[thaumasiotes]

> It's as though the original story had Zeus being tricked in earnest, but later writers grew uncomfortable with the idea that their high god was so easily fooled.

That kind of thing happens all the time. Just sticking to the Trojan War, the original mythology has the Greeks unable to set sail because Artemis maintains unfavorable winds, because Agamemnon has offended her. She demands the sacrifice of his daughter, Iphigenia, before she will allow the Greeks to depart.

This sets up several other parts of the story. It's load-bearing. But to the classical Greeks, it's a slander against Artemis, and we can see the process of mythological revisionism working to adjust what happened.