Author’s Ph.D. dissertation. University of Chicago, 1955 Achilles and Hector: The Homeric Hero is divided into two parts, “Style” and “Plot.” In the first, Benardete examines the formulae Homer inherited from the poetic tradition, but only to demonstrate how Homer put them to work for deliberate purposes: in his search for those purposes, Benardete leads us to see how the supposedly conventional epithets and similes in fact open up key themes of the Iliad, including the crucial differences between men and heroes, Achaeans and Trojans, lineage and individual virtue. If the epithets were properly understood, Benardete suggests, however hesitantly, the plot of the Iliad would necessarily follow. Turning to the plot, Benardete brings to light a pattern marked by three stages, in the course of which the motives of the Trojan War are transformed.