Diomedes

Diomedes, son of Tydeus, ruled Argos and led eighty ships to Troy, second in size only to Agamemnon's own contingent. In one day of fighting, with the goddess Athena riding beside him in his chariot, he wounds the goddess Aphrodite in the wrist as she carries her son Aeneas from the battlefield, then turns on the war god Ares himself, driving his spear into the god's belly until Ares bellows like ten thousand men crying out in battle. When Agamemnon, shaken by a bad night of fighting, proposes abandoning the siege and sailing home, Diomedes alone stands up to rebuke him, vowing that he and his charioteer Sthenelus will fight on to take Troy even if every other Greek sails away. Later tradition also credits Diomedes with one of the war's most daring exploits: sneaking into Troy at night, alongside Odysseus, to steal the sacred image of Athena called the Palladium, which the Trojans believed protected their city from capture.

Ancient sources disagree about which of the two heroes actually carried off the Palladium. Apollodorus's own narrative gives Odysseus the larger role, but the same passage records what it calls a more prevalent rival tradition, in which Diomedes bore the image away himself while Odysseus secretly plotted to kill his companion afterward and claim sole credit, foiled only when moonlight flashed off his drawn sword and warned Diomedes in time. The Greek proverb 'Diomedes's necessity', for someone forced into an act against their will, comes from this same story.