Creatures of the Night in Greek Epic

Casey L. Dué (University of Houston)

In this paper I propose to expand my current research on the poetics of ambushes and night raids in Greek epic by focusing on the character of Diomedes. Diomedes does not fit neatly into the dichotomy that has been supposed to exist between Achilles and Odysseus, the respective heroes of the traditional daytime polemos and nighttime lokhos.[1] Odysseus has long been understood to be a warrior that excels in alternative, more cunning kinds of warfare. Diomedes is often paired with Odysseus in nighttime exploits, but unlike Odysseus, he is a featured star in the Iliad’s daytime combat as well, so much so that he largely takes Achilles’ place for the Greeks when Achilles withdraws.

Except for the Doloneia of Iliad X, the raids featuring Diomedes were narrated in the Epic Cycle, and as a result they are rarely if ever juxtaposed with the Diomedes’ daytime exploits in the Iliad, such as his aristeia in Iliad 5. How does our understanding of the Iliadic Diomedes change as result of our knowledge of his role in the Epic Cycle? Here as elsewhere I will resist the often assumed dichotomy between the Iliad and the Epic Cycle (and the Iliad and the Doloneia), and show how an awareness of Cyclic traditions helps us to better understand the heroes of the Iliad and how they were received in antiquity.[2]

Finally, Diomedes’ versatility will lead me to suggest that perhaps Odysseus and Achilles have been typecast too hastily by scholars. Achilles seems to have been viewed as similarly versatile in Archaic Greek epic as a whole. In Iliad 1, Achilles cites both the polemos and the lokhos as places where the “best of the Achaeans” go. In Iliad 21, we learn of a time when Achilles captured the Trojan youth Lykaon ennukhios (Iliad 21.37). The T scholia point out here that this what Achilles must mean when in Iliad 9 he says that he has “passed many sleepless nights” (9.325).[3] Achilles dies before the sack of Troy, but this crucial event in the Trojan War is the ultimate night ambush, participated in by all of the best of the Achaeans who are still alive, including Odysseus, Diomedes, and Achilles’ son Neoptolemus. In his own epic, Odysseus too excels in both types of warfare: when Demodokos sings about the fall of Troy in the Odyssey, Odysseus is the hero “raging like Ares” through the streets of Troy.

With this paper I hope to show that taking into account what warriors like Diomedes and even Achilles do at night offers a more complete poetics of epic warfare.