fame

Had Menelaus satisfied the wife
who'd chosen him from all the lords of Greece,
his generation might have skipped the strife,
and frittered lives away in boring peace.
Had Paris died, or--better--not been born,
catastrophe need not have smitten Troy.
The Spartan King would not have earned those horns
from some perfidious young sailor boy.
Had Agamemnon been less insecure,
Achilles would have kept his trophy girl.
They'd be forgotten; nothing would endure
to edify the Hellenistic world.
But stars aligned, and Homer found his theme:
the Western Canon's oldest fever-dream.