Rhesus of Thrace

Rhesus or "Rhêsos" (Ῥῆσος) was a Thracian king who fought on the side of Trojans in "Iliad", Book X, where Diomedes and Odysseus stole his team of fine horses during a night raid on the Trojan camp. Homer gives his father as Eioneus— a name otherwise given to the father of Dia, whom Ixion threw into the firepit rather than pay him her bride-price— although the name is undoubtedly connected to the historic city of Eion in western Thrace, at the mouth of the Strymon. The event is portrayed in book X of Homer's "Iliad" and in the play "Rhesus", transmitted among the plays of Euripides. Scholia to the "Iliad" episode and the "Rhesus" agree against Homer's version in giving Rhesus a more heroic stature, incompatible with Homer's version. [See Bernard Fenik, "Iliad x and the Rhesus: The Myth" (Brussels: Latomus) 1964, who makes a case for pre-Homeric epic materials concerning Rhesus.]

Later writers provide Rhesus with a more exotic parentage, claiming that his mother was one of the Muses (Calliope, Euterpe, or Terpsichore), his father the river god Strymon, and he was raised by fountain nymphs. Rhesus arrived late to Troy, because his country was attacked by Scythia, right after he received word that the Greeks had attacked Troy. He was killed in his tent, and his famous steeds were stolen by Diomedes and Odysseus. His name (a Thracian anthroponym) probably derives from PIE "*reg-", 'to rule', showing a satem-sound change.

There was also a river in Bithynia named Rhesus, with Greek myth providing an attendant river god of the same name. Rhesus the Thracian king was himself associated with Bithynia through his love with the Bithynian huntress Arganthone (see the "Erotika Pathemata" ["Sufferings for Love"] by Parthenius of Nicaea, chapter 36).

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