Rhesus

Not to be confused with the play Rhesus, attributed to Euripides.

Rhesus was a king of the Thracians who came to help Troy in the tenth year of the Trojan War. On his first night in the Trojan camp, Diomedes killed him in his sleep, and Odysseus led away his famous white horses. The raid is told in book 10 of Homer’s Iliad, and the play Rhesus, which has come down under the name of Euripides, dramatizes the same night.

Family and Allies

In Homer Rhesus is the son of Eioneus and king of the Thracians, who have newly arrived and sleep apart at the edge of the Trojan camp (Iliad 10.434–435). In the play Rhesus, he is the son of the river Strymon and one of the Muses (Rhesus 279 and 393–394). The play also explains his lateness: before sailing to Troy he had to fight a war against the neighbouring Scythians and carried his army to the shores of the Euxine sea (Rhesus 426–431). He claims to have come late but just in time, since Hector has been fighting for ten years without result (Rhesus 443–446).

The Raid

The raid begins when the Trojan spy Dolon is caught by Odysseus and Diomedes. To save his life he tells them about the Thracians, saying that Rhesus has the finest horses he ever saw, whiter than snow and swift as the winds, a chariot decorated with gold and silver, and huge golden armour that suits a god more than a mortal (Iliad 10.434–441).

The two Greeks found the Thracians asleep, their armour laid out in three rows with a yoke of horses by each man, Rhesus in the middle, and his horses tethered to the rim of his chariot (Iliad 10.471–475). Athena strengthened Diomedes, who killed twelve sleeping Thracians while Odysseus dragged each body aside so that the horses would not be frightened. Rhesus was the thirteenth, killed as he lay breathing hard, for that night the grandson of Oeneus, Diomedes himself, stood over his head like an evil dream, through the devising of Athena (Iliad 10.482–497). Odysseus untied the horses, drove them out with his bow, and Athena warned Diomedes to return before some other god woke the Trojans (Iliad 10.498–514). Apollo, who saw Athena following the son of Tydeus, roused Rhesus’ kinsman Hippocoon, who woke to find the horses’ place empty and the men dying, and the Trojans were roused (Iliad 10.515–525).

Virgil also refers to the raid. Aeneas sees the snow-white tents of Rhesus among the pictures of the war in the temple at Carthage, betrayed in their first sleep and laid waste by Diomedes, who drove the horses off to the Greek camp before they could taste the pastures of Troy or drink from the Xanthus (Aeneid 1.469–473).

The Rhesus Play

The tragedy Rhesus makes the raid the centre of the action. Athena, appearing to Odysseus and Diomedes, tells them that if Rhesus survives the night, neither Achilles nor the spear of Ajax will keep him from destroying the ships and walls of the Greeks (Rhesus 600–605). After his death his mother, the Muse, appears with his body and blames Odysseus for his death. She also reproaches Athena as the cause of his fate (Rhesus 890–894, 938). She says that he will not go into the dark earth: she will ask the nymph below, the daughter of Demeter, to release his soul, and he will lie hidden in the caves of the silver-veined land, a man-god who sees the light, as the prophet of Bacchus once dwelt in the rock of Pangaeum (Rhesus 962–973). She adds that she herself will never see him again (967–969).

Rhesus Sources

Homer, Iliad 10.434–525; Euripides (attributed), Rhesus 279, 393–394, 426–446, 600–605, 890–894, 938 and 962–973; Virgil, Aeneid 1.469–473.

See Also: Trojan War, Muses, Diomedes, Odysseus, Athena, Hector, Dolon, Thrace