Characters
- Artemis — fighting for Troy; wounded in the belly; flees to Zeus
- Diomedes — strikes Ares under Athena’s leave
- Lyssa — rebukes Diomedes; drives the chariot; wears Hades’ cap; guides the spear
- Paieon — heals Ares on Olympus
- Parthenopaeus — Diomedes’ father; cited as model of boldness
- Sthenelus — displaced as charioteer for Athena’s turn
Places
- Assembly — site of the charge against Ares
- Cap of Hades — Athena’s invisibility (portable “place” of concealment)
- Underworld — Ares’ flight and healing
Themes
Narrative
After Aphrodite flees wounded and Apollo has shielded Aeneas, Ares fights openly for the Trojans, shrouded at times in darkness. Hera and Athena obtain Zeus’s leave to check him. Athena finds Diomedes resting, rebukes his slackness beside the work Ares is doing, and reminds him of Tydeus’s boldness. She takes the place of Sthenelus as charioteer, puts on the cap of Hades so Ares cannot see her, and drives straight at the war-god as he strips a huge corpse.
She tells Diomedes not to fear Ares—this immortal he may strike. Diomedes casts; Athena drives the spear into Ares’ lower belly, tearing the flesh. Ares bellows as loud as nine or ten thousand men and flees to Olympus, showing Zeus the immortal blood (ichor). Zeus rebukes him as most hateful of gods yet has Paieon heal him. Athena and Hera quit the field. This entry isolates the tip and the joint wounding from the wider aristeia: the mortal’s glory against Ares is Athena’s granted exception to her own earlier ban on fighting gods other than Aphrodite.