Iliad: Book 5 - Diomedes Fights the Gods | Ascend The Great Books Podcast

[@GSQuay]

Pleasure being on the show!

[@AscendTheGreatBooksPodcast]

Wonderful to have you on the show! Looking forward to doing it again sometime.

[@JMJ-Jim]

Can you guys speak to Diomedes being able to injure/kill the gods? I don't get how the immortals are in essence mortal; I thought immortality meant invulnerability (nothing can kill/injure them ever). Probably a misunderstanding from growing up watching Disney Hercules or God of War, but I thought the gods could only be injured by something greater than the gods (potion to make them mortal or a weapon made to kill gods). Maybe this is an error too, but I also thought the gods were like how St Thomas Aquinas described angels: each is its own species, created but immortal/impervious, so far above humanity in the created order we couldn't hope to injure one. But, the gods in the Illiad sound more like Thor from Marvel comics (superheroes with long lifespans).

[@piaraskelly1038]

My understanding is that they are immortal, but can get injured and then take some time to repair completely. Like Prometheus getting his liver eaten every day (okay, he was technically a Titan).

[@AscendTheGreatBooksPodcast]

Yes. The gods can be injured - even by mortals. Homer gives a quick list of such stories with Aphrodite goes to Olympus injured. The gods here a really just persons who imploded personalities and patronages. They aren't as philosophically dense as Aquinas' angels. They are subject to all the passions, flaws, etc., human are - they are just immortal.

[@brickingle3984]

The Greek pantheistic view is also a lot less systematic than one might expect. There is no “Greek mythology” just various stories that often share a cast of characters. So someone like Hercules shows up in lots of stories not related to him just cause he is a popular culture hero. How strong the gods are, what are their relevant strengths, what are their essences, these are not questions that are really grappled with in any serious way by the stories themselves. Later philosophers did do a lot of thinking on these topics though, but those writers are sometimes many centuries removed from the texts that give us these stories