Rhesus
mythological figure · 4 works · 5 mentions · 21 anchored passages
Child of the River · King Rhesus · Strymonian Rhesus · my king · my son · son of Eioneus · son of Strymon · the Thracian
in the texts
Rhesus
Legendary Thracian king, son of the river-god Strymon and a Muse, who arrives at Troy with a huge allied army and is murdered in his sleep by Greek raiders the same night.
Enter RHESUS in dazzling white armour, followed by his CHARIOTEER and Attendants.
Like many Thracian heroes Rhesus has a dash of the Sun-god in him, the burning targe, the white horses and the splendour.
RHESUS.
On the Nature of the Gods
Thracian king said to be son of a Muse, cited in Cotta's reductio argument
but if he is a god, then Orpheus and Rhesus too are gods, born of a Muse for their mother — unless, perhaps, marriages with sea-deities are set above those with earthly ones.
Orations
Thracian king whose arrival Dolon betrayed to the enemy
For that poet, whenever he relates of Dolon — how he desired the horses of Achilles, and how, able to escape the enemy, he stood still when the spear was fixed near him and his swiftness profited him nothing, and how he chattered with fear and clashed his teeth together, and how he told the enemy not only whatever they asked, but also things about which no one inquired (for he disclosed the Thraci …
Iliad
King of the Thracians, newly arrived allies of Troy, famed for his splendid horses and armor.
Rhesus was sleeping in the middle, and hard by him his horses were made fast to the topmost rim of his chariot.
As a lion springs furiously upon a flock of sheep or goats when he finds without their shepherd, so did the son of Tydeus set upon the Thracian warriors till he had killed twelve.
and they have Rhesus son of Eioneus for their king.