Diomedes

Family: Argos · Role: son of Tydeus · First appears: Apollodorus, Library 1.3

🌐 Also appears in: The Metamorphoses of Ovid (as Diomedes) · Greek Tragedy — The Same Myth, Three Voices (as Diomedes) · The Iliad (as Diomed) · The Aeneid (as Diomede)

Diomedes is of Argos and is identified as the son of Tydeus; he married Aegialia, daughter of Adrastus, and is also described as the husband of Deipyle, daughter of Oeneus. After the sons of Agrius ambushed and killed Oeneus at Telephus’s hearth in Arcadia, Diomedes came secretly from Argos with Alcmaeon and killed Agrius’s sons, except Onchestus and Thersites. He took Oeneus to the Peloponnese, later conveyed his corpse to Argos for burial, and gave the kingdom to Andraemon, who had married Oeneus’s daughter.

Diomedes was among the suitors who went to Sparta seeking Helen’s hand. During the Trojan War, he exchanged arms with Glaucus after recalling their fathers’ friendship, and with Odysseus he killed Dolon and Rhesus in a night raid: “And night coming on, they sent Ulysses and Diomedes as spies; and these killed Dolon, son of Eumelus, and Rhesus, the Thracian”. He wounded Aphrodite when she came to Aeneas’s aid, went with Odysseus to Philoctetes in Lemnos, and helped Odysseus steal Troy’s Palladium after Helen enabled the theft.

Another Diomedes in the material is named as the son of Ares and Cyrene and is said to have been slain by Heracles.