Argos (Ἄργος) — a Homeric kingdom of the Odyssey, c. 1200 BC

Argos — Argos of Diomedes — the man who wounded gods, and one of the few who came safely home.

The eastern Argolid realm of Diomedes son of Tydeus, second only to Mykene among the kingdoms of the plain. Eighty black ships and the fiercest aristeia of the war — yet unlike so many of the great captains, Diomedes moored at Argos on the fourth day out of Troy, safe and unscathed.

Leader at Troy: Diomedes.

Ruler in the Odyssey's present: Diomedes.

Role in the Trojan War: Achaean. Eighty black ships under Diomedes of the loud war-cry — joint-largest of the vassal contingents — whose aristeia in Book 5 broke the Trojan line, seized the divine horses of Tros, and drew the blood of Aphrodite and Ares themselves.

The homecoming: Home on the fourth day — swift and unscathed, while better men were lost.

Behind the great walls of Tiryns and the vine-heavy terraces of Epidauros lay the realm of Diomedes son of Tydeus, second kingdom of the Argive plain. From Argos and Tiryns of the great walls, from Hermione and Asine about their deep gulf, from Troezen and Eionai and Epidauros full of vines, and from Aegina and Mases, the youths of the Achaians mustered eighty black ships. Diomedes led them, with Sthenelos dear son of famous Kapaneus, and third with them the godlike Euryalos son of Mekisteus — 'but Diomedes of the loud war-cry was lord over all.' Only Agamemnon of neighbouring Mykene (MYC), overlord of the whole host, brought more; within the Argolid Diomedes was the great king's foremost vassal and the sharpest spear of the plain.\n\nNo warrior at Troy burned brighter. When Athene kindled unwearied flame from his helmet and shield, 'like to the star of summer,' and sent him into the thickest press, Diomedes made of the Trojans a slaughter. He broke Aeneas at the hip with a jagged stone — and Sthenelos, forgetting nothing his lord had charged, leapt upon Aeneas' sleek-coated horses and drave them to the ships: the immortal strain that Zeus gave to Tros in recompense for Ganymede, the prize the dataset remembers as the Mares of Diomedes. Then Diomedes did what no other mortal dared. When Aphrodite came to bear her wounded son from the field, he lunged and tore her white wrist with the bronze; and before the day was done, with Athene beside him in the car, he drove his spear into the belly of brazen Ares himself, so that the war-god bellowed like nine thousand men and fled to Olympos. When he met Glaukos of Lycia (LYC) across the lines, the two knew their grandfathers had been guest-friends, and traded armour rather than blows — Glaukos giving gold for bronze. And by night he went out with Odysseus of the Cephallenians (CEP), his inseparable companion, into the dark between the camps to kill Dolon and cut down sleeping Rhesus — the same partnership that tradition sends up into Troy itself to steal the Palladion.\n\nYet the mark of this realm, in the tenth year of the returns, is what set it apart from almost every other: Diomedes came home. When the host quarrelled at Troy and Nestor of Pylos (PYL) put to sea, the son of Tydeus went with him, and their ships ran together down to Tenedos and Lesbos. There they took an omen and cleaved a straight path across the open sea to Euboea; and as Nestor tells the tale in his own hall, 'it was the fourth day when the company of Diomede son of Tydeus, tamer of horses, moored their ships at Argos.' Swift, sure, and unscathed — the very opposite of his neighbour Agamemnon, cut down at the welcome-feast, and a mercy denied to Aias, to Idomeneus' pilot, to Odysseus still wandering. Nestor couples his homecoming with that of Menelaos of Lacedaemon (LAC), who limped back in the same westward wave: these were the lucky ones, the kings the sea let go.\n\nSo at the dramatic present Diomedes reigns again in Argos, one of the handful of great captains restored to his own throne while the world of the nostoi still counts its dead. It is a fitting close for the son of Tydeus — one of the Seven's line, himself an Epigonos who had already sacked Thebes with Sthenelos before ever he sailed for Troy. (Of the later tradition that jealous strife drove him at last from Argos into exile among the Italian tribes, the poems of the returns say nothing; here, in the tenth year, the man who wounded gods is simply, and rarely, home.)

“Be of good courage now, Diomedes, to fight the Trojans; for in thy breast I have set thy father's courage undaunted, even as it was in knightly Tydeus, wielder of the buckler.” — Iliad 5.124-126