Palamedes

Palamedes was a Greek hero of the Trojan War, the son of Nauplius and Clymene. He exposed Odysseus’s feigned madness and was later destroyed by Odysseus, who framed him as a traitor. His father Nauplius took vengeance on the Greeks after the war.

Family

Apollodorus makes Palamedes the son of Nauplius, himself a son of Poseidon and Amymone. Nauplius married Clymene, daughter of Catreus, according to the tragic poets; the author of the Returns named Philyra instead, and Cercops named Hesione. Their sons were Palamedes, Oeax and Nausimedon (Apollodorus, Library 2.1.5). Epitome 6.8 again calls Palamedes the son of Nauplius and Clymene, daughter of Catreus (Apollodorus, Epitome 6.8).

Palamedes and Odysseus

After Helen was taken, Menelaus asked Agamemnon to raise an army, and Agamemnon sent heralds to the kings reminding them of the oath they had sworn to Tyndareus (Apollodorus, Epitome 3.6; Library 3.10.9). Odysseus did not wish to go and pretended to be mad. Hyginus explains that an oracle had told him that if he went to Troy he would come home only after twenty years, alone, destitute and with his companions lost. Knowing that Agamemnon and Menelaus were coming to Ithaca for him, he put on a felt cap and yoked a horse and an ox to a plough; Palamedes saw through the act and laid the infant Telemachus, taken from his cradle, in front of the plough. Odysseus stopped, gave up his pretence and agreed to join the others, and from then on he was Palamedes’s enemy (Hyginus, Fabulae 95). In Apollodorus the scene is shorter: Palamedes snatched Telemachus from Penelope’s arms and drew his sword as if to kill him, and Odysseus in fear for the child confessed that his madness was pretended (Apollodorus, Epitome 3.7).

His Death

In Apollodorus, Odysseus took revenge by forcing a Phrygian prisoner to write a letter, supposedly from Priam to Palamedes. He buried gold in Palamedes’ quarters and let the letter be found in the camp. Agamemnon read it, found the gold, and handed Palamedes over to the allies to be stoned as a traitor (Apollodorus, Epitome 3.8; compare 6.9, where Agamemnon is called the accomplice of Odysseus in the murder). Virgil’s Sinon names Palamedes as an innocent man whom the Greeks put to death on a false charge of treason because he opposed the war; the Greeks later mourned his loss (Virgil, Aeneid 2.81–85). In Quintus of Smyrna, Ajax taunts Odysseus during the quarrel over the arms of Achilles with having contrived the death of godlike Palamedes, a better man than Odysseus in both battle and counsel (Quintus, Fall of Troy 5).

The epic Cypria told another story. Pausanias, who read it, says that Palamedes drowned while fishing and that Diomedes and Odysseus were his murderers (Pausanias 10.31.2). Pausanias also saw Palamedes in Polygnotus’s painting of the underworld at Delphi, playing at dice with Thersites while Ajax, son of Oileus, watched them; Palamedes was the only beardless figure in the group (Pausanias 10.31.1–3).

The Invention of Dice

Pausanias says the dice were Palamedes’ invention: at Argos opposite the Nemean Zeus there was a very old temple of Fortune, and Palamedes was said to have dedicated there the dice he had invented (Pausanias 2.20.3; compare 10.31.1).

The Vengeance of Nauplius

When Nauplius learned of his son’s death he sailed to the Greeks and demanded satisfaction, but all of them favoured Agamemnon and he went away empty-handed. He then travelled along the Greek coasts and arranged for the wives of the Greek leaders to be unfaithful: Clytemnestra with Aegisthus, Aegialia with Cometes, and Meda, wife of Idomeneus, with Leucus (Apollodorus, Epitome 6.8–9). Later, when he learned that the Greeks were returning home, he lit a false beacon fire on Mount Caphereus in Euboea. The Greeks took it for a harbour and many of their ships were wrecked on the rocks (Apollodorus, Epitome 6.11; Hyginus, Fabulae 116). Apollodorus adds that Nauplius had long been in the habit of luring ships to their destruction with beacon fires, and that he died in the same way himself (Library 2.1.5).

Palamedes Sources

Apollodorus, Library 2.1.5, 3.10.9; Apollodorus, Epitome 3.6–8, 6.7–11; Hyginus, Fabulae 95, 116; Pausanias 2.20.3, 10.31.1–3; Quintus of Smyrna, Fall of Troy 5; Virgil, Aeneid 2.81–85.

See Also: Clymene, Trojan War, Helen, Paris, Oath of Tyndareus, Odysseus, Agamemnon, Telemachus, Diomedes, Priam