Diomedes

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  The great albatrosses carry the name of a Greek hero. Their genus is Diomedea and their family is Diomedeidae, both drawn from Diomedes, a hero of Greek mythology known above all for his part in the Trojan War. Homer's Iliad ranks him with Ajax the Great and Agamemnon, just behind Achilles, among the finest fighters of the Achaeans. Tradition adds that he founded ten or more cities in Italy, and that people in both Italy and Greece worshiped him as a divine being after his death. How does the son of an exile reach that height? What did the Greeks admire in him, and what did they hold against him? And why do stories of birds follow him to the end?

  72167

• 2. An Exile's Son

  ›

  Tydeus came to Argos as a fugitive from Calydon, where his father Oeneus was king. He had killed relatives, though the sources disagree on exactly which ones. King Adrastus of Argos gave the exile shelter and then gave him a daughter, Deipyle, as his wife. They had a daughter named Comaetho and a son named Diomedes, who was therefore an Aetolian through his father and an Argive through his mother.

  A second outsider soon turned up at the same court. Polynices, a banished prince of Thebes, married another of Adrastus' daughters, Argia, and begged the king to help him win back his homeland. Adrastus agreed and gathered seven leaders, each assigned to attack one of the seven gates of Thebes. Tydeus, Polynices and Adrastus were among them, and together they became known as the Seven against Thebes.

  The attack failed badly. All seven champions died in the fighting except Adrastus, who escaped on his horse Arion, the swiftest of his breed. Tydeus was among the dead.

  Athena had a favorite among the seven, and it was Tydeus. As he lay dying, she wanted to give him a medicine, obtained from her father, that would make him immortal. She withdrew the gift in apparent disgust when he gobbled down the brains of the hated enemy who had wounded him.

  Diomedes was about four years old when his father was killed. At the funerals, the sons of the fallen champions, Diomedes among them, vowed to destroy Thebes and avenge their fathers. They became known as the Epigoni, a word meaning offspring. Ten years later they marched, naming Alcmaeon as commander-in-chief and adding contingents from Messenia, Arcadia, Corinth and Megara. Even so, their army was small beside the Theban one.

  Greek tradition remembers this campaign as the most important expedition before the Trojan War, and it was a favorite subject of epics, all now lost. The decisive battle came at Glisas, where King Laodamas killed Prince Aegialeus, the son of Adrastus and heir to the throne. Alcmaeon then killed Laodamas. Believing themselves finished, the Thebans asked the seer Tiresias for advice, and he told them to flee. They did, and the Epigoni walked in, plundered the treasures and tore down the great walls. Before leaving, they installed Thersander, the son of the fallen Polynices, as the city's new ruler.

  1213141517

• 3. Ruler of Argos

  ›

  King Adrastus did not live to see his army come home. Elderly by then, he died of grief on hearing the news from the battlefield. That left Diomedes as the last of Adrastus' male descendants, so he took the throne of Argos on his return. To secure his hold, he married Aegialia, the daughter of the dead Aegialeus.

  Diomedes ruled Argos for more than five years and brought it wealth and stability. He was a skilled politician, and other rulers respected him.

  Calydon, his father's homeland, still held his attention. The sons of Agrius, led by Thersites, had thrown Oeneus into jail and set their own father on the throne. Diomedes attacked, seized the kingdom and restored his grandfather. He killed the traitors with three exceptions. Onchestus escaped to the Peloponnesus, Agrius killed himself, and Thersites survived.

  Oeneus later handed the kingdom to his son-in-law Andraemon and set out for Argos. In Arcadia, Thersites and Onchestus murdered him on the road. Diomedes could not find the killers, so he founded a city called Oenoe at the place where his grandfather was buried.

  Thersites reappears at Troy, hated by every Achaean except Diomedes, who did not mistreat him. Achilles killed Thersites with a single blow after Thersites mocked him for weeping over the dead Penthesileia. Diomedes alone wanted Achilles punished. Only his cousin Diomedes mourned Thersites, and the other leaders had to persuade the two mightiest Achaeans not to fight each other.

  Hyginus and Pseudo-Apollodorus count Diomedes among the suitors of Helen. Under the oath of Tyndareus, every suitor had sworn to defend whichever man she married. When Paris stole Menelaus' wife, Agamemnon summoned the oath-takers to sail from Aulis. Hesiod's list of suitors leaves Diomedes out, however, and the label may have been extrapolated from his place in the Catalogue of Ships. If Helen ruled Sparta with Menelaus for ten years before her abduction, Diomedes would have been only a child at her wedding.

  161314159

• 4. Athena's Champion

  ›

  Homer credits Diomedes with a fleet of 80 ships, third only to Agamemnon's 100 and Nestor's 90. Sthenelus drove his chariot and was probably his closest friend. Euryalus, another veteran of the campaign against Thebes, also fought under his command. Troops from Argos, Tiryns, Troezen and other cities marched behind him.

  He was the youngest of the Achaean kings, yet many scholars call him the most experienced, because he had fought more battles than the rest. Even old Nestor had never seen military work like the Theban war. Dares the Phrygian pictured him as "stocky, brave, dignified, and austere." Dares adds that he shouted loudly in battle and was hot-tempered, impatient and daring.

  The god Hephaestus made Diomedes' cuirass. Apart from Achilles, no other Achaean carried gear from the son of Hera. His round shield bore the mark of a boar, and his golden armor carried a boar crest on the breast. A mortal smith made that armor, but Athena blessed it and gave it to Tydeus, from whom it passed to Diomedes. His spear, unlike his father's sword, was not enchanted.

  Athena stood closer to Diomedes than to any other hero. She even drove his chariot once. In Book V she spoke to him in her true divine form, after granting him a special vision. In the Odyssey, by contrast, she always appears to Odysseus in disguise. Odysseus also had to pray for her help before a footrace, while Diomedes received it unasked.

  Book V opens with Athena putting valour into her champion's heart and making a stream of fire flare from his shield and helmet. When the Trojan Pandarus wounds him with an arrow, Diomedes prays for revenge. Athena offers a vision that lets him tell gods from men, and she asks him to wound Aphrodite if she enters the fight. She warns him to engage no other god.

  Aeneas and Pandarus then ride at him together. Sthenelus raises the alarm, and Diomedes orders him to steal the horses of Aeneas, descendants of immortal steeds that Zeus once gave King Tros, founder of Troy. Diomedes kills the bragging Pandarus with a spear throw. Unarmed, he picks up a huge stone and crushes the hip of Aeneas.

  Aphrodite covers her fainting son with her garment, but Diomedes strikes her, and she drops Aeneas. Apollo rescues him and sends the wounded goddess fleeing back to Olympus. Disregarding Athena's advice, Diomedes attacks Apollo three times before the god warns him not to match himself against immortals. Aphrodite complains to her mother, who reminds her that Heracles, now an Olympian, once wounded two Olympians as a human.

  Ares arrives next, urged on by Apollo. Diomedes recognizes the god of war and orders the Achaeans to fall back toward their ships. Athena finds him resting by his horses and says: "Diomedes most dear to my heart, do not fear this immortal or any other god for I will protect you." She throws Sthenelus out of the chariot, takes the reins and puts on the helmet of Hades, which makes her invisible even to gods. Ares sees only Diomedes and hurls a spear, which Athena catches. Diomedes throws his own, guided by Athena, and wounds Ares in the stomach. The god screams with the voice of ten thousand men and flees. Diomedes thus becomes the only human to wound two Olympians in a single day.

  Book VI shows how the Trojans now see him. Hector's brother Helenus calls him the mightiest of the Achaeans, and says: "his rage is beyond all bounds, and there is none can vie with him in prowess." The wife of Priam gathers the matrons at Athena's temple, offering the largest, fairest robe in Troy and twelve heifers if the goddess will break his spear. Athena does not grant it.

  For all this, Diomedes keeps to mortal limits. He retreats before Ares and gives way to Apollo. Patroclus refuses to yield when Apollo opposes him, and Achilles tries to fight the river Scamander. Readers of the epic often treat Diomedes as the model of traditional heroic values, a man who chases glory without being swallowed by the madness of battle rage.

  The funeral games for Patroclus in Book XXIII give him one more stage. He starts the chariot race in last place, because the lots were against him. Eumelus takes the lead until Apollo, out of spite, makes Diomedes drop his whip. Athena returns it, puts fresh strength into his horses and breaks the yoke of Eumelus, who is thrown and injured. Diomedes wins with the horses taken from Aeneas, and his prize is a woman skilled in all useful arts and a three-legged cauldron.

  He then fights Ajax in an armed sparring match, where the first blood wins. Ajax owns the biggest armour and the tallest shield, leaving only his neck and armpits exposed. Diomedes slips his spear above the shield and draws blood from the neck. The Achaean leaders fear that another blow would kill Ajax and stop the fight, and Diomedes takes the long sword as his prize. That contest is his final appearance in the Iliad.

  83435323

• 5. Voice of Counsel

  ›

  In Book IV, Agamemnon taunts Diomedes by calling him far inferior to his father Tydeus. Sthenelus is enraged and urges his friend to answer that they conquered Thebes and so bested their fathers. Diomedes instead says that urging the troops forward is a leader's duty, and that men of valour should shrug off such insults. When Agamemnon taunts Odysseus in the same way, Odysseus answers with anger.

  In Book VI, the Trojan Glaucus challenges Diomedes to single combat. Impressed by his noble bearing, Diomedes asks whether he is an immortal in disguise and says, "I will not fight any more immortals." Glaucus explains that he descends from Bellerophon, who killed the Chimaera and the Amazons. Oeneus once hosted Bellerophon, so Diomedes declares the two men friends, and they agree to trade armour. Diomedes gives bronze worth nine oxen for gold worth 100. The phrase "Diomedian swap" comes from this exchange.

  In Book VII, nine Achaeans step forward to fight Hector in single combat. As the lots are cast, the troops pray that the choice will fall on Ajax, on the son of Tydeus, or on Agamemnon. It falls on Ajax. Later the Trojan herald Idaeus offers to return everything Paris stole, plus more, keeping only Helen. Diomedes speaks first in the council: "Let there be no taking, neither treasure, nor yet Helen, for even a child may see that the doom of the Trojans is at hand." Everyone applauds, and Agamemnon declares it the answer of the Achaeans.

  Book VIII is the clearest test of his nerve. Zeus has forbidden the other gods to interfere and sends lightning at the Achaeans, and the great warriors flee, including both Ajaxes, Agamemnon, Idomeneus and Odysseus. Nestor is trapped when Paris wounds one of his horses. Diomedes shouts for Odysseus, who does not hear and keeps running. Left alone, he stands before Nestor, seats him in the driver's place and charges at Hector, killing Hector's driver Eniopeus.

  Zeus then hurls a thunderbolt in front of Diomedes' chariot, and Nestor advises retreat. Diomedes answers: "Hector will talk among the Trojans and say, 'The son of Tydeus fled before me to the ships.'" Nestor replies that no one will believe Hector if he calls Diomedes a coward. Diomedes thinks three times of turning back to fight, and each time Zeus thunders from heaven. Later, when Zeus sends an eagle as an omen, Diomedes is the first to read it and kills Agelaus in the next charge.

  In Book IX, Agamemnon weeps and proposes abandoning the war because Zeus favors the Trojans. Diomedes reminds him of the earlier insult and says that such talk is improper in a leader. He declares that Troy is fated to fall, and that he and Sthenelus will fight on even if every other Achaean goes home. The Achaeans cheer. Nestor praises his counsel, saying "You are still young." He then faults Diomedes for offering no alternative plan, and proposes gifts to win back Achilles.

  The embassy fails, and Achilles threatens to leave Troy for good. Diomedes scorns the gifts as food for Achilles' pride and says: "Let Achilles stay or leave if he wishes to, but he will fight when the time comes." In Book XV, Zeus tells Hera that he has already planned how to bring Achilles back, confirming the prediction. Diomedes also urges Agamemnon to lead the next day's battle himself, and the next morning begins with Agamemnon's own aristeia, the day's display of heroic deeds.

  Book XI brings a reversal. Diomedes hurls a spear at Hector's head, and although Apollo's helmet saves Hector's life, the force of the throw makes him swoon. Hector slips away into the crowd, and Diomedes, frustrated, calls him a dog. He had not been heard to speak so rudely to an enemy before. Paris then pins Diomedes' foot to the ground with an arrow. Diomedes answers that a coward like Paris can only inflict a light wound, and that his own weapon leaves widows and fatherless children. With Odysseus covering him, he pulls out the arrow and leaves the field, unable to fight with a limp.

  In Book XIV, the wounded Agamemnon, Odysseus and Diomedes consult with Nestor as the Trojans near the ships. Agamemnon asks for better counsel from anyone, old or young, and Diomedes steps forward, apologizing for speaking as the youngest. His advice is to go to the fight despite their wounds, stay out of spear range and spur on the men who have been holding back. All approve. Agamemnon had asked for a wiser voice, and the youngest king in the tent supplied it.

  3343235

• 6. Odysseus and Diomedes

  ›

  At Aulis, where the Achaean leaders gathered, Diomedes met Odysseus and began a partnership of shared adventures. Both men were favorites of Athena, and each carried a trait of the goddess. Odysseus had her wisdom and cunning, Diomedes her courage and skill in battle, though neither was wholly without the other's gift.

  Agamemnon faced a hard choice there. To sail, he had to sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia to Artemis, or else resign as high commander. He chose the sacrifice, and Odysseus carried out the order by luring Iphigenia from Mycenae to Aulis, where a murder disguised as a wedding awaited her. According to Hyginus, Diomedes went with Odysseus, making it their first mission together. Pseudo-Apollodorus sends Odysseus and Talthybius instead, and Euripides has neither of them make the trip.

  The death of Palamedes darkens the pair's record. Palamedes had exposed Odysseus in Ithaca for feigning insanity, forcing him to honor his oath and join the alliance. At Troy, one story has Odysseus drown him while he was fishing. Another says Palamedes advised the Achaeans to go home, and Odysseus accused him of treason with forged evidence and a fake witness, so that he was stoned to death.

  Some say that both Diomedes and Odysseus drowned him. Another version has them lower him into a well on the pretext of a hidden treasure and stone him there. Others hold that Diomedes guessed the plot but did not defend Palamedes, since Odysseus was essential to the fall of Troy.

  In Book X of the Iliad, the council wakes Diomedes, who is found outside his tent in full armour, sleeping on an ox skin. When Agamemnon asks for a volunteer to spy on the Trojans, Diomedes steps forward. He asks for a companion, saying: "When two men are together, one of them may see some opportunity which the other has not caught sight of." He picks Odysseus, even though Odysseus had run from the battlefield that very day, and praises his bravery in front of the others.

  Across the plain, Hector had found no volunteer to spy on the Achaeans until Dolon, a good runner, accepted a reward sealed by a false oath. Diomedes and Odysseus lie among the corpses until Dolon passes, then chase him. Dolon is the faster runner, but Athena puts fresh strength into Diomedes, who throws a spear over Dolon's shoulder and orders him to stop. Dolon reveals that Hector's council meets by the monument of Ilus, that only the Trojans keep watchfires, and that the allies sleep. The Thracians are most exposed, camped apart under King Rhesus, whose horses are "whiter than snow and fleeter than any wind that blows."

  Dolon hopes to be taken prisoner. Diomedes refuses, saying that a freed Dolon might return as a spy or fight them openly, and cuts off his head before he can plead. The pair hang the spoils on a tamarisk tree in honor of Athena and go to the Thracians. Diomedes kills Rhesus and twelve of his soldiers in their beds while Odysseus gathers up the horses. Diomedes is still wondering whom to kill next when Athena tells him to retire, lest another god warn the Trojans.

  The raid mattered beyond the dead. One tradition holds that Troy could not fall while the horses of Rhesus fed on its plains. Another says Troy was safe if they ever drank from the river Scamander. Pindar's version has Hera send the two to kill Rhesus because he was fighting too well. In Virgil and Servius, an oracle promised Rhesus invincibility after he and his horses drank from the river. In each version, the killing helped the Achaeans, and Diomedes received the horses. Some scholars add that the leaderless Thracians went home.

  After Achilles died, a prophecy required his son Neoptolemus to fight before Troy could fall. According to Quintus Smyrnaeus, Odysseus and Diomedes went to Scyros to fetch him. The seer Calchas then declared that the bow of Heracles, and Philoctetes with it, were needed. The Achaeans had abandoned Philoctetes on Lemnos because of the vile odour from a snakebite, and he hated Odysseus, Agamemnon and Menelaus. Diomedes and Odysseus sailed there and took the bow by a trick. According to the Little Iliad, Odysseus wanted to sail home with the bow, but Diomedes refused to leave Philoctetes behind. Heracles or Athena persuaded Philoctetes to come, and he used the bow to kill Paris.

  Another prophecy, revealed by the captured Helenus, said that Troy would stand as long as the Palladium, an image of Athena, remained inside its walls. Odysseus, some say, entered the city by night disguised as a beggar, and Helen recognized him and told him where the statue lay. Diomedes climbed the wall and followed. Together they killed several guards and one or more priests and took the Palladium "with their bloodstained hands." Diomedes is generally regarded as the one who carried it to the ships.

  On the way back, according to the Little Iliad, Odysseus raised his sword to stab Diomedes in the back and claim the prize for himself. Diomedes saw the gleam of the blade in the moonlight, turned, seized the sword and tied Odysseus' hands. He drove him forward, beating his back with the flat of the blade. He spared him only because Odysseus was needed to destroy Troy. From this scene comes the Greek proverb "Diomedes' necessity," for people who act against their inclination for the greater good. The French sculptor Pierre-Jules Cavelier showed the scene in an 1842 plaster sculpture.

  Diomedes took the Palladium with him when he left Troy, but accounts of where it ended up differ. Plutarch says it reached Argos, and that his descendant Ergiaeus later carried it off to Sparta with the help of the Laconian Leagrus. Pausanias says Demophon robbed Diomedes of it in Attica, where he had landed one night without knowing where he was.

  1024253845

• 7. Return From Troy

  ›

  The wooden horse was the stratagem of Odysseus, and Diomedes was one of the warriors hidden inside it. Once in the city, he killed many Trojans. Quintus Smyrnaeus tells of an elderly man named Ilioneus who begged for mercy, arguing that killing an old man brings little renown. Diomedes held back his sword long enough to let him speak. Then he answered, "Old man, I look to attain to honored age; but while my Strength yet exists, not a single foe will escape me with life." He killed Ilioneus.

  Other victims that night included Coroebus, who had come to Troy hoping to win Cassandra, along with Eurydamas and Eurycoon. The Cypria says Polyxena died of wounds from Odysseus and Diomedes during the capture.

  Cassandra, the daughter of Priam and Hecuba, clung to the statue of Athena during the sack, and the Lesser Ajax raped her. Odysseus urged the Achaean leaders to stone Ajax and turn aside the goddess's anger, but they refused, since Ajax himself had clung to the same statue. Their failure to punish the sacrilege earned them Athena's wrath. She caused a quarrel between Agamemnon and Menelaus about the voyage home, and Agamemnon stayed behind to appease her.

  Diomedes and Nestor talked it over and decided to leave at once, taking their vast armies. Athena then asked Poseidon to send a violent storm against most of the other Achaean ships. Diomedes arrived at Argos only four days after leaving Troy. The other Achaeans suffered on their returns, the Greeks called nostoi, because each had committed some atrocity. His safe return therefore implies that the gods still favored him.

  The homecoming itself was bitter. Oeax, the brother of Palamedes, went to Argos and told Aegialia, truly or falsely, that her husband was bringing back a woman he preferred to her. Others say that Palamedes' father Nauplius persuaded her to take a lover, Cometes, the son of Sthenelus. Still others blame Aphrodite, who had never forgotten the Argive spear that pierced her flesh at Troy and helped Aegialia find many lovers. The sources name Hippolytus, Cometes and Cyllabarus.

  In any version, Aegialia and the Argives kept Diomedes out of the city. Or, if he did enter, he had to take sanctuary at the altar of Hera and flee by night with his companions. Cometes was briefly king in his absence, but the rightful heir, Cyanippus, the son of Aegialeus, quickly replaced him.

  Some say a storm also drove Diomedes to Libya, where King Lycus imprisoned him and planned to sacrifice him to Ares. The king's daughter Callirrhoe freed him from his bonds. Diomedes sailed away without any acknowledgment, and she hanged herself in grief.

  4748462638

• 8. Founder in Italy

  ›

  King Daunus of the Daunians welcomed Diomedes, who had come from Aetolia to Daunia, in Apulia. Daunus was honored to host the great warrior and asked for help against the Messapians. In return he offered a share of the land and marriage to his daughter. Diomedes agreed, drew up his men and routed the Messapians. He assigned the conquered land to his followers, the Dorians. He also defeated two nations, the Monadi and the Dardi, and took the cities of Apina and Trica.

  Diomedes built the city of Argyrippa, and there he once hosted Aeneas. Aeneas asked for the Palladium to be returned. An oracle had told Diomedes to give it to a Trojan so that his disasters would end, and he handed it over. Diomedes later married Daunus' daughter Euippe, and they had two sons named Diomedes and Amphinomus.

  Greeks and Romans credited him with founding a long list of settlements in southern Italy. They included Argyrippa, also called Arpi, Aequum Tuticum, Beneventum, Brundusium, Canusium, Venafrum, Salapia, Spina and Garganum. The list continues with Sipus, Ankon, Histonium, Adria and Aphrodisia, also called Venusia. He founded Aphrodisia as a peace offering to the goddess he had wounded, and he included temples in her honor.

  Virgil's Aeneid describes the beauty and prosperity of his kingdom. When Turnus and Aeneas went to war, Turnus sent messengers to ask Diomedes for help against the Trojans. One of them, Venulus, recalls finding him laying the foundations of Argyrippa. Diomedes refused, saying he had fought enough Trojans in his lifetime and that peace with Aeneas was wiser. He told them his purpose in Italy was to live in peace.

  He also gave a grim account of himself. As punishment for his part at Troy, he said, he never reached his fatherland of Argos and never saw his beloved wife again. Birds that were once his companions pursued him and his soldiers, crying out wherever they landed, even on the sea cliffs. Ovid tells it differently. In his version, the exiled Diomedes was raising walls with the favor of Daunus, his new father-in-law, and the city became Luceria rather than Argyrippa.

  Wherever he went, Diomedes spread the worship of gods and heroes. In and near Argos he had temples of Athena built. His armour was kept in a temple of Athena at Luceria in Apulia, and a gold chain of his was displayed in a temple of Artemis in Peucetia. At Troezene he founded a temple of Apollo Epibaterius and instituted the Pythian games there.

  Hero cults became common from the start of the 8th century BCE, and they were widespread in Greek cities around the Mediterranean by the last quarter of that century. Diomedes' cults lay chiefly in Cyprus, Metapontum and along the Adriatic coast. Most of the archaeological evidence comes from the Adriatic, where the cult spread because of Achaean migration. The most distinctive votive offerings were found on the island of Palagruža. Strabo says offerings in the Daunian temple of Athena at Luceria were addressed specifically to Diomedes.

  At Argos, his native place, the festival of Athena included a procession in which his shield was carried through the streets as a relic alongside the Palladium. His statue was washed in the river Inachus. The Heneti sacrificed a white horse to him in special groves where wild animals grew tame. Even so, the cult was never widespread. Heracles and Theseus held a far more prominent place in the Greek world, because of the benefits they were thought to grant their followers.

  Strabo records four traditions about how Diomedes' life ended in Italy. In the first, he was digging a canal to the sea at the city of Urium when he was summoned home to Argos. He left his work half-finished and died there. In the second, he stayed at Urium until the end of his life. In the third, he vanished on Diomedea, an uninhabited island in the Adriatic named for him, where shearwaters, once his companions, live. The Heneti tell the fourth, in which he stayed in their country and underwent a mysterious apotheosis. The first two hint at divinity only through a later hero cult, while the other two clearly claim immortality.

  Birds appear in other versions of the story. One legend says that when he died the albatrosses gathered and sang their normal call. Others say his companions were turned into birds. A further story says a shipwreck stranded his men on an island in the Adriatic, where Aeneas killed Diomedes and the men became birds, living beside a shrine to their king and attacking foreigners. On San Nicola Island in the Tremiti Archipelago stands a tomb from the Hellenic period called Diomedes's Tomb. Legend says Venus saw his men weeping and turned them into birds called Diomedee, to guard the grave. In Fellini's film 8½, a cardinal tells this story to the actor Marcello Mastroianni.

  According to post-Homeric stories, Athena gave Diomedes the immortality she had withheld from his father. Pindar mentions his deification in Nemean X: "the golden-haired, gray-eyed goddess made Diomedes an immortal god." A scholiast on that poem says Diomedes married Hermione, the only daughter of Menelaus and Helen, and now lives among the Dioscuri as a god, while also honored at Metapontum and Thurii. Statues of him stood at Argyripa, Metapontum, Thurii and other places, and a temple called The Timavo was consecrated to him on the Adriatic. A drinking song to Harmodius, one of the famous tyrannicides of Athens, places Diomedes in the Islands of the Blessed alongside Achilles and Harmodius.

  Dante gave him a very different fate. In the Inferno, Diomedes burns in the Eighth Circle of Hell, where the counsellors of fraud are held for eternity in sheets of flame. His offenses are advising the theft of the Palladium and the stratagem of the Trojan Horse. Odysseus shares the punishment.

  Medieval writers gave him yet another role in the legend of Troilus and Cressida. When Cressida is sent to the Greek camp to join her traitorous father, Diomedes becomes her new lover. In Shakespeare's play Troilus and Cressida, he is often seen fighting Troilus over her.

  724546456