454-456. mvp-comment-180-1 10.454–456 Diomedes kills Dolon before Dolon can touch him in a gesture of supplication. On supplication in Homeric epic, see Crotty 1994, Wilson 2002, and Naiden 2006. According to these analyses of the act of supplication, Dolon’s supplication begins at 10.378–381 with his offer of ransom ( apoina) if he can be taken alive (see also our comments at 10.378–381). At that point, Odysseus and Diomedes have grabbed Dolon’s hands, so that he is unable to make this clasping gesture. (Such a scene is visualized by the Dokimasia painter on a kylix cup from c. 480 BCE [St. Petersburg, Hermitage B.1539], with Dolon pictured in his wolf skin.) According to Naiden’s arguments, the person being supplicated always has the freedom to reject the request, as Diomedes does here (see Naiden 2006:181 for this particular example of supplication).

455-457. mvp-comment-181-1 10.455–457 Beheading the enemy, as gruesome or repulsive as it may seem to a modern audience, does occur several times in the Homeric epics, either as the method of killing or as an act carried out after killing, and in most cases, it is the Achaeans who do it. In Iliad 13, the two Ajaxes take the corpse of the Trojan Imbrios, a husband of one of Priam’s illegitimate daughters. They strip the corpse of his armor, and Ajax, son of Oileus, cuts off Imbrios’ head and throws it so that it ends up at Hektor’s feet ( Iliad 13.201–205). Oilean Ajax, the rapist of Kassandra, is known to commit war atrocities during the sack of Troy, but this beheading happens during the course of regular, daytime battle. Achilles beheads Deukalion at Iliad 20.481–483 after pinning his arm with a spear (in other words, Deukalion cannot fight back at that moment). Although Achilles is acting beyond normal human boundaries at this point in his story, he is also depicted in two sixth-century vase paintings as beheading Troilos (see Gantz 1993:600), an incident much earlier in the war, and one that also involves ambush. Agamemnon beheads Köon over the body of his brother Iphidamas ( τοῖο δ’ ἐπ’ Ἰφιδάμαντι κάρη ἀπέκοψε παραστάς, Iliad 11.261) without hesitation. Hektor plans to behead Patroklos’ corpse after he strips it ( Iliad 17.126). In a series of back-and-forth killings with vaunting afterwards, Penelos kills Ilioneus, a Trojan introduced as he dies as the beloved of Hermes and an only child of a wealthy man. Penelos’ spear hits Ilioneus in the eyesocket, and then Penelos cuts off Ilioneus’ head with his sword and holds it up, helmet still on and spear still in eyesocket, to show it to the Trojans ( Iliad 14.493–507). All of these examples come from the battle that rages on the day following this night, when the fighting is most intense and the stakes at their highest for the Achaeans.

455-457. mvp-comment-181-2 The closest parallel to the beheading of Dolon in terms of language and situation, however, occurs during Odysseus’ ambush of the suitors. During the slaughter in Odysseus’ home, Leiodes supplicates Odysseus, but Odysseus kills him anyway ( Odyssey 22.310–329). In both cases, then, there is an attempted supplication, and a verbal response followed by a swift beheading. As Odysseus responds to Leiodes’ arguments for why he should be spared, Odysseus gives him the same fierce look ( Odyssey 22.320) that Diomedes gives Dolon here (see 10.446). In both cases the killer drives a sword through the victim’s neck ( αὐχένα μέσσον ἔλασσε, Iliad 10.455, Odyssey 22.328), and the graphic detail of the victim’s head still talking as it mixes with the dust is included ( Iliad 10.457 = Odyssey 22.329). We may certainly question how these actions inform the character of the killers and the action of the episode, but we must also recognize that beheading is “Homeric” in the sense that the Iliad and Odyssey represent it as happening in the intensity of battle and of ambush.

456. mvp-comment-182-1 10.456 φασγάνῳ ἀΐξας This formula is used to describe a particular cutting motion with the sword. ἀίσσω generally refers to any quick motion, but we can see from the few other uses of this phrase in the Iliad that it means to use the sword to cut rather than to stab. At Iliad 5.81, Eurypylos flashes his sword at Hypsenor and cuts off his arm. In Iliad 8, one of Nestor’s horses has been struck with an arrow as Nestor is trying to retreat from the battlefield. Nestor uses his sword at Iliad 8.88 (there the present participle ἀίσσων is used instead of the aorist participle) to cut the harness straps from that horse in his attempt to escape (compare the use of ἀΐξας alone for cutting a horse loose at Iliad 16.474). Thus we should imagine this motion to be quick, with the edge of the sword positioned to cut through whatever it is aimed at. The one use of the phrase in the Odyssey (at 22.98) occurs when Telemakhos is afraid that one of the suitors will attack him in this way if he stops to remove his spear from one of his victims during the battle with the suitors; it gives no other indications about what the motion is. As in all of the cases in the Iliad, however, the example from the Odyssey does show that this phrase is used in a line initial position, enjambed with the previous line. That consistent position gives us an important clue as to how a singer would use this phrase in performance.

456. mvp-comment-182-2 10.456 ἀπὸ δ᾽ ἄμφω κέρσε τένοντε Compare the same phrase at Iliad 14.466, where a spear thrown by Telamonian Ajax cuts through the top vertebra of Arkhelokhos, effectively beheading him.

458-459. mvp-comment-183-1 10.458–459 If we compare these lines depicting the stripping of Dolon’s weapons and “armor” (the wolf skin) to the arming scene at 10.333–335 where he put them on, we find that different epithets or adjectives and even names of the items are used here. Such differences suggest that compositionally the theme of stripping armor employs different combinations of formulas to repesent the same items described in arming scenes. The ambush-related items nevertheless remain prominent: the headgear made of animal hide, the animal skin, and the bow. Holoka (1983:9) calls this stripping of armor “a near parody of standard battlefield practice” particularly because of the “paltry panoply” of the wolf skin, spear, and bow. Yet it is precisely this panoply that will indicate that Diomedes and Odysseus have ambushed an ambusher.

459. mvp-comment-184-1 10.459 δόρυ μακρόν As Sherratt 1990:811 points out, the single long thrusting spear (as opposed to lighter, smaller, paired throwing spears) is a weapon “most at home in the 13th century or considerably earlier.” Achilles’ Pelian ash spear is likewise of this earlier kind, and Hektor’s spear, which is eleven cubits long (e.g. Iliad 6.319), may be as well. See above on 10.263–264 for more on the way that such artifacts can reveal archaeological layers in the text.

460-464. mvp-comment-185-1 10.460–464 In the prayers to Athena at the outset of the mission, both Odysseus and Diomedes emphasize their personal relationships with Athena in asking for her help and protection (see commentary on 10.275 and 10.291). In this address to the goddess, that request is renewed, but their initial success in capturing and killing Dolon is associated with the goddess as well. Athena’s prominent role not only here but also in the Odyssey reveals her to be a goddess of ambush. At Odyssey 20.44–51, she tells Odysseus that, with her on his side, they could take far more men than the suitors and drive away their livestock, a description that combines the ambush narrative pattern of one or two killing many with that of a cattle raid. Odysseus similarly states earlier that, with Athena on his side, he could fight three hundred suitors ( Odyssey 13.389–391). Proklos’ summary of the epic Little Iliad describes the building of the wooden horse as “according to Athena’s plan of action” ( κατ’ Ἀθηνᾶς προαίρεσιν), indicating that she is the mastermind of that ultimate ambush at Troy. On the shield of Achilles ( Iliad 18.516), Athena and Ares together lead an ambush from the city at war. And it is of course Athena who warns Telemakhos about his impending ambush by the suitors ( Odyssey 15.28). Stagakis (1987–88:70) examines the language here in detail and concludes that this passage does “not indicate that the spoils were vowed or dedicated to Athena,” but the technicalities of the religious nature of what is or is not happening here do not diminish the association between Athena and ambush.

465-466. mvp-comment-186-1 10.465–466 Gernet (1936:192–196) and Davidson (1979:64) both connect the hanging of the wolf skin in a tree with initiation rituals in which the initiate must remove his clothes, hang them on a tree, and live “like a wolf” for his period of separation. We have seen other hints that ambushes and night raids are associated especially with young men, those at the right age for such an initiation (Odysseus would be an exception, of course): see commentary on 10.259. For more on the wolf skin, see commentary on 10.334.

466-468. mvp-comment-187-1 10.466–468 We see here another example of details appropriate to nocturnal actions. Odysseus and Diomedes could leave these spoils behind without worrying that someone else will take them during the night; instead, the concern is that they may not be able to find them again in the darkness, hence the need to make a sign conspicuously or clearly ( δέελον δ᾽ ἐπι σήματ᾽ ἔθηκε, 10.466). Odysseus creates such a sign by tying the branches of the tamarisk tree (a large, dense, shrub-like tree) to the reeds below. We will see later, of course, that this sign works, when Odysseus and Diomedes stop and pick these spoils up on their return (10.526–529). This sort of planning is necessary in the dark.

466-468. mvp-comment-187-2 The tamarisk grows often near water, and the reeds mentioned here also suggest a wetland environment, perhaps the bank of a river. We see these characteristics of the plant in its other appearances in the Iliad: Achilles leans his spear against a tamarisk before he leaps into the Xanthos river to kill the Trojans he has forced into it ( Iliad 21.18) and later, when Hephaistos sets the corpses in the river on fire, tamarisks are among the plants listed as burning along the river ( Iliad 21.350). The denseness of the plant is seen at Iliad 6.39, when the horses of Adrestos become tangled in a tamarisk and his chariot is broken, setting the horses loose. We have seen that a woody or marshy area—that is, one filled with plants—is often chosen for an ambush (see “The Poetics of Ambush”), and the tamarisk itself may also have a particular association with ambush. In the Homeric Hymn to Hermes, the god, who is called “a robber, driver of cattle” ( ληϊστῆρ’, ἐλατῆρα βοῶν, Homeric Hymn to Hermes 14) and “a spy at night” ( νυκτὸς ὀπωπητῆρα, Homeric Hymn to Hermes 15), among other epithets, is himself associated with the night and the ambush theme, as we also see in his role in guiding Priam during Priam’s infiltration of the Achaean camp in Iliad 24 (see “The Poetics of Ambush” and above on 10.1ff. for fuller discussion). According to the hymn, on the evening of the day he is born, Hermes steals the cattle of Apollo (see “The Poetics of Ambush” also for how cattle rustling is part of the larger ambush theme). When Hermes is driving these cattle at night, he stops and makes himself sandals, weaving together tamarisk and myrtle branches ( συμμίσγων μυρίκας καὶ μυρσινοειδέας ὄζους, Homeric Hymn to Hermes 81). Odysseus ties together tamarisk and reeds here in another kind of weaving of this plant, accompanying another night ambush. Schnapp-Gourbeillon (1981:115) suggests that this plant has religious associations (see also Wathelet 1989:221n35).

468. mvp-comment-188-1 10.468 θοὴν διὰ νύκτα μέλαιναν See on 10.394 for this formula.

469. mvp-comment-189-1 10.469 τὼ δὲ βάτην προτέρω For the use of the dual for a pair of ambushers working together, see on 10.254.

471-475. mvp-comment-190-1 10.471–475 The sleeping arrangements of the Thracians seem quite orderly from this description, even though they are exhausted before falling asleep (see also the following note). One implication of this orderliness seems to be that the only arrangement not made was setting up a guard, and this lack results in their being vulnerable to ambush. Within the Achaean camp, the sleeping arrangements of Nestor (10.74–79) and Diomedes (10.150–156) are similarly detailed, suggesting that such descriptions are part of the night ambush theme. We see that the details of the scene are appropriate to each hero or group, similar to the way arming scenes are adapted for each hero.

471. mvp-comment-191-1 10.471 οἱ δ᾽ εὗδον καμάτῳ ἁδηκότες See note on 10.98 for more on καμάτῳ ἀδηκότες. There, we saw that this formula is especially connected to night themes, and that the weariness can be from either fighting all day or traveling, as we saw in the example from Odyssey 12. Since we are dealing here with a version of the Rhesos myth in which he has not yet fought at Troy—Dolon has to tell Diomedes and Odysseus of his presence since he is “newly arrived” (10.434)— the formula seems to be used for their deep sleep after traveling that day to Troy. For more on the versions of the Rhesos myth in which he fought for one day at Troy, see the Rhesos section of our essay “Tradition and Reception.”

482. mvp-comment-192-1 10.482 τῷ δ᾽ ἔμπνευσε μένος γλαυκῶπις Ἀθήνη Athena breathes menos ‘force’ into Diomedes as he starts the slaughter. A similar expression is used for Apollo breathing menos into Hektor so that he may return to battle ( ὣς εἰπὼν ἔμπνευσε μένος μέγα ποιμένι λαῶν, Iliad 15.262; Apollo does so at Zeus’ suggestion, see Iliad 15.60), and he does the same for Aeneas later ( Iliad 20.110). We also see a connection between menos and breathing at Iliad 3.8, where the Achaeans breathe menos as they enter battle. During Diomedes’ aristeia in the polemos, Athena tells him that she has put menos into his chest, the kind of menos his father used to have ( Iliad 5.124–126). Thus this “inspiration” happens between gods and their favorites, and we find in this episode in Book 10 a pattern of opposition between Athena and Apollo (we can compare their direct rivalry in Iliad 7). In the Rhesos, Athena uses speech instead to incite ambush, as she prompts Diomedes and Odysseus to attack Rhesos and the Thracians though they are ready to turn back to their own camp ( Rhesos 594–625; see also Fantuzzi 2006b:163–170).

485-488. mvp-comment-193-1 10.485–488 This compressed lion simile describing Diomedes’ slaughter of the Thracians calls our attention to the lion similes elsewhere in the Iliad that happen explicitly at night. The shepherdless flocks in this simile correspond well to the Thracians who sleep unguarded, and the absence of a shepherd suggests that, like Diomedes, the lion is attacking at night. To support this argument, we can compare the slightly longer simile at Iliad 15.323–326, where the attackers also find the herds or flocks unguarded:

In this simile, two wild beasts, which Lonsdale (1990:66, 131) identifies as lions, attack. Important details here include the time, the dead of night, and the lack of a shepherd, just as in 10.485. The sudden appearance of the lions ( ἐλθόντ’ ἐξαπίνης) is likewise similar to ambush language, in which the attacker appears out of the darkness or his hiding place to surprise his victims (compare 10.496–497 below for how the poetic language represents such a sudden appearance of an ambusher). Because this simile has so much in common with the one at 10.485–488, we can draw the inference that the simile of Diomedes’ attack is also imagined to be happening in the dead of night, but that compression has left that detail implicit. We can compare also Iliad 12.299–308, where Sarpedon is compared to a lion trying to get inside the πυκινὸν δόμον ( Iliad 12.301) of the sheep—that attack is also likely to be taking place at night, when the sheep are in their pen. See 10.5–9 for more on the relation of the adjective pukinos to the ambush theme. The lion attacks because he is hungry, but also because his audacious spirit bids him to: κέλεται δέ ἑ θυμὸς ἀγήνωρ, Iliad 12.300. Compare the “audacious spirit” that motivates both Diomedes (10.220) and Dolon (10.319) to undertake the spying missions.

485-488. mvp-comment-193-2 We see lions attacking flocks explicitly at night in still other similes, such as at Iliad 11.172–178, where the Trojans are compared to cattle when a lion has panicked the whole herd. In that simile, similar to Iliad 15.324, the time, the dead of night, is indicated by the phrase ἐν νυκτὸς ἀμολγῷ ( Iliad 11.173; see also Tsagalis 2008:153–187 for more on this phrase and what he sees as its Indo-European imagery, connected to cattle, the sun, and danger), and the fear and confusion of the herd animals is a central feature ( ἐφόβησε, Iliad 11.173), while death comes to one in particular ( Iliad 11.174–176). This fear and confusion is replayed on the battlefield as Agamemnon routs the Trojans, but the simile itself has the feeling of an ambush. Lonsdale (1990:118–122) has also argued that lion and cattle similes like this one adapt the epic theme of the cattle raid. See “The Poetics of Ambush” for the cattle raid as part of the ambush theme.

485-488. mvp-comment-193-3 In two of the similes of lions attacking at night, similes that share much of the same formulaic language, the lion is unsuccessful because of the watchfulness of the men and dogs who guard them ( Iliad 11.546–557 and Iliad 17.655–666). In these examples, we see that they must keep watch all night long ( πάννυχοι ἐγρήσσοντες, Iliad 11.551 and Iliad 17.660), and it is only at dawn that the lion finally withdraws ( Iliad 11.555 and Iliad 17.664). These lions, who go away empty-handed, provide a contrast to what we see depicted at 10.485–488, where the lack of a shepherd watching the herd enables the lion to successfully attack: in the simile world, a steadfast night watch can counteract ambush tactics. We can also hearken back to the watchdog simile at 10.180–189 and see that comparison as an indication both that the wakeful and watchful Achaean guard is indeed the kind needed on this dangerous night and that it is a mistake on the part of the Thracians to fall asleep without a guard to watch over them. Lion similes, so common in the narration of fighting in the polemos, also have affinities with the ambush theme, and a lion attacking at night should especially be seen in this light. That lion similes work for both themes can also be taken as another indication that the two types of warfare are not diametrically opposed, just as we have seen warriors such as Diomedes himself, but also Achilles, who excel at both. See also Schnapp-Gourbeillon 1981:104–131 for her extended discussion of Diomedes the lion in Iliad 10.

488. mvp-comment-194-1 10.488 δυώδεκ᾽( α) Gernet (1936:200) argues that twelve victims is a number with ritual significance, and we can compare the sacrifices of twelve cows ( Iliad 6.93 = 6.274 = 6.308) and twelve sheep ( Odyssey 8.59), as well as the twelve Trojan youths Achilles sacrifices on Patroklos’ pyre ( Iliad 21.27–28, Iliad 23.175). Germain (1954:17–18) notes that in the Iliad twelve is a number used for enemies killed and similarly relates that usage to its use as a number of sacrificial victims.

488. mvp-comment-194-2 10.488 πολύμητις Ὀδυσσεύς See above on 10.148 for this epithet of Odysseus.

495. mvp-comment-195-1 10.495 τρισκαιδέκατον The number thirteen seems to be almost a “round number” or to have a completing or capping aspect to it in Homeric diction. Just as the most important victim, Rhesos, is thirteenth, Alkinoos counts himself as the thirteenth basileus among the Phaeacians ( Odyssey 8.390–391). Similarly, when Odysseus chooses men for the mission to investigate further the land of the Cyclopes, he chooses twelve, counting himself as thirteenth, although the number itself is not cited there ( Odyssey 9.195–196). Thirteen also seems to round off or cap lengths of time, such as the thirteen months that Ares is held bound in chains by Otos and Ephialtes before Hermes rescues and frees him ( Iliad 5.387). It is on the thirteenth day that Odysseus and his crew leave Crete after being trapped there by a north wind ( Odyssey 19.202). When Odysseus recounts to Laertes the gardens his father had promised him as a young man (as part of proving his identity to him), the numbers are all what we would consider round (ten apple trees, forty fig trees, fifty vines), but also include thirteen pear trees ( Odyssey 24.340). Perhaps the completing aspect is related to the lunar calendar, the year coming round in the thirteenth moon. Germain (1954:10) includes thirteen among numbers that are “presque fantomatiques.”

497. mvp-comment-196-1 10.497 This line was omitted by Zenodotus and Aristophanes, according to the A scholia, and athetized (but therefore included) by Aristarchus. Papyri such as p425 and the medieval manuscript tradition do include it. Objections have been made to the accusative τὴν νύκτ’, which would more often mean ‘all night long’ than ‘on that night’, as the sense seems to demand. Indeed, according to Allen, the tenth-century Laurentian manuscript (D) has τῇ νύκτ’, seemingly correcting the problem. But Fenik finds another parallel and concludes that the accusative can have the sense of “time when” (Fenik 1964:49). What has been less well understood is the equation this line makes between Diomedes and the bad dream standing at the head of Rhesos. We discuss this use of language in detail in our essay “The Poetics of Ambush” (pp. 68–69). In brief, the syntax has Homeric parallels in other ambush situations and seems to replicate the emergence of an ambusher in the dark. As Fenik (1964:51–52) has argued, with the parallel of the charioteer’s nightmare in the tragedy Rhesos, a dream may have been part of the Rhesos tradition, and we may have a very compressed allusion to it in 10.496. That dream, alluded to, then becomes reality in the figure of Diomedes.

497. mvp-comment-196-2 10.497 διὰ μῆτιν Ἀθήνης This phrase has been considered problematic by ancient and modern critics alike. A comment in the Venetus A scholia objects that the ambush of Rhesos is happening through the information given by Dolon rather than Athena’s plan. Fenik (1964:52–54) argues that these words “suit perfectly well the non-Iliadic versions” of events, those suggested by the scholia on 10.435 (see our commentary on that line) and that seen in the tragedy Rhesos, in which Athena has a more direct role in instigating the attack on Rhesos. We have seen, however, both that mētis is thematically central to ambush (see commentary on 10.19 and “The Poetics of Ambush”) and that Athena is associated with ambush tactics (see commentary on 10.460–464). Thus this phrase can be understood not literally but thematically. That is, the very fact that this is an ambush accounts for how Diomedes stands over Rhesos “through the scheme of Athena.” It need not be explained by means of another version in which Athena directly sent the Achaeans against Rhesos, even though we know such versions existed at some point in the tradition.

498. mvp-comment-197-1 10.498 ὁ τλήμων Ὀδυσεὺς For more on this epithet for Odysseus (and the whole phrase), see above on 10.231 and 10.248. Like πολύτλας, τλήμων is a distinctive epithet of Odysseus (see Parry MHV 92). As a traditional epithet, it describes Odysseus within the tradition as a whole. As a supreme ambusher both here and in other episodes, including his own epic, his endurance is a key characteristic.

500-501. mvp-comment-198-1 10.500–501 Diomedes specifically chooses Odysseus as his ambush partner for his noos, his ability to perceive important things (see commentary on 10.224–226 and 10.247), and we have seen that Odysseus does just that earlier in the episode, when he is the first to notice Dolon (see commentary on 10.339). So why does he not notice the whip, which seems to be apparent ( φαεινήν)? Is this detail an indication that Odysseus simply ignored the chariot altogether (see below on 10.503 and 10.513–514)? Does it reflect the hurried nature of the ambush attack: even a perceptive warrior like Odysseus may simply use what is nearest at hand? Or does the theme call for an employment of the bow he brought on the mission? (On the bow and the connection between archery and the ambush theme, see “The Poetics of Ambush.”) It is difficult to know if any or all of these possible factors lie behind this detail because we have such limited evidence for the ambush theme, but it does create a vivid visual image of the “getaway” that begins here.