"Nine years we wove a web of disaster for those Trojans,
pressing them hard with every tactic known to man,
and only after we slaved did Zeus award us victory.
And no one there could hope to rival Odysseus,
not for sheer cunning –
at every twist of strategy he excelled us all."
– Homer
The Odyssey, Book 3, lines 131-136. Using a metaphor, Nestor compares the siege of Troy by the Greeks to a spider weaving a web. He attributes the Greeks’ eventual and hard-won victory to the will of Zeus, but also to the cunning of Odysseus.