While some of the female characters in Homer’s The Illiad are powerful goddesses, others are merely helpless mortal women. Hera is one of the most powerful forces in the poem. She holds more power over Zeus, and the other characters, than many of the male gods. “You’ll set me curry-worrying with Hera and make her scold me again! She is always at me as it is before them all…You just go away …showed first 75 words of 463 total…

…showed last 75 words of 463 total…was not to be; and so I pine away in sorrow” (Homer 42). As opposed to Hera, who rarely does anything against her will, Helen is forced to be the wife of a man she doesn’t love because he captured her while attacking a city. The Illiad is an excellent example of both how women can be powerful and important or be passive and needless, depending on both their attitude and their place in society.