DIOMEDES OF THRACE (son of Ares)

The horses of Diomedes were renowned for their savage nature, eating the flesh of men with hideous joy.^3,4,5 Kept in stables near the heights of the Hebrus river, these animals were restrained by iron chains and fed from brass troughs stained with blood.^3,5,6 The mares were notorious for eating humans, while the horses generally were said to tear the limbs of men with their jaws.^1,6

In the fierce daytime battles, he was wounded and put to flight by Hector alongside other Greeks.⁷ After the capture of Troy, he returned home with his fleet, and he won the chariot race held in honor of Patroclus.^8,9

His fate was sealed when Heracles, destined to fight against him and his horses, killed him during a battle with the Bistones.^6,1,5 Heracles tamed the ferocious horses using a bit and then threw Diomedes to them to satisfy their hunger.^3,1,5 The king was killed by his own horses after being fed to them.⁵

Beyond his violent end, Diomedes was remembered for founding the city of Spina and for a promontory in Dalmatia named after him, though some call it the peninsula of Hyllis.^10,11 On an island opposite the coast of Apulia, a tomb and shrine stand in his honor, where birds pursue barbarian strangers but show courtesy to Greeks.¹² A fable claims his companions were transformed into these birds, while Diomedes himself had previously treated the exiled Oeneus with the respect due to a grandfather.^12,13