THE BABYLONIAN CAPTIVITY OF HOMER: THE CASE OF THE ???S ?????

The Δι ς π τη or ‘Deception of Zeus’ in the Iliad’s 14th and 15th books (DA hereafter) was subject to an intense and varied scrutiny in the ancient period – moralising, disapproving, allegorical.1 Though these judgements have found adherents as well as opponents in modern scholarship,2 by far the most influential recent interpretations have been conducted from an ‘orientalising’ perspective, documenting the links between Greece and the other civilisations of the Mediterranean basin.3 Features in the DA which