The rapid retelling by way of foretelling here, starting from the time when Achilles will send forth Patroklos to stop the attack of the Trojans and continuing all the way to the time when Troy will be destroyed by the Achaeans, is a compressed narration that extends beyond the narrative arc of the Iliad as we know it. The outlines of such a compressed epic narrative, formulated here as the Plan of Zeus, resemble what we see in the surviving plot-summaries of the epic Cycle. On the epic Cycle, see the inventory of Words and Ideas. The narrative as narrated here by the god Zeus himself shows “the bare outlines of distinct phases in the development of the Iliad as a composition subject to ongoing recomposition-in-performance” (HTL 83).