Chapter summary
While the other Achaean chiefs sleep by the ships, Agamemnon cannot sleep: when he looks at the Trojan plain, he is amazed at the fires and the sound of flutes, and when he looks at the ships and his men, he tears at his hair and groans, turned toward Zeus. He decides to seek Nestor, in the hope of getting from him a plan that frees the Argives from disaster. Menelaus also does not sleep, out of fear for what may befall those who crossed the sea because of him, and he arms himself to wake his brother. When they meet, Menelaus asks whether Agamemnon intends to send a spy into the enemy camp, and fears that no one will agree to go alone, at night. Agamemnon answers that they both need counsel, because the spirit of Zeus has turned and Hector has done in a single day what no man has done. He tells his brother to call Ajax and Idomeneus, each by his father's name and without haughtiness, and he himself goes to Nestor.
Nestor, lying beside his arms, asks who wanders by the ships at night. Agamemnon says that Zeus has given him more suffering than anyone, that sleep does not come, that he fears for the Danaans, and proposes going to the sentries to see whether weariness has overcome them. Nestor replies that Zeus will not fulfill all of Hector's plans, and that Hector will have more troubles if Achilles changes his heart; then he rises to wake the others. He reproaches Menelaus for sleeping and leaving the work to his brother, and Agamemnon defends him: Menelaus usually waits for the king's example, and that time he went ahead. Nestor wakes Odysseus and then Diomedes, with a kick. Diomedes protests that there are younger men for the watch, and Nestor replies that the danger stands on a knife's edge and asks him to go call the other two chiefs. They find the sentries awake, watching like shepherd dogs that hear a beast, and Nestor praises them. They cross the ditch and sit down on a clear stretch free of the dead, where Hector had withdrawn at nightfall.
Nestor proposes a volunteer to spy on the Trojans, with fame and a black ewe from each captain as pay, and all fall silent. Diomedes offers himself, but asks for a second man, and many step forward, among them the two Ajaxes, Meriones, Nestor's son, Menelaus and Odysseus. Agamemnon tells Diomedes to choose the best, not the one of highest birth, and the narrator says that he feared for his brother. Diomedes chooses Odysseus. The two arm themselves with borrowed gear: Thrasymedes gives Diomedes a sword and a leather helmet, and Meriones gives Odysseus a bow, a quiver, a sword and a helmet of leather lined with boar's tusks, which had passed from hand to hand since Autolycus. On the road, Athena sends a heron up on their right, which they only hear. Odysseus asks the goddess that they return with a deed that will trouble the Trojans, and Diomedes recalls her support of his father, Tydeus, at Thebes, and promises a heifer with gilded horns. Athena hears them, and the two go on like lions through the night, among corpses, weapons and blood.
On the Trojan side, Hector also keeps the chiefs from sleeping. He gathers them and promises a chariot and the two best horses of the Achaean ships to whoever spies out whether the ships still have guards or whether the Achaeans plan to flee. All fall silent, and Dolon, son of the herald Eumedes, rich in gold and bronze, ugly of body but swift, and the only son among five sisters, offers himself in the same words as Diomedes, but demands that Hector swear, holding the scepter, to give him the horses and the chariot of Achilles. Hector swears by Zeus, and the narrator says the oath was false. Dolon sets out covered with a wolf's skin and a cap of weasel fur, on his way to the ships. Odysseus sees him coming, and the two Greeks crouch among the dead to let him pass and cut off his return. Hearing footsteps, Dolon thinks they are companions sent by Hector to call him back, but at the distance of a spear's throw he recognizes the enemy and flees. Athena gives Diomedes the spirit so that no Achaean takes the glory of the blow from him. He shouts that he will catch him and throws his spear on purpose, a little beyond his shoulder. Dolon stops, pale, his teeth chattering, weeps and offers a ransom.
Odysseus reassures him and questions him, and Dolon confesses that Hector had turned his judgment with many promises. Odysseus smiles and observes that he coveted the horses of Achilles, which no mortal can tame or drive except Achilles himself, son of a goddess. Dolon reports where Hector is, by the tomb of Ilus, with the chiefs; says that the Trojans keep watch around their fires and that the allies, with no women or children near, are asleep; and tells where the Thracians, the people of Rhesus, have arrived, with the finest horses he has ever seen, white as snow and swift as the wind, and golden arms worthy of gods. He asks to be taken to the ships or bound until they verify his word. Diomedes answers that, even though he has brought good news, he will not let him go, because he would return to the ships to spy or to fight, and he kills him with a sword stroke to the neck just as he was about to touch his chin: the head rolls in the dust, still speaking. They take off his cap, the wolf's skin, the bow and the spear, and Odysseus holds them up as an offering to Athena, asking her to guide them to the Thracian horses. He hangs the spoils on a tamarisk and marks the place with reeds and branches, to recognize it on the way back.
They reach the Thracian camp, where the men sleep from weariness, their arms stacked in three rows and two horses beside each one, and Rhesus sleeps in the middle, with the horses tied to his chariot. Odysseus recognizes the king and the horses from what Dolon described, and tells Diomedes to choose between freeing the horses and killing the men. Diomedes, with the spirit Athena gives him, kills twelve, and Odysseus drags the bodies by the feet so that the horses, which are not used to corpses, will pass without being startled. Rhesus, the thirteenth, dies gasping, visited by an evil dream: Diomedes himself standing over him. Odysseus frees the horses and drives them with his bow, because he has forgotten the whip in the chariot, and whistles to Diomedes, who hesitates between dragging the chariot by the pole, lifting it, or killing more Thracians. Athena appears and orders them back to the ships, and Diomedes recognizes the goddess's voice. Apollo, seeing Athena beside Diomedes, grows angry, enters among the Trojans and rouses Hippocoon, cousin of Rhesus, who, seeing the place empty and the men dying, calls his companion by name and sounds the alarm. The two, already at the spot where they killed Dolon, gather the spoils and leave.
Nestor hears the trot and tells the chiefs that he fears something has happened to the two of them, and no sooner has he spoken than they arrive. The chiefs greet them, and Nestor asks how they obtained the horses. Odysseus answers that a god could give even better horses, and that these are Thracian, taken by Diomedes, who killed Rhesus, twelve companions and Hector's spy. They cross the ditch laughing, tie the horses beside Diomedes' own, put Dolon's spoils at the stern of Odysseus's ship to offer them to Athena, wade into the sea to wash off the sweat, bathe, and pour a libation of wine to the goddess.
Analysis
The book builds two mirrored spy missions. Diomedes and Dolon offer themselves in the same words, heart and spirit driving them both; both ask for something before setting out (Diomedes a companion, Dolon Hector's oath on Achilles' horses); and both go out at night. The difference lies in what each one takes: Diomedes chooses Odysseus, to whom he attributes intelligence and Athena's love, and states the rule that two see better than one; Dolon goes alone, with the promise of a man who, according to the narrator, swore falsely, and walks past the men lying in wait without noticing them.
The book also shows what the night allows. The spy who surrenders and hands over everything is killed in the middle of his plea; the newly arrived Thracians are killed in their sleep, and Odysseus drags the bodies so that the horses will not startle. The narrator tells it all without comment, and the offerings to Athena that follow treat the result as a success. Achilles, absent, weighs on the night in three ways: Nestor makes Hector's fortune depend on the softening of his anger, Dolon asks for his horses, and Odysseus observes that only he can drive them.
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