Characters
- Diomedes — night spy; killer of Dolon and of Rhesus’s company
- Dolon — Trojan scout; betrayed his side under threat; slain
- Eumedes — father of Dolon (herald)
- Hector — sends Dolon; offered Achilles’ horses as reward
- Hippocoon — Rhesus’s kinsman who raises the alarm
- Meriones — lend gear (helmet, weapons) in the Homeric arming
- Nestor — proposes the reconnaissance
- Odysseus — night spy; interrogator of Dolon; stealer of Rhesus’s horses
- People of Crisa — favors the raiders; calls them back in time
- Rhesus — Thracian king, new ally; killed in his sleep
- Thyestes — initiates the sleepless council
Places
- Achaean camp by the ships — council and return
- Mount Pangaeum — homeland of Rhesus (offstage origin)
- Sea by the ships — ritual washing after the raid
- Space between the camps — capture of Dolon
- Trojan — Dolon’s start; Thracian bivouac
Themes
Narrative
Agamemnon could not sleep for fear of Hector’s fires. He rose, woke Menelaus, Nestor, Odysseus, and Diomedes; the chiefs gathered in council. Nestor proposed a spy mission into the Trojan camp. Diomedes volunteered and chose Odysseus as partner. Armed in borrowed gear—Diomedes with a plain helmet, Odysseus with a bow and a cap of leather and boar’s tusks—they set out through the night.
On the Trojan side Hector likewise called for a volunteer to scout the Achaean ships. Dolon, son of Eumedes, greedy for Achilles’ horses as prize, took a wolf-skin and ferret-cap and slipped toward the camp. Odysseus and Diomedes caught him, forced him to name Hector’s dispositions and the newly arrived Thracian king Rhesus with his white horses, then killed him as he begged. They pushed on into the Thracian bivouac, killed Rhesus and twelve of his men in their sleep, and drove off the famous horses. Apollo woke Hippocoon; the camp stirred too late. Athena warned the Achaeans off further slaughter; they rode the Thracian steeds back to the ships, washed in the sea, and took a meal. The raid lifts Achaean morale for a night and strips Troy of Rhesus’s aid—without changing Achilles’ wrath or Zeus’s larger tilt toward Hector.