In the _Doloneia_ the wakeful princes, after inspecting the advanced guard, go forward within view of the Trojan ranks and consult. With them they take Nestor's son, Thrasymedes, and Meriones (X. 196). The two young men, being on active service, are armed; the princes are not. Diomede, having been suddenly roused out of sleep, with no intention to fight, merely threw on his dressing-gown, a lion's skin. Nestor wore a thick, double, purple dressing-gown. Odysseus had cast his shield about his shoulders. It was decided that Odysseus and Diomede should enter the Trojan camp and "prove a jeopardy." Diomede had no weapon but his spear; so Thrasymedes, who is armed as we saw, lends him his bull's-hide cap, "that keeps the heads of stalwart youths," his sword (for that of Diomede "was left at the ships"), and his shield. Diomede and Odysseus successfully achieve their adventure and return to the chiefs, where they talk with Nestor; and then they go to Diomede's hut and drink. The outposts remain, of course, at their stations. Meanwhile, Thrasymedes, having lent his shield to Diomede, has none of his own. Naturally, as he was to pass the night under arms, he would send to his father's quarters for the old man's shield, a sword, and a helmet. He would remain at his post (his men had provisions) till the general _reveillez_ at dawn, and would then breakfast at his post and go into the fray. Nestor, therefore, missing his shield, would send round to Diomede's quarters for the shield of Thrasymedes, which had been lent overnight to Diomede, would take it into the fight, and would bring it back to his own hut when he carried the wounded Machaon thither out of the battle. When he arms to go out and seek for information, he picks up the shield of Thrasymedes. Nothing can be more obvious; the poet, being a man of imagination, not a professor, sees it all, and casually mentions that the son had the father's and the father had the son's shield. His audience, men of the sword, see the case as clearly as the poet does: only we moderns and the scholiasts, almost as modern as ourselves, are puzzled. It may also be argued, though we lay no stress on it, that in Book XI. 312, when Agamemnon has been wounded, we find Odysseus and Diomede alone together, without their contingents, because they have not separated since they breakfasted together, after returning from the adventure of Book X., and thus they have come rather late to the field. They find the Achaeans demoralised by the wounding of Agamemnon, and they make a stand. "What ails us," asks Odysseus, "that we forget our impetuous valour?" The passage appears to take up the companionship of Odysseus and Diomede, who were left breakfasting together at the end of Book X. and are not mentioned till we meet them again in this scene of Book XI., as if they had just come on the field.