SOURCE: Thomas G. Rosenmeyer, "Bacchae and Ion: Tragedy and Religion," in The Masks of Tragedy: Essays on Six Greek Dramas, University of Texas Press, 1963, pp. 103-52.

In the essay that follows, Rosenmeyer discusses the conversion of Admetus in Alcestis, which centers around the dramatic depiction of death in the play.

In Homer's Iliad the uneasy truce which accompanies the duel between Menelaus and Paris is, after the disgraceful withdrawal of Paris, broken by Athena, who persuades a lesser Trojan, Pandarus, to shoot Menelaus (4.104, tr. Richmond Lattimore):

Straightway he unwrapped his bow, of the
   polished horn from
 a running wild goat he himself had shot in
   the chest once,
 lying in wait for the goat in a covert as it
   stepped down
 from the rock, and hit it in the chest so it
   sprawled on the boulders.
 The horns that grew from the goat's head
   were sixteen palms' length...