Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Rhesus.
The gallery
Ulysses and Diomedes in the Tent of Rhesus
Corrado Giaquinto, 1753–1762
Oil painting by the Neapolitan Rococo painter Corrado Giaquinto, in the Pinacoteca metropolitana di Bari. Odysseus and Diomedes have slipped into the Thracian king's pavilion by night; Rhesus still sleeps on a canopied bed while his charioteer nods nearby — the Doloneia of Iliad 10, staged with the auriga who belongs to the Attic tragedy Rhesus.
Diomed and Ulysses Returning with the Spoils of Rhesus
John Flaxman, 1895
Line engraving after John Flaxman's neoclassical outline design, published in Alfred John Church's Story of the Iliad. Diomedes drives the snow-white horses of Rhesus while Odysseus follows with the Thracian spoil — the prize that, had the horses drunk from the Scamander, would have made Troy impregnable.
Diomedes Slays Rhesus
Crispijn van de Passe, 1613
Engraving by Crispijn van de Passe from the Speculum Heroicum Homeri series, in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. In the Thracian camp Diomedes strikes down the sleeping king while Odysseus gathers the horses — Homer's night raid compressed into a single heroic plate.
Diomedes and Odysseus Stealing the Horses of Rhesus
Lycurgus Painter, c. 360 BC
Apulian red-figure situla by the Lycurgus Painter, in the Naples National Archaeological Museum (inv. 81863), from Ruvo di Puglia. Odysseus in his pilos and Diomedes drive off Rhesus' white horses after slaying the Thracian king and twelve of his men in their sleep — the Doloneia fixed in clay.
In play
Rhesus
The Attic tragedy (often kept under Euripides' name) restages the Iliad's night raid — Rhesus' arrival and death as a self-contained war play.
Total War Saga: Troy
Creative Assembly
The Rhesus & Memnon DLC makes the Thracian king a playable faction leader — snow-white horses and night-raid fame turned into campaign power.
Doloneia
Scholars still call Iliad Book 10 the Doloneia — the night when Odysseus and Diomedes kill Dolon and steal Rhesus' horses.