INTRODUCTION

In this study I will explore a literary representation of a single fatherless son, Diomedes in the Iliad. Though the Iliad cannot be used as a reliable source for the depiction of social norms and practices in any single period of Greek history, its broad influence and high status in antiquity make it an integral part of Classical culture. As children in Classical Athens studied the Iliad in school from an early age and were sometimes even required to memorize it in full, as it was regularly performed at major festivals and contests all over Greece in the Classical period, and as it is clearly alluded to in multiple ways in multiple texts and works of art, both Greek and Roman, from various periods, so we may assume that it shaped the consciousness of a broad range of different kinds of ancient audiences in powerful ways. Thus, though Diomedes represents only one view of a fatherless son and a fictional one at that, his example must have been extremely well known. In a world in which many children never knew their fathers and in many cases suffered the isolation that might go along with fatherlessness but still frequently found great social success, as is detailed in many of the chapters in this volume, the complex characterization of Diomedes in the Iliad surely had a particular resonance.