Epic Summer: The Iliad, post 3

 Paris and Menelaus face off, and Menelaus has the upper hand when Aphrodite butts in and steals Paris away in a cloud.  Menelaus is VERY put out and demands Helen back.  Aphrodite, meanwhile, is urging Helen to go see Paris in his bedchamber, because he's all hot and muscly. (No really.) Helen balks because she saw the whole battle and knows Menelaus would have killed Paris, but Aphrodite calls her a "bold hussy" and makes her go anyway.

Athena's getting bored, so she encourages a Trojan to shoot an arrow at Menelaus, assuring him that it's DEFINITELY THE BEST PLAN.  Of course, she then keeps the arrow from killing Menelaus.  But the attempt on his life enrages the Greeks so they all start fighting.  This begins a section of the story in which lots of people die, their armor rattling and clanging to the ground, or mists covering their eyes.  Often they are stabbed in the nipple or the groin, but sometimes in the mouth with the steel among their teeth.  Yeah, it's a festive passage.  These people have names, but I do not remember them.

Also there's an interlude on Olympus where Zeus and the gods are discussing what's going on.  The gods are increasingly involved in the battle at this point, and it's interesting the way the story is told that sometimes the gods can be some sort of metaphor or embodiment of a human quality, and other times they're definitely doing things.

Like, Ares goes around rabble-rousing in the Trojan ranks "in the form" of this other guy.  So the story could be that this other guy just got the spirit and riled up the troops and people later said that Ares was totally their in that guy's form. 

But Aphrodite at one point gets stabbed in the hand by a Greek (who Athena clued in as to the best Aphrodite-stabbing technique), and so...that's not very metaphorical?  At the time Aphrodite was also saving her son from the battle.  Because he had been crushed by a boulder, if I recall.

So here we are.  People are stab-stabbing away at each other, the gods are running around encouraging them in the stabbing, and Zeus and Hera are sniping away at each other on Olympus.

This is the end of Book 3 and the entirety of books 4 and 5.