1–34 Zeus cannot sleep; he summons destructive Dream and bids it appear to Agamemnon and tell him to attack the Trojans without delay. Dream stands over the king's head as he sleeps and, in the guise of Nestor, passes on Zeus's message

1–2 = 24.667f. (down to παννύχιοι), the only other place in Homer where men in general are ἱπποκορυσταί, ‘equippers of chariots’, an epithet applied elsewhere to the Paeonians and Maeonians. Both ancient and modern critics have shown concern over an apparent contradiction between the end of book 1, where Zeus went to sleep with Here beside him, and the statement here that ‘sweet sleep did not hold him’; but οὐκ ἔχε(ν) (epic imperfect) clearly means ‘did not continue to hold him’ in contrast with the others who slept παννύχιοι, ‘all night through’. Exactly the same contrast in much the same terms occurs at 10.1–4, between Agamemnon and the other Achaean chieftains; again the motif makes a useful way of beginning a new Book. Another apparent discrepancy is the disregard here of Here – but that is understandable if book-division implies, as it surely must, a pause considerably greater than that involved, for example, in modern paragraphing.