The Iliad, one of the oldest Greek narratives to have survived, depicts the gods themselves using mythology to help to understand, or at least accept, their own misfortunes and the limits of their freedom to act. In his greatest show of strength, Diomedes wounds the goddess Aphrodite. With the help of Iris, she makes her way to the left side of the Trojan battlefield, where she finds her brother Ares. She persuades him to lend her his chariot, which is pulled by two horses with gold frontlets. With Iris to handle the reins, she goes to Olympus, where she finds her mother Dione. As an aid to accepting and enduring pain, Dione presents her daughter Aphrodite with nothing less than a miniature mythological digest, a series of tales of gods’ misfortunes, including the suffering of Ares, Hera, and Hades. Then the mother wipes away the ichor (the divine form of blood) from her daughter’s wound; Athena and Hera have some catty fun at Aphrodite’s expense; and Zeus advises the goddess of love that she has strayed too far from her proper field of activity.

No wonder nearly 3000 years later we still find these stories charming and fascinating and continually examine them to find what meaning they might hold for us. The approaches to Greek mythology have long been pleasingly various. Some scholars have found in them a message that transcends all cultures and centuries, a vision of human heroism, of quest and achievement. On this view, the