Achilles actually vibrates with anger. It is obvious that he is torn between the urge to turn on his heel, take his men, and leave Ilium forever, and the overwhelming desire to unsheath his sword and gut Agamemnon like a sacrificial sheep.

“But know this, Achilles,” Agamemnon goes on, his shout dropping to a terrible whisper that can be heard by all the hundreds of men assembled here, “whether you leave or stay, I will give up my Chryseis because the god, Apollo, insists—but I will have your Briseis in her stead, and every man here will know how much greater man is Agamemnon than the surly boy Achilles!”

Here Achilles loses all control and goes for his sword in earnest. And here the Iliad would have ended—with the death of Agamemnon or the death of Achilles, or of both—and the Achaeans would have sailed home and Hector would have enjoyed his old age and Ilium would have remained standing for a thousand years and perhaps rivaled Rome in its glory, but at this second the goddess Athena appears behind Achilles.

I see her. Achilles reels around, face contorted, and obviously also sees her. No one else can. I don’t understand this stealth-cloaking technology, but it works when I use it and it works for the gods.

No, I realize immediately, this is more than stealth. The gods have frozen time again. It is their favorite way of talking to their pet humans without others eavesdropping, but I’ve seen it only a handful of times. Agamemnon’s mouth is open—I can see spittle frozen in midair—but no sound is heard, no movement of jaw or muscles, no blinking of those dark eyes. So it is with every man in the circle: frozen, rapt or bemused, frozen. Overhead, a sea bird hangs motionless in mid-flight. Waves curl but do not break on the shore. The air is as thick as syrup and all of us here are frozen like insects in amber. The only movement in this halted universe comes from Pallas Athena, from Achilles and—even if shown only by my leaning forward to hear better—from me.