The One-Man Wrecking Crew
The Five-Minute Iliad, #5
This is another ongoing series as I do a slow-read of THE ILIAD by Homer, translated by Rouse. Previous installments: book 1 | 2 | 3 | 4
“Diomedes, You Unit”
Now that Athena has successfully pissed off both sides—and more importantly, instigated the Trojans to break the terms of the peace treaty until Menelaus and Paris finish their duel—the fight is on in earnest, and the Greeks (Achaians) are able to take the brakes off. They send in the Big Gun.
Enter Diomedes, an absolute unit of a man who could pwn just about anyone on a normal day. Today is special, though: Athena, literal goddess of war, equips him with numerous buffs (basically Ye Olde Greek Zero Carb Monster Energy) and sends him into battle with his hair on fire.
Diomedes then starts racking up kills like it’s a ranked contest and the prize is Sydney Sweeney. What happens next is another famous roll-call scene where This Guy beats the tar out of That Guy who was related to That Other Guy and so on, repeated ad nauseum as we figure out which important people were killed by whom, and how. Diomedes is kicking so much sphincter that neither side knows who he belongs to, it’s just wholesale anus-whipping at low, low prices, and Diomedes Outlet is open for business, everything must go.
Remember Pandaros, that stupid archer who kicked all this off? He sees Diomedes going and—we’ve established he’s stupid, don’t let that go—he thinks I can totally take that guy down with my totally special bow and arrows. And to his credit, he puts one right through Diomedes’ shoulder, drawing blood and proving he’s mortal.
Diomedes, however, is a pious man, and does what any good Christian Greek man of faith would do, and says a nice little prayer to the god of charity glute-flogging, that he may have power to forgive smite his enemy, yay, with a very mighty smitey, and lo, Athena did smile favorably upon her servant berserker, and sent him a booster pack with +5 agility, +8 courage, and extra manna for stamina.
“Go forth, my child, and flay their colons open, be they man or god, in fact, you can kill pretty much any god you see—and I am showing them to you, make no mistake—but don’t kill Aphrodite, you really don’t have to, I mean…you’ll see her out here, but she sucks at this, it'd be totally unnecessary for you to kill her, so just don’t. Lol. Stick her with your spear, I guess.”
Diomedes, with fervent gratitude, returns to the battle at 3x his previous level of posterior destruction, and builds a literal wall of corpses through his enemies (everyone). Eventually he stumbles across a Significant Historical Figure.
Ever heard of a guy named Aeneas? He’s kind of important here, and he’ll play a role in the foundation of Rome later on. So, spoiler, you know he survives this battle, but he’s gonna lose some homies along the way. He sees Diomedes coming like a freight train out of Dante’s fourteenth circle of hell, and asks the archer Pandaros to maybe pretty please take another shot. And Pandaros is like “Bro, I don’t know if you’ve seen my track record today, but every time I do this…”
Aeneas hits him back with the classic “Trust me bro, just use your spear, I’ll chase him with my chariot, and we’ll tag-team this guy.” And he’s maxed on charisma stats, so Pandaros says “Bet.” They run at Diomedes. Pandaros chucks his spear. It hits Diomedes and for a second it looks like it killed him.
Then Diomedes smiles and says something in Greek, probably the name of a key component of female anatomy, and chucks a spear back at Pandaros. Gets him right in the mouth and…I mean it’s a spear, you know what happens next. Pandaros is insta-dead, and now Diomedes can focus in on Aeneas, prince of Troy.
He picks up a rock that’s so damned big it would take two normal people to get it off the ground, and he raises it over his head and—this is quite disrespectful of him—smashes Aeneas under it partway so that his hip socket is shattered, leaving him alive by in excruciating pain.
Who should come to intervene on Pretty Boy Aeneas’ behalf than Aphrodite herself, who throws her body across Aeneas and is like “Noooo he’s too handsome to die, nooooo…” and Diomedes almost crushes her too. He bashes up her wrist pretty bad but she doesn’t exactly bleed because, hey, goddess, and her crying draws Apollo’s attention, and he helps her get away with Aeneas. Diomedes then continues to kill people.
Book 5 closes with Diomedes squaring off against Ares, and by now he is so jacked up on that sweet sweet Athena Combat Sauce that he 1v1’s the actual god of war and stabs him in the stomach, sending him back to Olympus crying like a little twink. “Zeus, Daddy, pwease make the bad man stop!”
Question: where the HELL was Diomedes in the 2004 Troy movie?!
Go read my boy’s adventure novel FOSSIL FORCE, set in the Utah desert, featuring four friends who use ancient power armors to defend the surface from a hollow-earth invasion.
P. S. Per Virgil, Aphrodite/Venus is the mother of Aeneas.