 Aristotle seems to agree with Xenophanes that it is wrong to believe that the gods look like human beings and share our bad behaviors; but the poets must take into account how people generally imagine them to be if they want to have them intervening in their plots. For representing the gods as morally good beings would actually make Homer’s epics rather odd to the people they were addressed to, which would have disturbed their involvement in the plot, and spoilt their pleasure. Another example comes from the scene in which Achilles pursues Hector: the way Achilles prevents the army from taking up arms against him and lets him go by a simple nod of the head is, from a psychological point of view, totally implausible (1460a14–16; Iliad 22, 205–206). But this is not an error we have to blame Homer for, Aristotle replies, since this adds to the effect of wonder, which is part of our pleasure: even if it is a mistake from a psychological perspective, 