No more than with the famous passage from Pindar, Pythian 8.95 (alluded to in the two questions in this lecture's title) can the Iliad be definitively and simply explicated. Picking up, however, from Melanippedes, another fifth century BCE lyric poet, this presentation investigates the idea that, as Scholion on Il 13.350 which cites Melanippedes says, "Thetis was pregnant by Zeus when she was given in marriage to Peleus because of the remarks of Prometheus or Themis."

Any such scenario is kept under wraps in the Iliad, but it nevertheless pervades the whole poem, starting with its first word. Watkins' now well-known observation that mênis is used in archaic Greek epic poetry only of divinities (15 times) and of Achilles (4 times) becomes simpler if we view Achilles as being even more divine than one regularly imagines.

Superficially, the reference to Achilles as "son of Peleus," within line 1 itself, might seem to undercut any putative divine resonance in mênin; however, a comparably complex pattern is paralleled elsewhere in the Iliad, as for example at 16. 173-178, where Menesthios is referred to actually the son of the river-god Spercheios though in name (epiklesin) he was the son of Boros, who married his mother Polydora.