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Dolon answered, his limbs trembling beneath him: "Hector, with his vain flattering promises, lured me from my better judgement.
It chanced that Hector too had thought of a similar plan and that Dolon had offered to reconnoitre the Greek position. He was a wealthy man, ill-favoured to look upon, but swift of foot, and had asked that his reward should be the horses and the chariot of Achilles.
But he, in the midst of dangers being brave, was only troubled. So he makes Dolon and Lycaon feeling fear; Ajax and Menelaus, turning gradually and going away step by step, as lions driven from their quarry. In the same way he shows the differences of those who grieve and also of those who rejoice. My heart within me laughed.
Then Dolon answered him, his limbs trembling beneath him: "With many a blind hope did Hector lead my wits astray, who vowed to give me the whole-hooved horses of the proud son of Peleus, and his car bedight with bronze: and he bade me fare through the swift black night, and draw nigh the foemen, and seek out whether the swift ships are guarded, as of old, or whether, already, being subdued beneath our hands, they are devising of flight among themselves, and have no care to watch through the night, being fordone with dread weariness."
So they spake, and turning out of the path they lay down among the bodies of the dead; and swiftly Dolon ran past them in his witlessness.
It is only after reading the Odyssey that we begin to understand why Diomedes chose Odysseus as his companion in the famous Dolon adventure in Noman's land. Achilles would have been the wrong man for this or any other situation which demanded first and last a cool head.
In return for his information Dolon begged them to spare his life, but Diomedes deemed it safer to slay him. The two Greeks penetrated the Thracian encampment, where they slew many warriors and escaped with the horses back to the Greek armament. When the fighting opened on the next day, Agamemnon distinguished himself by deeds of great bravery, but retired at length wounded in the hand.
Hector swore to give these horses, which were the best in the world, to Dolon, so he took his bow and threw a grey wolf's hide over his shoulders, and ran towards the ships of the Greeks. Now Ulysses saw Dolon as he came, and said to Diomede, "Let us suffer him to pass us, and then do you keep driving him with your spear towards the ships, and away from Troy."
The boy answers his questioner, as Dolon answers Ulysses in the Iliad, at the point of the sword. It is to a certain degree the same thing, when the boy is questioned merely by his senior. He fears he knows not what, a reprimand, a look of lofty contempt, a gesture of summary disdain. He does not think it worth his while under these circumstances, to "gird up the loins of his mind."
Moreover, there is a particular character to be noted of the men who undertake for any action. For Dolon thus promiseth: I'll pass through all their host in a disguise To their flag-ship, where she at anchor lies.
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