It’s been a few year since I last read The Iliad, but I still think about the book a lot. It’s central conflict between living a long leisurely life for which you are hardly remembered, or living a short brutal one that may grant you “Kleos Aphthiton”[1] really caught my interest when I first read it and never really let go.

Still, another feature of the book that grabbed me was just how damn capitalist the gods are. The Christian gods in comparison talk about exulting the poor, and each giving what they can in tithe. None of that shit here however. Agamemnon has all the fatted bulls, he can burn all the bones, and so he gets all the favor. The only way you can compete with him is to out-spend him:

"Zeus has changed his mind, and inclines towards Hector's sacrifices rather than ours." (Book IX)

Yeah, so another investor is out-spending him in the Zeus market and is now reaping in the rewards.

Of course that makes me wonder why none of the heroes exploit this. Why, when they’re splitting up the loot, is everyone worried about armor and slaves but never the fatted bulls? You take all of those ‘invest’ them wisely in your next conflict, and bam, you’ve suddenly got even more bulls to sacrifice and you’ve even taken some gold and concubines as ‘dividends’.

This is bullshit. The system is rigged!

The exulted get exulted-er, and the rest of us just get conquered. We need to organize. We need to redistribute the bullocks of the 1%. Occupy Olympus!

[1] Well, not quite ‘aphthiton’, another theme of the book is how no man made thing can last.