The constant bickerings between Hera and Zeus in the _Iliad_ are merely the reflection in the upper Olympian world of the wars and jealousies of men below. Ilios is at war with Argos and Mycenae, therefore the chief protecting gods of each city take part in the strife. This conception is connected with the heroic genealogies. Noble and royal families, as in most countries, feigned a descent from the gods. It followed that Zeus was a partisan of his "children," that is, of the royal houses in the towns where he was the most favoured deity. Thus Hera when she sided with Mycenæ had a double cause of anger, and there is an easy answer to the question, _quo numine læso?_ She had her own townsmen's quarrel to abet, and she had her jealousy to incite her the more; for to become father of the human families Zeus must have been faithless to her. Indeed, in a passage (possibly interpolated) of the fourteenth _Iliad_ he acts as his own Leporello, and recites the list of his conquests. The Perseidæ, the Heraclidæ, the Pirithoidæ, with Dionysus, Apollo and Artemis spring from the amours there recounted.* Moved by such passions, Hera urges on the ruin of Troy, and Zeus accuses her of a cannibal hatred. "Perchance wert thou to enter within the gates and long walls, and devour Priam raw, and Priam's sons, and all the Trojans, then mightest thou assuage thine anger."** That great stumbling-block of Greek piety, the battle in which the gods take part,*** was explained as a physical allegory by the Neo-Platonists.**** It is in reality only a refraction of the wars of men, a battle produced among the heavenly folk by men's battles, as the earthly imitations of rain in the Vedic ritual beget rain from the firmament. The favouritism which Zeus throughout shows to Athene***** is explained by that rude and ancient myth of her birth from his brain after he had swallowed her pregnant mother.****** * Pherecydes is the authority for the treble night, in which Zeus persuaded the sun not to rise when he wooed Alemena. ** See the whole passage, Iliad, iv. 160. *** Ibid., v. 385. **** Scholia, ed. Dindorf, vol iii.; Ibid., v. 886. *****Ibid., v. 875. ****** Cf. "Hymn to Apollo Pythius," 136.