ABSTRACT
The only son of Eumedes, a Trojan herald. In the Trojan War, at the time when Hector, in Achilles’ absence, had succeeded in penning the Greeks in a fortification built to protect their beached ships, Dolon offered to go by night from the Trojan army, now encamped on the plain, and spy on the Greek dispositions, if Hector would swear to reward him with Achilles’ horses. An ugly man, Dolon wore a ferret-skin cap and carried a bow which he covered in a wolfskin. As he approached the Greek lines he was seen in the darkness by Odysseus and Diotnedes, who were engaged on a similar expedition. They let Dolon pass them, then chased him, captured him, and forced him to tell them all he knew about the Trojan camp, and the newly arrived force of Rhesus, king of the Thracians. Then in spite of Dolon’s offer of a vast ransom, Diomedes killed him and hid his equipment, picking it up on the way back from the expedition. Ironically Hector, who had offered Dolon Achilles’ team of horses, was himself destined to go behind them after his death, when Achilles dragged his body in the dust. Euripides, in his Rhesus, presented Dolon in a better light than Homer had.
