This paper shows the structuring role of repetition in the Iliad: as already shown, it is composed as a story that advances with strong echoes between books 1 and 24. We explore here other kinds of repetition: a comparison of a character in tears to a mountain waterfall (books 9 and 16), the ash spear that Patroclus does not take (16), and Achilles takes (19), two very particular verses for the deaths of Patroclus and Hector (16 and 22), and the “iron heart” of Achilles in Hector’s last words (22), and of Priam in Hecabe’s and Achilles’ words (24). We try to explain why the greatest number of links highlights the importance of Patroclus, Hector and Achilles: they help to integrate the Patrocleia into the overall scheme of Achilles’ Anger. The ’reverberation’ of exempla and the counterfactual hypotheses show other types of echo from one book to another, alluding to a ‘mythological diffuse background’ of the epos, thus strongly united.