The argument of the Iliad mainly turns on the affection of Achilles for Patroclus, whose love for the greater hero is only tempered by reverence for his higher birth and his unequalled prowess.

But the mutual regard which united Idomeneus and Meriones, Diomedes and Sthenelus, though, as the persons themselves are less important, it is kept more in the back-ground, is manifestly viewed by the poet in the same light.

The idea of a Greek hero seems not to have been thought complete, without such a brother in arms by his side."-- Thirlwall, Greece, vol.
i.p.176, seq.
244 "As hungry wolves with raging appetite, Scour through the fields, ne'er fear the stormy night-- Their whelps at home expect the promised food, And long to temper their dry chaps in blood-- So rush'd we forth at once." -- Dryden's Virgil, ii.

479.
245 -- _The destinies ordain._--"In the mythology, also, of the Iliad, purely Pagan as it is, we discover one important truth unconsciously involved, which was almost entirely lost from view amidst the nearly equal scepticism and credulity of subsequent ages.

Zeus or Jupiter is popularly to be taken as omnipotent.