Chapter 17, The Return from Troy
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♠ Diktys Cretensis, De Bello Troiano 6.2
At the same time Oeax, who was the son of Nauplius and the brother of Palamedes, on learning that the Greeks were returning home, went to Argos and reported, falsely, to Clytemnestra and Aegiale that Agamemnon and Diomedes were bringing back women they preferred to their wives; and he added those things by which their womanly hearts, by nature easily persuaded, might be the more incensed against their husbands. Thus they were prompted to arm themselves against their husbands’ arrivals. Accordingly, Aegiale, with the help of the citizens, prevented Diomedes from entering the city…
Soon after this, Diomedes learned that his grandfather, Oeneus, was being afflicted in every way by those who had gained control of Aetolia during his absence. Accordingly, he went to that region and killed the guilty usurpers. Those who favored his cause easily welcomed him back, for all Aetolia feared him. Latin Text
♠ Hyginus, Fabulae 175
When Agrius, son of Parthaon, saw his brother Oineus bereft of children and in need, he drove him out of his kingdom, and took it over himself. In the meantime, after the fall of Troy, Diomede, son of Tydeus and Deipyle, hearing that his grandfather had been driven from his kingdom came to Aitolia with Sthenelus, son of Capaneus, and fought with Agrius’ son, Lycopeus. He killed him, and expelled the needy Agrius from the kingdom, and restored it to his grandfather Oineus. Afterwards Agrius, expelled from the kingdom, killed himself. Latin Text
♠ Vergil, Aeneid 11.269-77
The gods have envied me the sweets of life,
My much lov’d country, and my more lov’d wife:
Banish’d from both, I mourn; while in the sky,
Transform’d to birds, my lost companions fly:
Hov’ring about the coasts, they make their moan,
And cuff the cliffs with pinions not their own.
What squalid specters, in the dead of night,
Break my short sleep, and skim before my sight!
I might have promis’d to myself those harms,
Mad as I was, when I, with mortal arms,
Presum’d against immortal pow’rs to move,
And violate with wounds the Queen of Love. Latin Text
♠ Servius, scholia at Vergil, Aeneid 11.271 – Servii Grammatici qui feruntur in Vergilii Carmina commentarii: Aeneis, ed G. Thilo and H. Hagen, 2, pp. 512-13. Leipzig 1884.
♠ Antoninus Liberalis, Metamorphoses 37 – Mythography Graeci 2.1, pp. 118-20, ed. E. Martini. Leipzig 1896.
THE DORIANS: After the capture of Troy, Diomedes arrived in Argos and denounced his wife Aegialia for her behaviour when she was stirred by Aphrodite. He went to Calydon in Aitolia where he made away with Agrius and his sons. He handed over the rule of the place to his grandfather Oineus. He then sailed for Argos but was swept into the Ionian Sea by a storm. When Daunius, king of the Daunians, saw who it was that had arrived, he begged him for help in warring against the Messapians, for a share of the land and marriage to his daughter. Diomedes agreed to the proposal, drew up his men and routed the Messapians, He took his land which he assigned to the Dorians, his followers. The daughter of Daunius gave him two sons, Diomedes and Amphinomus. He died of old age in the lands of the Daunians and the Dorians buried him with honours on the isle which they called Diomedia after him. They cultivated the lands that had been assigned to them adjoining those of the king. It brought them much produce because of their experience in farming. After the death of Daunius, the barbarian Illyrians coveted their lands and plotted against them. They appeared suddenly on the island and the Illyrians slaughtered all the Dorian as they were sacrificing victims. By the will of Zeus the bodies of the Greeks disappeared and their souls were changed into birds. Even today when a ship of the Greeks is brought into harbour, these birds go up to them, but they flee from an Illyrian ship and all disappear from the island. Greek Text
♠ Homer, Odyssey 3.190
and safely Philoctetes, the glorious son of Poias. Greek Text
♠ Homer, Iliad 2.716-18
And they that dwelt in Methone and Thaumacia, and that held Meliboea and rugged Olizon, these with their seven ships were led by Philoctetes, well-skilled in archery. Greek Text
♠ Aristotle, Peri Thaumasiôn Akousmatôn (De Mirabilibus Auscultationibus) 840a (107) – Aristotle: Minor Works, pp. 267-68, ed. W. S. Hett. Cambridge, Mass., 1936
It is said that Philoctetes is honoured among the Sybarites. For when he was brought back from Troy, he lived in a place called Macallad in the region of Croton, which they say is a hundred and twenty stades away, and they relate that he dedicated Heracles’ bow and arrows at the temple of Apollo the sea god. There they say that the Crotoniates during their supremacy dedicated them at the Apollonium in their own district. It is also said that, when he died, he was buried there by the river Sybaris, after helping the Rhodians who landed at the spot with Tlepolemus, and joined battle with the barbarians, who dwelt in that part of the country. Greek and English Text
♠ Lykophron, Alexandra 911-29
Another shall the streams of Aesarus and the little city of Crimisa in the Oenotrian land receive: even the snake-bitten slayer of the fire-brand; for the Trumpet herself shall with her hand guide his arrow point, releasing the twanging Maeotian bowstring. On the banks of Dyras he burnt of old the bold lion, and armed his hands with the crooked Scythian dragon that harped with unescapable teeth. And Crathis shall see his tomb when he is dead, sideways from the shrine of Alaeus of Patara, where Nauaethus belches seaward. The Ausonian Pellenians shall slay him when he aids the leaders of the Lindians, whom far from Thermydron and the mountains of Carpathus the fierce hound Thrascias shall send wandering to dwell in a strange and alien soil. But in Macalla, again, the people of the place shall build a great shrine above his grave and glorify him as an everlasting god with libations and sacrifice of oxen. Greek Text
Edited by Elena Bianchelli, Retired Senior Lecturer of Classical Languages and Culture, Univ. of Georgia, March 2023
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