“The voice of reason is occasionally heard in the mouths of the characters in the Iliad. Thersites’ speeches are reasonable to the highest degree; so are the speeches of the angry Achilles […] But words of reason drop into the void. If they come from an inferior, he is punished and shuts up; if from a chief, his actions betray them. And failing everything else, there is always a god handy to advise him to be unreasonable.”

– Simone Weil, “The Iliad or The Poem of Force”