formulas that he concluded that this section of the Iliad could not belong to the phase of oral tradition but was a written composition." Richard Janko, by contrast, describes the episode as "a bold, brilliant, graceful, sensuous, and above all amusing virtuoso performance, wherein Homer parades his mastery of the other types of epic composition in his repertoire". The debate on this issue is not yet settled.

Walter Burkert found that the passage "shows divinity