The Iliad. Only just started but it looks promising. I'm picturing the characters (Zeus and all) looking a bit like the GoT cast.
OK, so this story is pretty much the ur-trash-fantasy novel. Pure sword'n'sorcery, everything is
totally over the top - luka compared
Beowulf to Conan the Barbarian once, but this is like Conan times 100. It basically consists of fighting, boasting/insults, Zeus being a dick, and more fighting; rinse and repeat.
Now the formula of "...then Dude son of Bloke stabbed Matey, Thingy's son, in the guts, and darkness covered his eyes..." gets repetitive really fast, but what's actually interesting about it is that it gives a window into a world with an ethical system that is rigid, highly codified and almost completely alien to ours. Moral goodness is basically identical with heroism, and heroism, or courage, is identical with physical strength and war-prowess. To be strong is to be brave, and to be brave is to be strong. Cowards are physically as well as morally puny, by definition. So the proposition that a small, weak man attempting to fight a big, strong man is by far the braver of the two, which to us is intuitively obviously, would (I suspect) have struck Homer's original audience as absurd. The well-meaning teacher's old chestnut, that "all bullies are cowards really", would probably have provoked incredulous laughter. In fact I strongly suspect the word "bully" would have been translated as "hero".
Further, the good (i.e. brave) are beautiful, and the beautiful are good. Cowards are not only puny, they are also ugly.
Hereditary nobility and personal nobility are also identical, or nearly so. The "rags to riches" genre, so common in Western culture (and virtually an article of religious faith in the USA) would have seemed perverse, even blasphemous, in this culture. Men of lowly birth are too worthless even to be used as arrow-fodder; men of middling birth make adequate foot soldiers, while the sons of great lords make great warriors. At the top of course are the kings, who are expected to lead the fighting. Not that they always live up to this ideal, but any time one of them exhibits unkingly behaviour - i.e. failing for a moment to demonstrate an absolute and almost idiotic bravery, and an insatiable lust for slaughter and spoils - he will be upbraided by one of his peers, brothers or even a subordinate, and quickly snap out of it.
Finally, it seems very odd to the modern reader that none of the characters, as far as I can remember, considers it at all an 'unfair advantage' when one of the Olympians intervenes by infusing his enemy with superhuman strength or courage to temporarily turn the tide of battle. I suspect that, for this culture, for a hero to be suddenly filled with the spirit of Zeus or Athene or Ares is not a sort of bonus power-up in addition to his native strength and courage; rather, it literally
is strength and courage. "Enthusiasm" is "en-theos-ism", to be "filled with (a) god", after all.
Of course all this applies only to the male characters - the women are all present as wives, sisters and mothers of the fighting men, or are there to be fought over as the spoils of war.