All this matter is called "the saga" by the critics. As Homer comes at the crowning period of epic poetry, as his instrument, the hexameter, is delicately tempered by long processes, it seems probable that his mind was full of ancient lays on legendary themes as well, probably, as of _Märchen_ and traditions told orally in prose. These things are to him what ballads and oral traditions were to Scott. Though he only once, in a suspected passage, touches on the Choice of Paris (_Iliad_, xxiv, 25-30), he must have known some tale which accounted for the enmity of Hera to Ilios, and the hatred of Athene to the Asian city of which she was patroness. Zeus himself (_Iliad_, iv. 31-33) seems puzzled by the fury of Hera against Troy. _Quo numine laeso_? The cause of wrath is, in fact, _spretae injuria formae_, the spite of neglected beauty. No other reason (setting aside the favour of Ganymede, to whom Homer only refers in the most casual way) has ever been given. As to the Trojan affairs, Homer knows many things on which he only touches briefly. It is clear that he knew a great saga about Trojan legendary history; for example, about the wall built by the Trojans and Pallas Athene to shelter Heracles when he fought a monster that ravaged the land (_Iliad_, xx. 146). He also knows that Apollo was made thrall to Laomedon, and built the city wall of Troy, but was defrauded of his reward (xxi. 441-455). That Apollo and Poseidon therefore sent the monster to which Hesione, daughter of Laomedon, was exposed, Homer does not say; he commonly ignores the _märchenhaft_, the fairy-tale points in a legend, but he knows that Heracles was also defrauded, and avenged himself by sacking Ilios (v. 638641). Manifestly there was a rich growth of _Märchen_ and legends clustered round Troy, and known to the Achaeans; Homer merely alludes to it, and to events posterior to the death of Hector. He knows how Achilles fell in the Scaean gate, slain by Paris and Apollo; he knows the Sack of Troy, the wooden horse; the Returns, prosperous, troubled, or fatal, of the heroes; he knows Memnon's part in the war, and the end of Aias; he knows that Philoctetes is to be needed, and that Eurypylus fought and fell, and so forth. Concerning some of these things he may have heard lays; others he may have learned merely through oral tradition in prose.