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This chapter examines carefully the fragmentary remains of the first Homeric Hymn to Dionysus and provides a reconstruction of the poem's narrative, which, it is argued, told the story of Hera's binding and Dionysus' successful arrival on Olympus. Detailed attention is given to the possible interaction of this narrative with the narratives found in other early hexameter poetry, particularly the Iliad and Odyssey. It is suggested that the Hymn's narrative may have served as a model.

Demodocus’ song of the quarrel of Odysseus and Achilles anticipates the quarrel between Odysseus and Euryalus at the Phaeacian games, and looks forward to Odysseus’ dealings with the suitors in Ithaca. It is the first of three songs which meditate on the relative merits of μῆτις‎ (stratagem) and βίη‎ (violence) in dealing with adultery. The handsome Euryalus corresponds in the second song to the good-looking Ares, who is caught in adultery by the stratagem of Hephaestus, Odysseus’ counterpart. Hephaestus entraps Ares, but fails to follow stratagem with violent punishment. The third song celebrates how Troy fell to Odysseus’ stratagem of the Wooden Horse. He outdid Hephaestus, following his stratagem with violent punishment of the adulterer: while the Greeks plundered, he went with Menelaus, the wronged husband, to the house of Deiphobus, Helen’s Trojan husband. Having punished the Trojans for adultery, Odysseus can do the same to the suitors in Ithaca.

Falling is not only a highly repetitive action in the Iliad but also the primary means for indicating death on the battlefield. It is thus a quintessentially human gesture, which draws the body not only toward death but also into a specifically mortal sense of time. In light of the significance of falling for mortals, this chapter examines the problematic case of two gods who fall in the Iliad. It argues that when Hephaestus tumbles to earth from Olympus and when Ares is knocked flat on the battlefield, both gods also “fall into” human time. This action complicates their status as immortals and draws into question the different temporal registers at work in the poem.

In Homeric epic, describing a map of the world, like epic song itself, is a privilege granted by the divine Muses and figured in Hephaestus’ shield-making. In two examples from Aeschylean tragedy, a defiant hero appropriates the map-making prerogative of the gods established in Homeric epic. In each case, in a bid to restructure the existing order, the hero lays claim to the divine ability to map the space of the world without invoking the Muses. In Prometheus Bound, Prometheus’ gift of a map to mortal Io is not just an altruistic favour. It is also a part of his strategy for controlling and directing the future in a way that will ultimately lead to his own liberation. In Agamemnon, Clytemnestra uses Hephaestus’ fire to map space instantaneously. Her control of the god’s technology is aligned with her scandalous power over every other aspect of the action of the play.