This initial chapter is concerned with the religious background of the Iliad: with the ways in which the Olympian pantheon might have developed, and with what aspects of it might be due to Homer himself or the oral heroic tradition on which he drew; with the degree of artificiality and poetic elaboration or suppression consequently to be expected, and the possible awareness of that among his audiences; and especially with the assumptions that might underlie the connexions between men and gods through sacrifice and prayer. The conclusions that can reasonably be drawn are often speculative, and will need to be modified as research on contacts with the Near East, in particular, proceeds; but they are important none the less, affecting as they do the literary and aesthetic impressions made on audiences by divine scenes and episodes in the epic – for example over how far they might be understood as predominantly conventional, and therefore diminished in serious emotional impact. Clearly there are other things to be said, and in greater detail, about the divine characters of the Iliad, the individual gods and goddesses as actors and the rôles they play. These will be discussed as they arise in the different commentaries, as also by R. Janko in the introduction to vol. iv. Here, on the other hand, the emphasis is primarily historical and theological.

It is plain, in any event, that our own particular understanding of the nature of Homeric gods greatly affects the ways in which we respond to the Iliad as a whole, just as ancient audiences were affected by their own more contemporary reactions.