In Book 18 of the Iliad, Achilles, after the completion of the funerary rites for his deceased friend Patroclus, organizes games in his honor with precious prizes for the winners, among others, a chariot race, to which Antilochus, son of Nestor, King of Pylos, participates. Antilochus' horses appear to be inferior to those of his competitors, and Nestor instructs him how to win by knowledge rather than by the capacity of his horses. Nestor's words provide an excellent formulation of the laws governing the motion of a rigid body on a curved course. Antilochus follows his father's instructions and eventually wins the race.
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Paipetis, S.A., Engineering Mechanics, Vol. I, Statics, Ion Publishers, Athens, 2003.
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© 2008 Springer Science+Business Media, B.V.
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Paipetis, S.A. (2008). The Laws of Curvilinear Motion in the Iliad. In: Paipetis, S.A. (eds) Science and Technology in Homeric Epics. History of Mechanism and Machine Science, vol 6. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-8784-4_7
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