First Sentence

"This initial chapter is concerned with the religious background of the Iliad: with the ways in which the Olympian pantheon might have developed, and with what aspects of it might be due to Homer himself or the oral heroic tradition on which he drew; with the degree of artificiality and poetic elaboration or suppression consequently to be expected, and the possible awareness of that among his audiences; and especially with the assumptions that might underlie the connexions between men and gods through sacrifice and prayer."