The Iliad is not just a glorious poem—it is a textbook, and was taken as such throughout the history of the ancient world. How should you defend a gate? Like Telamonian Ajax. How should you follow up an attack? Like Hector, "flame-like," when he drove the Danaans back on their ships. How should you handle your most powerful weapon? Not, presumably, as Agamemnon handled Achilles.

Homer presents the hero's view of war, where to act worthily is the first aim, to act successfully the second....

— Michael Kaplan and Ellen Kaplan, Chances Are..., pp. 239-40

"Truth often suffers more by the heat of its defenders than from the arguments of its opposers." — William Penn