‘Lo, here is some man, Diomedes,’ he said; ‘I know not whether he be a spy or a plunderer of the dead. But let him pass, and then will we rush on him and take him.’
Turning from the path, they lay down amongst the dead bodies on the plain, still and silent as those they lay beside.
But when Dolon had gone a little way, they ran after him, and Dolon, when he heard them, stopped, thinking they were messengers from Hector, coming to bid him return. Less than a spear’s-throw from him were they when he knew them for foemen and fled before them.
But as two fierce hounds pursue a hare or a doe, so did Odysseus and Diomedes hunt Dolon. They had wellnigh reached the trench where the sentinels were placed when Diomedes called aloud:
‘Halt! or my spear shall pin thee dead to the ground!’
Thereat he hurled his spear, but not with the wish to smite Dolon. Over his right shoulder it flew, burying its sharp point in the ground in front of him. Green with fear, and with chattering teeth, Dolon stopped, and Odysseus and Diomedes panting, came up to him, and laid hold of him.
‘Take me alive!’ said Dolon, weeping, ‘and a mighty ransom of gold and bronze and iron shall be yours if ye but spare my life.’
‘Fear not,’ said Odysseus, ‘but tell us truly why thou comest thus at dead of night into the camp of thine enemies.’
Then did Dolon, the coward, tremblingly tell his tale, and reveal to Odysseus and Diomedes all that Hector had bidden him do. At their bidding, too, he told them how all the Trojan forces lay, and how best they could win into the camp.
‘At the farthest point from the men of Troy are encamped the Thracians,’ he said. ‘Rhesus is their king, and fit for a god is his golden armour and his chariot of gold and silver. His, too, are the fairest horses mine eyes have seen, of great strength and height, whiter than snow, and swift as the wind.’