Agamemnon next found Menestheus son of Peteos tarrying with the Athenians, and nearby cunning Odysseus with his sturdy Cephallenians. Not yet hearing the war-cry, since the phalanxes had only just begun to move. He rebuked them: son of Peteos, and you, Odysseus skilled in tricks — why do you hang back and wait for others? It befits you to stand among the foremost and meet the burning of battle. You are first to hear my invitation whenever an elder’s feast is prepared. Then you are glad to eat roast meat and drink honey-sweet wine as long as you please. But now you would gladly look on even if ten Achaean companies fought with ruthless bronze before you.
Odysseus answered with a dark look: how could Agamemnon say they shrank from war? When battle rose, he would see Telemachus’s father among the front fighters. Agamemnon smiled, took the rebuke back, and said he knew Odysseus’s heart was friendly.
He then rebuked Diomedes by comparing him unfavorably to Tydeus. Tydeus was not used to shrink, but fought far in front of his companions. Once he had gone to Mycenae with Polyneices gathering allies; later, sent alone as envoy to Thebes, he found many Cadmeans feasting in Eteocles’s hall. Stranger though he was, he challenged them at contests and beat them all easily, so much help Athena was to him. The Cadmeans set a close ambush of fifty young men on his return; Tydeus killed them all but one, sending Maeon home by the gods’ signs. Such was Aetolian Tydeus; but he fathered a son worse than himself in battle, though better in the assembly. Diomedes kept silent out of respect for the rebuke of the king.
Sthenelus answered that the sons claimed to be far better than their fathers. For they had taken seven-gated Thebes with a smaller army against a stronger wall, trusting the gods’ signs. While those others died by their own blind folly. Diomedes looked at him darkly and checked him: sit silent and listen. It was not amiss that Agamemnon urge the Achaeans forward; glory would be his if Troy fell, and great grief his if the Achaeans were destroyed. Then Diomedes leapt from the chariot, and his bronze rang so fiercely about his body that even a brave man might well have been scared to hear it.