τὸν ἄριστον
Agamemnon tells Diomedes to choose the “best” man. The question of who is the “best of the Achaeans” is a theme that runs throughout the Iliad, as Gregory Nagy has shown. In the catalogue of ships (Iliad 2.761), the narrator asks the Muses who was the best (aristos) of the Achaeans, and answers that it was Ajax, so long as Achilles had mēnis (2.768–769). But as Nagy points out, the claim to being best of the Achaeans is a disputed and divided one in the Iliad, precisely because the acknowledged best, Achilles, has withdrawn. The Odyssey tradition is not divided, however. There, Odysseus is the unquestioned best (Nagy 1979:26–35 and passim). So too in the Doloneia tradition is Odysseus the “best,” and here he is so in part because of his association with nostos ‘return, homecoming’, as Diomedes states explicitly (see below on 10.243).
An interesting correlation to this competition to be the “best” in epic is that ambushes feature the “best” men. (See also Edwards 1985:18–24.) There are several examples of the best men going on ambush in Homeric epic. Achilles states that Agamemnon does not go on ambush with the best (σύν ἀριστήεσσιν, Iliad 1.227). Idomeneus’ description of ambush involves a gathering of the best (ἄριστοι, Iliad 13.276). Those in the Wooden Horse are the best (Odyssey 4.272, 8.512–513, 11.523–524), and the best men are selected for ambushes of Bellerophon (Iliad 6.188), Proteus (Odyssey 4.409), and Agamemnon (Odyssey 4.530–531). Even in a Cretan lie, Odysseus says that he used to choose the best men for ambush (Odyssey 14.217–218). We can also see that the best are involved in ambush warfare because both Odysseus and Achilles participate in nighttime ambushes (see “The Poetics of Ambush”).