, as the world itself was believed to be, by Oceanus:

Some Greek astronomers considered them to be a distinct constellation, and they are mentioned by Hesiod, and in Homer's Iliad and Odyssey.

" In fact one modern scholar has observed in Bacchylides a general tendency towards imitation, sometimes approaching the level of quotation: in this case, the eagle simile in Ode 5 may be thought to imitate a passage in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter ( 375 – 83 ), and the countless leaves fluttering in the wind on " the gleaming headlands of Ida ", mentioned later in the ode, recall a passage in Iliad ( 6. 146 – 9 ).

This specific use of cedar is mentioned in The Iliad ( Book 24 ), referring to the cedar-roofed or lined storage chamber where Priam goes to fetch treasures to be used as ransom.

In another scholium, it is said that the Argonautica's account of Ganymede's abduction by an amorous Zeus ( Argonautica 3. 114 – 17 ) was also modelled on a version by Ibycus ( in Homer's earlier account, Zeus abducted the youth to be his wine-pourer: Iliad 20. 234 ), and that Ibycus, moreover, described the abduction of Tithonus by Dawn ( Eos ).

Iphianassa () is the name of one of Agamemnon's three daughters in Homer's Iliad ( ix. 145, 287 ) The name Iphianassa may be simply an older variant of the name Iphigenia.

In the Iliad, Homer is understood to be referring to Electra in mentioning " Laodice " as a daughter of Agamemnon.

In the Iliad, Calchas tells the Greeks that the captive Chryseis must be returned to her father Chryses in order to get Apollo to stop the plague he has sent as a punishment: this triggered the quarrel of Achilles and Agamemnon, the main theme of the Iliad.

Thus he might be the same as the son of Poseidon and Pronoe referenced in the scholia on Iliad, see above.