A number of factors determine the fates of individual characters during battlefield scenes in the Iliad. In terms of sheer body count, most of those that perish in battle seem to have been created simply in order for others to kill them.1 Typical of this group is the Trojan Cleoboulus, who receives neither dying words nor patronymic nor homeland, and appears only long enough to fall to Oileian Ajax (16.330–334). As for the more developed characters, life or death in battle is, to begin with, a function of the plot: major heroes by definition survive through most or all of the narrative, and lesser ones at least until they have performed their subsidiary roles. Hector, for instance, must remain alive until the dramatic climax of the plot in Book 22, while the Trojan ally Pandarus is killed soon after he performs the necessary function of restarting the war following the duel between Menelaus and Paris in Book 3 (4.85–222, 5.243–296). The fates of at least some of these more developed characters are also influenced by the fact that they were already or were becoming established in other contexts at the time when the Iliad was taking shape. Odysseus, to take an obvious example, cannot die in the Iliad because he was a widely recognized figure best known for a successful return from Troy, as is attested in the Homeric Odyssey and non-Homeric poetry, artistic representations, cult activity on his native Ithaca, and so on. Inclusion of heroes who like Odysseus are linked to other, in most cases regional, contexts helped poems like the Iliad appeal to audiences that came from across the Hellenic world to attend festivals such as the Panathenaea and Olympic games. Since regional, or “epichoric,” myths could vary a great deal – as is the case for instance with the contradictory accounts of Odysseus’ life after his homecoming – the inclusion of such heroes came at a certain cost. On the one hand, audiences would at times be required to set aside other accounts

OBJECTIVE:This study aimed to examine the correspondence between seven established risk factors for coronary heart disease (CHD) and CHD mortality among the states in the United States. An ecologic analysis relating CHD risk factor prevalences to CHD mortality rates among 49 states was undertaken in 1991-1992.METHODS:Approximately 68,000 men and women ages 45-74 were randomly sampled and interviewed by telephone in surveys conducted in 49 states in 1991 and 1992. From these interviews, we estimated state-specific prevalences of smoking, overweight, physical inactivity, hypertension, elevated cholesterol, diabetes, and alcohol abstinence. These seven CHD risk factors were also combined to create a CHD risk index for each state. The main outcome measures were mortality rates from CHD (ICD9 codes 410.0-414.9) in each of 49 states in 1991-1992 for men and women ages 45-74. The analysis was based on multiple linear regression and Spearman's rank-order correlations between the CHD risk factor prevalences, the combined CHD risk index, and the CHD mortality rates among the 49 states.RESULTS:The prevalences of most of the CHD risk factors correlated with CHD mortality rates in the expected directions, and correlations were similar for men and women. The CHD risk index correlated strongly with CHD mortality for both men (r = 0.75) and women (r = 0.80).CONCLUSION:About 60% of the variance in CHD mortality between the states in the United States (56% for men and 64% for women) is attributable to differences between the states in the prevalences of seven established risk factors for CHD. As state health agencies prioritize resources for chronic disease prevention programs, they should consider the potential benefits of increased efforts to reduce the prevalences of modifiable CHD risk factors in their populations to reduce CHD mortality.