The Tears of Diomedes: Allusion in Early Greek Epic

This study examines the tears of Diomedes in the Iliad as a richly layered narrative device that functions across intratextual, intertextual, and metaleptic dimensions. On the intratextual plane, Diomedes’ emotional outburst reactivates resonances with Books 1, 10, and 22, subtly reinforcing his thematic kinship with Achilles. Intertextually, his unexpected triumph in the chariot race reconfigures an earlier epic tradition – one in which Diomedes suffers defeat in the funeral games held in Achilles’ honor – thus staging a quiet act of narrative revision. At the metaleptic level, the scene destabilizes the boundary between narrative and poetic agency, evoking an awareness of alternate epic trajectories and foregrounding the Iliad ’s self-reflexive engagement with its literary inheritance. In the end, Diomedes’ tears crystallize the poem’s meditation on heroic legacy, while simultaneously illuminating its profound consciousness of epic tradition and the artifice of storytelling itself.