Vergil's Italian Diomedes

This paper builds on existing scholarship concerning Vergil's Diomedes and his relationship to Aeneas in two ways: first, by stressing that the character of Diomedes presented a problem for Vergil, not just because he wounded Aeneas, Aphrodite, and Ares in Iliad 5, but also because he came to be an important figure in Italian myth; second, by focusing on numerous passages previously ignored in this context, including ones in which Diomedes significantly does not appear. In these ways, I hope to show just how elaborate, and important, a process Vergil's rewriting of Diomedes is.