Iliad II · The Dream and the Catalogue

Zeus sends “Dream” to Agamemnon with a promise that Troy can be taken that day. Agamemnon tests the army by proposing to sail home, and the men run for the ships. Odysseus takes up the staff of command, stops the rout, and beats the dissident Thersites into silence.

The army is reconstituted, and the poet lists the contingents of the Achaean coalition city by city, then the Trojan and allied forces. The catalogue turns a quarrel between two men into a war of the whole Aegean world.

Now all the other gods and men, lords of chariots, slumbered the whole night through, but Zeus was not holden of sweet sleep, for he was pondering in his heart how he might do honour to Achilles and lay many low beside the ships of the Achaeans. — Homer, Iliad II.1ff., trans. A. T. Murray (Loeb; Perseus Digital Library, CC BY-SA 4.0).