Diomedes fights the gods

My first impression upon a recent a rereading of the Iliad, the first in my adulthood, is that the epic poet did not judge his heroes by the result: Heroes won and lost battles in a manner that was totally independent of their own valor; their fate depended upon totally external forces, generally the explicit agency of the scheming gods. Heroes are heroes because they are heroic in behavior, not because they won or lost.

Nassim Taleb