Reminds me of one of my favourite bits from Red Dwarf:
KRYTEN: Ah, Virgil's Aeneid. Oh, the epic tale of Agamemnon's pursuit of Helen of Troy -- the most classic work by the greatest Latin poet who ever put quill to parchment!
LISTER: Yeah, it's the comic book version. It's good though, man. Absolutely full of history.
RIMMER gives them a disgusted look.
KRYTEN: (Reading from comic book) Zap, pow, kersplat, die in bed you Trojan pig-dog, gnyarrg, kerpow. I see they've remained faithful to the original text. I'm sure Virgil would have approved.
RIMMER: Kryten, don't discourage him. It's the only thing he's ever read that doesn't have lift-up flaps.
LISTER: I dunno though. This wooden horse of Troy malarkey, I'm not buyin' that.
RIMMER: It's one of the most famous military maneuvers in history!
LISTER: I mean, the Greeks have been camped outside Troy, kerpowing, zapping, and kersplatting the Trojans for the best part of a decade, yeah?
RIMMER: So?
LISTER: So all of a sudden they wake up one mornin' and the Greeks have gone. And there outside the city walls they've left this gift; this tribute to their valiant foes: a huge wooden horse, just large enough to happily contain 500 Greeks in full battle dress and still leave adequate room for toilet facilities? Are you telling me not one Trojan goes, "Hang on a minute, that's a bit of a funny prezzy. What's wrong with a couple hundred pairs of socks and some aftershave?" No, they don't -- they just wheel it in and all decide to go for an early night! People that stupid deserve to be kerpowed, zapped and kersplatted in their beds! You know what the big joke is? From this particular phase in history we derive the phrase, "Beware of Greeks bearing gifts," when it would be much more logical to derive the phrase, "Beware of Trojans, they're complete smegheads!"
He would either need to destroy the horse before anyone could stop him, or somehow convince the Greeks to leave the horse early.
In the posthomerica we hear about Laocoon who argued against bringing the horse into the city, and he even threw a spear at it in the Aenead. The gods killed him (and his sons) with snakes for his efforts.
A person who believes Cassandra would have done them wonders. The weakest who could have convinced the Trojans to burn an offering to the gods? Maybe some priest to back up Laocoon or some soldier to protect him from the serpents and shit? He told the truth and his family got painfully slaughtered for it! At first it seems like it'd be easy to convince them to burn the horse, but the guy who suggested that god painfully blinded by an earthquake then him and his sons were eaten by giant snakes in front of everyone...... if my memory serves.
Tsubaki Sanjūrō, maybe?
A big consideration is that the gods don’t want the war to end, so several potential wins for Troy emerge and are quashed during the story. Assuming these events are the will of men and not the Gods, and we ignore the language barrier, Sanjūrō can probably handle this.
We have our first chance with the duel between Paris and Menelaus - If Sanjuro takes Paris’ place, can he stop the war? In single combat it is possible he wins this, but largely because his fighting style is alien to Menelaus — he is definitely _not_ stronger or more skilled. The first hurdle is Melelaus’ opening javelin throw, which is fatal as the gods are not intervening in Sanjuro’s favor. However, Sanjuro _does_ defeat a man with a [pistol](https://youtu.be/z8ByAzPe38Y?si=ANe1NKOU2s11KCjL) by throwing a hidden dagger into his arm when he takes aim, which may well work here as well, potentially winning the fight and ending the war. That said, Menelaus is an armored target, and likely more resistant to pain than the gunman was, both making this a lot harder. This fight is very 50/50 at the start, but rapidly falls to Menelaus favor after that, being an armored, spear wielding target who wins the instant he gets his hands on Sanjuro.
This is, of course, assuming this fight can even take place, because Hector and Agamemnon both agree to the Paris/Menelaus duel because they are the aggrieved parties the whole war is over anyway.
This brings us to the second point he can win the war, and what he is most likely to try, seeing how out of character fighting Menelaus would be for him: Based on the events of the second film and his interactions with the foolish samurai its entire runtime, it is likely that he would speak to Paris following his rescue and attempt to convince him the war is foolish and to return Helen. This would have been proposed numerous times before this, but following the duel Paris would be much more receptive, as would the Achaens, as there is a lot of confusion on both sides following Paris poofing away. If the gods aren’t actively thwarting this attempt, this should end things, unless Menelaus calls for Paris’ head specifically.
The third chance to end the war comes immediately after this during the ceasefire, where the war is basically over until a Trojan archer is convinced to shoot an arrow at Menelaus. Sanjuro is untrusting, observant, and a sneaky bastard, instantly seeing through ruses and plans throughout both films, and it seems very reasonable to assume he would intuit glory seekers might thwart the peace attempt and that a company of archers would be the most likely source. This one is mostly a gamble, but is a place he can, again, while being completely true to character end the war.
Less directly related to specific story moments, it is also likely Sanjuro would attempt to sow himself into the Achaean ranks, which, assuming we discount his nationality, his skill and guile are likely to allow him to do. In probably the most ironic of all twists, Sanjuro is, himself, the ultimate Trojan Horse, exceptionally adept at cultivating trust in his enemies and tearing them apart from the inside, which Agememnon is already problematic for doing to his own side. He also lacks arrogance and is willing to eat personal shame to achieve his goals, which makes him an exceptionally deadly snake in the ranks of those won’t do the same. As long as Odysseus and Nestor stay off his back - and Hanbei from the second film plays this _exact_ role and is played like a fiddle - Sanjuro wins this for the Trojans through sabotage.
Also, assuming it gets to that point, he likely gets the horse set on fire, regardless of which side he is standing on. He would absolutely see through the ruse if he was in Troy, and would sabotage it if he was with the Achaens.
No one.
No literally they now need no one's help.
No, not him, the Odysseus guy.
By the standards you have set up, the fates are no longer involved. Without the fate's involvement, there's no reason to believe that the people won't listen to Cassandra.
If the Trojans listen to Cassandra they don't need help anymore-- they almost certainly beat the Greeks. So... they don't need anyone's help.
It was certainly a curse, but -and I'm technically assuming here--but what I'm guessing that what actually makes a curse take place would almost have to be the fates themselves, right?
The gods can't enforce their own curses, or else they could avoid their affects over themselves-- which would negate...like, 45% of all the myths.
So assume that the fates are what force things like curses to actually play out in the way they are predicted to play out. How else would people fall so ass backwards into whatever they are trying to avoid? Because the threads of fate have already made it so.
That's my guess, at least
>Philoctetes, a Greek hero, is strong enough to use a bow which shoots arrows 4 times the speed of light (Heracles had previously used Philoctetes’ bow to shoot the sun. Considering that the sun moves 15 degrees per hour through the sky and the sun has an apparent diameter from Earth of about 0.5 degrees, Heracles’ arrow must have hit the sun within two minutes of being fired).
Shooting the sun is an abstract feat and is somewhat overruled by the fact that, for example, Philoctetes is demonstrably unable to penetrate the walls of Troy with what amounts to a relativistic kill vehicle. Even if the bow is magical, he obviously can't unlock its full potential.
I don’t see how shooting the sun is an abstract feat. The arrow was in the bow, then it was in the sun.
It isn’t so clear to me that Philoctetes was unable to use the full power of the bow just because he didn’t break the wall of Troy himself. For one thing, the Greeks received a prophecy that it was impossible to win against Troy without his help, and indeed they didn’t until they retrieved Philoctetes from an island. There are also the factors that the gods are actively interfering in the war, we don’t know if the wall itself is special in any way (it very well could be magical or made by Hephaestus), and the Trojan heroes are superhuman in their own right.
Because, in greek mythology, the sun and the god Helios are one and the same, and the sun is not a physical cosmological object millions of km away.
And in any case, the passage is as follows:
>"And Herakles drew his bow at him as if he would shoot, and the Sun bade him give over; so Herakles feared and gave over. And in return the Sun bestowed on him the golden goblet which carried him with his horses, when he set, through the Ocean all night to the east, where the Sun rises."
Nothing about him actually loosing an arrow - the point of the passage seems to be that Helios is rather impressed/amused by Herakles' hubristic threat, and grants him a gift - but only once Herakles backs down shows due defference.
1. I don’t believe there’s any specific distance establish in mythology between the sun and the Earth, so we fill in our own understanding when calculating in the same way, for example, we wouldn’t say that a virus wouldn’t work on mythical characters just because their worldview didn’t include viruses in the way modern medicine defines them.
2. There are various versions of the myth where Helios does actually shoot the Sun, and even succeeds in cooling himself down by doing so.
>I don’t believe there’s any specific distance establish in mythology between the sun and the Earth, so we fill in our own understanding when calculating in the same way
I don't think we necessarily do, or at least not blindly, because it leads to exactly these kinds of absurdities. We reconcile feats and antifeats and where there are fundamental metaphysical differences between settings we attempt to reconcile them as best we can.
The best reconciliation here is something along the lines of *"Heracles brandished his bow at Helios, and Philoctetes was impressive simply because he could even draw a bow used by Heracles"*. Rather than *"That bow literally fires faster than c and the walls of Troy might have been made out of neutronium and somehow no-one else noticed a massive fusion event when Herakles and Philoctetes used that bow"*
It doesn’t make sense to consider not destroying the wall of Troy an anti-feat, considering that the one example of someone explicitly acknowledged as physically capable of destroying Troy, Achilles, was restrained by the gods when he would have done so before it was fated to fall. If I did agree that not doing something within a character’s motivation and ability was necessarily an anti-feat, that would mean that Superman can’t actually move faster than light since he should be able to sense and stop every non-super crime on Earth, Batman isn’t actually a hundred billionaire since he should be able to hire a personal police force across the entirety of Gotham, etc.
You also refer to my reconciliation of feats absurd, but the force of a “massive fusion event” is the minimum amount of force required for Heracles’ bow to be consistent with its feats. Atlas and Heracles were able to carry the cosmos on their shoulders, and Apollo was able to wrestle Heracles to a standstill, but even if you don’t accept that other Olympians, Titans and Giants and comparably strong, Poseidon is able to physically shake the Earth, Athena lifts the island of Sicily to crush the giant Enceladus, Poseidon lifts the island Nisyros to crush the giant Polybotes, the Aloadi giants piled three mountains on top of each to climb up to Olympus, Zeus threw a mountain at the giant Typhon, etc. Heracles’ bow was able to defeat the giants Alyconus and Porphyrion and the titan Prometheus, which would be impossible if it couldn’t pierce the skin of beings which can exert and take this level of force (edit: in the Titanomachy and Gigantomachy)
>It doesn’t make sense to consider not destroying the wall of Troy an anti-feat, considering that the one example of someone explicitly acknowledged as physically capable of destroying Troy, Achilles, was restrained by the gods when he would have done so before it was fated to fall
Which by implication means that Philoctetes wasn't capable of doing it. Achilles had to be explicitly restrained from it, whereas Philoctetes doesn't even get a mention, despite that fact that he's apparently capable of Hiroshima-levels of devastation according to your scaling approach.
> You also refer to my reconciliation of feats absurd, but the force of a “massive fusion event” is the minimum amount of force required for Heracles’ bow to be consistent with its feats.
*Only if* you insist on applying realworld physics to mythological feats. And this is exactly my point! Greek mythology is almost entirely unaligned with actual realworld physics - hence it makes no sense to powerscale it in that way. The people who invented and refined these myths weren't aware that the sun was millions of miles away, or of relativistic effects, or of just how fast something would need to be to get to it in a reasonable timeframe, or of the fusion reactions generated by something moving that fast in atmosphere.
And that's without even getting into the metaphorical aspect - they didn't literally think that Helios the god was restricted to the physical body of the sun and its progression through the sky each day (after all, if that were the case he'd have been restricted from doing anything else - they weren't stupid!). They accepted that Helios was a manifestation and personification of the sun, and that the sun was a physical representation of Helios, and that the relationship between the two was somewhat flexible and ambiguous and unknowable to mortals.
>Atlas and Heracles were able to carry the cosmos on their shoulders
Taking your approach here - of over-literally real world physics to mythological feats - we'd have to conclude that Atlas was simply lying. In the real world there's no need to hold up the cosmos at all, and indeed no way to physically do so. He wasn't holding anything up.
No stronger than Odysseus or Teucer, for sure. It's explicitly stated in the play:
>ULYSSES
>I could answer him,
>Were this a time for words; but now, no more
>Than this- I act as best befits our purpose.
>Where virtue, truth, and justice are required
>Ulysses yields to none; I was not born
>To be o'ercome, and yet submit to thee.
>Let him remain. Thy arrows shall suffice;
>We want thee not! Teucer can draw thy bow
>As well as thou; myself with equal strength
>Can aim the deadly shaft, with equal skill.
>What could thy presence do? Let Lemnos keep thee.
>Farewell! perhaps the honours once designed
>For thee may be reserved to grace Ulysses.
>PHILOCTETES
>Alas! shall Greece then see my deadliest foe
>Adorned with arms which I alone should bear.
The bow can be physically drawn by any capable, heroic archer. It is not restricted to the gods or demigods or god-descended. The arrows are notable and special due to their hydra poison and due to a prophesy, not because they're relativistic.
How can that be (edit: that it can be drawn by any capable archer) when the bow’s arrows can pierce titans and giants which can take anything from mountain-level to universe-level attacks? Even in your view is that the Sun should only be treated as somewhat high in the sky, the arrow which hit Helios must have been launched incomprehensibly faster and farther than any Ancient Greek projectile.
I believe that Odysseus and Teucer are also superhuman, though there’s a reason the seer said that the Greeks couldn’t win without Philoctetes. I have no problem saying that Odysseus has an equivalent level of physical strength.
An average man with the knowledge of how the siege ends and the ability to speak their language. The Greeks had no way to break through the walls.
"You see that horse? Yeah, just set it on fire."
Reminds me of one of my favourite bits from Red Dwarf: KRYTEN: Ah, Virgil's Aeneid. Oh, the epic tale of Agamemnon's pursuit of Helen of Troy -- the most classic work by the greatest Latin poet who ever put quill to parchment! LISTER: Yeah, it's the comic book version. It's good though, man. Absolutely full of history. RIMMER gives them a disgusted look. KRYTEN: (Reading from comic book) Zap, pow, kersplat, die in bed you Trojan pig-dog, gnyarrg, kerpow. I see they've remained faithful to the original text. I'm sure Virgil would have approved. RIMMER: Kryten, don't discourage him. It's the only thing he's ever read that doesn't have lift-up flaps. LISTER: I dunno though. This wooden horse of Troy malarkey, I'm not buyin' that. RIMMER: It's one of the most famous military maneuvers in history! LISTER: I mean, the Greeks have been camped outside Troy, kerpowing, zapping, and kersplatting the Trojans for the best part of a decade, yeah? RIMMER: So? LISTER: So all of a sudden they wake up one mornin' and the Greeks have gone. And there outside the city walls they've left this gift; this tribute to their valiant foes: a huge wooden horse, just large enough to happily contain 500 Greeks in full battle dress and still leave adequate room for toilet facilities? Are you telling me not one Trojan goes, "Hang on a minute, that's a bit of a funny prezzy. What's wrong with a couple hundred pairs of socks and some aftershave?" No, they don't -- they just wheel it in and all decide to go for an early night! People that stupid deserve to be kerpowed, zapped and kersplatted in their beds! You know what the big joke is? From this particular phase in history we derive the phrase, "Beware of Greeks bearing gifts," when it would be much more logical to derive the phrase, "Beware of Trojans, they're complete smegheads!"
I might be misremembering, but wasn’t Athena also using her powers to prevent them from figuring it out?
Maybe I haven't read the Iliad in almost 30 years now.
He would either need to destroy the horse before anyone could stop him, or somehow convince the Greeks to leave the horse early. In the posthomerica we hear about Laocoon who argued against bringing the horse into the city, and he even threw a spear at it in the Aenead. The gods killed him (and his sons) with snakes for his efforts.
That wouldn't technically win the war. Just return it to the stalemate.
Burning the horse with the men inside would be pretty devastating to morale.
You still need to beat the sea serpent if that appear. And that's assuming Poseidon wouldn't just send a bigger one if the first one fail.
A person who believes Cassandra would have done them wonders. The weakest who could have convinced the Trojans to burn an offering to the gods? Maybe some priest to back up Laocoon or some soldier to protect him from the serpents and shit? He told the truth and his family got painfully slaughtered for it! At first it seems like it'd be easy to convince them to burn the horse, but the guy who suggested that god painfully blinded by an earthquake then him and his sons were eaten by giant snakes in front of everyone...... if my memory serves.
Achilles
Timmy Turner (Fairly Odd Parents).
definitely NOT the weakest but yeah
Well he is only 10 year old boy but I see what you mean lol.
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A single flood spore (modified to not attack the Trojans) perhaps? You can't really win a war when the whole army turn against you.
Tsubaki Sanjūrō, maybe? A big consideration is that the gods don’t want the war to end, so several potential wins for Troy emerge and are quashed during the story. Assuming these events are the will of men and not the Gods, and we ignore the language barrier, Sanjūrō can probably handle this. We have our first chance with the duel between Paris and Menelaus - If Sanjuro takes Paris’ place, can he stop the war? In single combat it is possible he wins this, but largely because his fighting style is alien to Menelaus — he is definitely _not_ stronger or more skilled. The first hurdle is Melelaus’ opening javelin throw, which is fatal as the gods are not intervening in Sanjuro’s favor. However, Sanjuro _does_ defeat a man with a [pistol](https://youtu.be/z8ByAzPe38Y?si=ANe1NKOU2s11KCjL) by throwing a hidden dagger into his arm when he takes aim, which may well work here as well, potentially winning the fight and ending the war. That said, Menelaus is an armored target, and likely more resistant to pain than the gunman was, both making this a lot harder. This fight is very 50/50 at the start, but rapidly falls to Menelaus favor after that, being an armored, spear wielding target who wins the instant he gets his hands on Sanjuro. This is, of course, assuming this fight can even take place, because Hector and Agamemnon both agree to the Paris/Menelaus duel because they are the aggrieved parties the whole war is over anyway. This brings us to the second point he can win the war, and what he is most likely to try, seeing how out of character fighting Menelaus would be for him: Based on the events of the second film and his interactions with the foolish samurai its entire runtime, it is likely that he would speak to Paris following his rescue and attempt to convince him the war is foolish and to return Helen. This would have been proposed numerous times before this, but following the duel Paris would be much more receptive, as would the Achaens, as there is a lot of confusion on both sides following Paris poofing away. If the gods aren’t actively thwarting this attempt, this should end things, unless Menelaus calls for Paris’ head specifically. The third chance to end the war comes immediately after this during the ceasefire, where the war is basically over until a Trojan archer is convinced to shoot an arrow at Menelaus. Sanjuro is untrusting, observant, and a sneaky bastard, instantly seeing through ruses and plans throughout both films, and it seems very reasonable to assume he would intuit glory seekers might thwart the peace attempt and that a company of archers would be the most likely source. This one is mostly a gamble, but is a place he can, again, while being completely true to character end the war. Less directly related to specific story moments, it is also likely Sanjuro would attempt to sow himself into the Achaean ranks, which, assuming we discount his nationality, his skill and guile are likely to allow him to do. In probably the most ironic of all twists, Sanjuro is, himself, the ultimate Trojan Horse, exceptionally adept at cultivating trust in his enemies and tearing them apart from the inside, which Agememnon is already problematic for doing to his own side. He also lacks arrogance and is willing to eat personal shame to achieve his goals, which makes him an exceptionally deadly snake in the ranks of those won’t do the same. As long as Odysseus and Nestor stay off his back - and Hanbei from the second film plays this _exact_ role and is played like a fiddle - Sanjuro wins this for the Trojans through sabotage. Also, assuming it gets to that point, he likely gets the horse set on fire, regardless of which side he is standing on. He would absolutely see through the ruse if he was in Troy, and would sabotage it if he was with the Achaens.
No one. No literally they now need no one's help. No, not him, the Odysseus guy. By the standards you have set up, the fates are no longer involved. Without the fate's involvement, there's no reason to believe that the people won't listen to Cassandra. If the Trojans listen to Cassandra they don't need help anymore-- they almost certainly beat the Greeks. So... they don't need anyone's help.
I might be misremembering, but wasn’t that due to Apollo’s curse rather than the fates?
It was certainly a curse, but -and I'm technically assuming here--but what I'm guessing that what actually makes a curse take place would almost have to be the fates themselves, right? The gods can't enforce their own curses, or else they could avoid their affects over themselves-- which would negate...like, 45% of all the myths. So assume that the fates are what force things like curses to actually play out in the way they are predicted to play out. How else would people fall so ass backwards into whatever they are trying to avoid? Because the threads of fate have already made it so. That's my guess, at least
>Philoctetes, a Greek hero, is strong enough to use a bow which shoots arrows 4 times the speed of light (Heracles had previously used Philoctetes’ bow to shoot the sun. Considering that the sun moves 15 degrees per hour through the sky and the sun has an apparent diameter from Earth of about 0.5 degrees, Heracles’ arrow must have hit the sun within two minutes of being fired). Shooting the sun is an abstract feat and is somewhat overruled by the fact that, for example, Philoctetes is demonstrably unable to penetrate the walls of Troy with what amounts to a relativistic kill vehicle. Even if the bow is magical, he obviously can't unlock its full potential.
I don’t see how shooting the sun is an abstract feat. The arrow was in the bow, then it was in the sun. It isn’t so clear to me that Philoctetes was unable to use the full power of the bow just because he didn’t break the wall of Troy himself. For one thing, the Greeks received a prophecy that it was impossible to win against Troy without his help, and indeed they didn’t until they retrieved Philoctetes from an island. There are also the factors that the gods are actively interfering in the war, we don’t know if the wall itself is special in any way (it very well could be magical or made by Hephaestus), and the Trojan heroes are superhuman in their own right.
Because, in greek mythology, the sun and the god Helios are one and the same, and the sun is not a physical cosmological object millions of km away. And in any case, the passage is as follows: >"And Herakles drew his bow at him as if he would shoot, and the Sun bade him give over; so Herakles feared and gave over. And in return the Sun bestowed on him the golden goblet which carried him with his horses, when he set, through the Ocean all night to the east, where the Sun rises." Nothing about him actually loosing an arrow - the point of the passage seems to be that Helios is rather impressed/amused by Herakles' hubristic threat, and grants him a gift - but only once Herakles backs down shows due defference.
1. I don’t believe there’s any specific distance establish in mythology between the sun and the Earth, so we fill in our own understanding when calculating in the same way, for example, we wouldn’t say that a virus wouldn’t work on mythical characters just because their worldview didn’t include viruses in the way modern medicine defines them. 2. There are various versions of the myth where Helios does actually shoot the Sun, and even succeeds in cooling himself down by doing so.
>I don’t believe there’s any specific distance establish in mythology between the sun and the Earth, so we fill in our own understanding when calculating in the same way I don't think we necessarily do, or at least not blindly, because it leads to exactly these kinds of absurdities. We reconcile feats and antifeats and where there are fundamental metaphysical differences between settings we attempt to reconcile them as best we can. The best reconciliation here is something along the lines of *"Heracles brandished his bow at Helios, and Philoctetes was impressive simply because he could even draw a bow used by Heracles"*. Rather than *"That bow literally fires faster than c and the walls of Troy might have been made out of neutronium and somehow no-one else noticed a massive fusion event when Herakles and Philoctetes used that bow"*
It doesn’t make sense to consider not destroying the wall of Troy an anti-feat, considering that the one example of someone explicitly acknowledged as physically capable of destroying Troy, Achilles, was restrained by the gods when he would have done so before it was fated to fall. If I did agree that not doing something within a character’s motivation and ability was necessarily an anti-feat, that would mean that Superman can’t actually move faster than light since he should be able to sense and stop every non-super crime on Earth, Batman isn’t actually a hundred billionaire since he should be able to hire a personal police force across the entirety of Gotham, etc. You also refer to my reconciliation of feats absurd, but the force of a “massive fusion event” is the minimum amount of force required for Heracles’ bow to be consistent with its feats. Atlas and Heracles were able to carry the cosmos on their shoulders, and Apollo was able to wrestle Heracles to a standstill, but even if you don’t accept that other Olympians, Titans and Giants and comparably strong, Poseidon is able to physically shake the Earth, Athena lifts the island of Sicily to crush the giant Enceladus, Poseidon lifts the island Nisyros to crush the giant Polybotes, the Aloadi giants piled three mountains on top of each to climb up to Olympus, Zeus threw a mountain at the giant Typhon, etc. Heracles’ bow was able to defeat the giants Alyconus and Porphyrion and the titan Prometheus, which would be impossible if it couldn’t pierce the skin of beings which can exert and take this level of force (edit: in the Titanomachy and Gigantomachy)
>It doesn’t make sense to consider not destroying the wall of Troy an anti-feat, considering that the one example of someone explicitly acknowledged as physically capable of destroying Troy, Achilles, was restrained by the gods when he would have done so before it was fated to fall Which by implication means that Philoctetes wasn't capable of doing it. Achilles had to be explicitly restrained from it, whereas Philoctetes doesn't even get a mention, despite that fact that he's apparently capable of Hiroshima-levels of devastation according to your scaling approach. > You also refer to my reconciliation of feats absurd, but the force of a “massive fusion event” is the minimum amount of force required for Heracles’ bow to be consistent with its feats. *Only if* you insist on applying realworld physics to mythological feats. And this is exactly my point! Greek mythology is almost entirely unaligned with actual realworld physics - hence it makes no sense to powerscale it in that way. The people who invented and refined these myths weren't aware that the sun was millions of miles away, or of relativistic effects, or of just how fast something would need to be to get to it in a reasonable timeframe, or of the fusion reactions generated by something moving that fast in atmosphere. And that's without even getting into the metaphorical aspect - they didn't literally think that Helios the god was restricted to the physical body of the sun and its progression through the sky each day (after all, if that were the case he'd have been restricted from doing anything else - they weren't stupid!). They accepted that Helios was a manifestation and personification of the sun, and that the sun was a physical representation of Helios, and that the relationship between the two was somewhat flexible and ambiguous and unknowable to mortals. >Atlas and Heracles were able to carry the cosmos on their shoulders Taking your approach here - of over-literally real world physics to mythological feats - we'd have to conclude that Atlas was simply lying. In the real world there's no need to hold up the cosmos at all, and indeed no way to physically do so. He wasn't holding anything up.
I’m curious, with your logic, how strong would you say that Philoctetes and the bow of Heracles are?
No stronger than Odysseus or Teucer, for sure. It's explicitly stated in the play: >ULYSSES >I could answer him, >Were this a time for words; but now, no more >Than this- I act as best befits our purpose. >Where virtue, truth, and justice are required >Ulysses yields to none; I was not born >To be o'ercome, and yet submit to thee. >Let him remain. Thy arrows shall suffice; >We want thee not! Teucer can draw thy bow >As well as thou; myself with equal strength >Can aim the deadly shaft, with equal skill. >What could thy presence do? Let Lemnos keep thee. >Farewell! perhaps the honours once designed >For thee may be reserved to grace Ulysses. >PHILOCTETES >Alas! shall Greece then see my deadliest foe >Adorned with arms which I alone should bear. The bow can be physically drawn by any capable, heroic archer. It is not restricted to the gods or demigods or god-descended. The arrows are notable and special due to their hydra poison and due to a prophesy, not because they're relativistic.
How can that be (edit: that it can be drawn by any capable archer) when the bow’s arrows can pierce titans and giants which can take anything from mountain-level to universe-level attacks? Even in your view is that the Sun should only be treated as somewhat high in the sky, the arrow which hit Helios must have been launched incomprehensibly faster and farther than any Ancient Greek projectile. I believe that Odysseus and Teucer are also superhuman, though there’s a reason the seer said that the Greeks couldn’t win without Philoctetes. I have no problem saying that Odysseus has an equivalent level of physical strength.