Notes
1. All quotations from the Iliad are taken from Robert Fitzgerald's translation.
2. Three of the most useful works I've seen that address this theme in depth are Cedric Whitman's Homer and the Heroic Tradition, James M. Redfield's Nature and Culture in the Iliad: The Tragedy of Hector, and Robert J. Rabel's “Apollo as a Model for Achilles in the Iliad.”
3. Achilles's lack of food and sleep is implied by Thetis's speech to her son in 24.129–30.
4. See Whitman, pp. 217–18. Besides Whitman, the critic who most develops this interpretation is Michael N. Nagler in Spontaneity and Tradition: A Study in the Oral Art of Homer (see esp. p. 167–84).