αὐτὰρ ὃ μοῦνος ἔην μετὰ πέντε κασιγνήτῃσιν
Dolon’s status as an only son may be a detail that increases the audience’s sympathy for his death. Although some modern scholars revile Dolon completely (on this line, see e.g. Holoka 1983:8–9 and Hainsworth 1993, who calls Dolon a “sissy”), an ancient audience might have reacted quite differently. For example, we might compare Ilioneus the son of Phorbas: he is a Trojan identified as an only son, and his brief life story, given at the moment of his death, seems intended to arouse sympathy based on that status (Iliad 14.489–492). Both Achilles and Odysseus are only sons (as is Odysseus’ son Telemakhos, in the Odyssean tradition), and the epics offer intensely emotional scenes about the potential loss of the son. In Iliad 24.485–512, Priam appeals to Achilles to think of his father and how much he hopes to see his son return home, and Achilles weeps remembering both Patroklos and his father. In Odyssey 24.345–348, Laertes indeed sees his only son return home after twenty years and faints. We see the hope of and joy at the son’s return also embodied in a simile comparing Eumaios’ joy at greeting Telemakhos to a father greeting his only son (μοῦνος at Odyssey 16.19, just as here) coming home from a foreign land in the tenth year, having suffered greatly (Odyssey 16.17–19). Following this self-referential Odyssean simile, Eumaios kisses Telemakhos as though Telemakhos has escaped death. In fact, Telemakhos has just outsmarted the suitors in their ambush attempt, and so has escaped death (see also Odyssey 17.47, where Telemakhos says he has just escaped sheer destruction). Dolon will not return after he is ambushed, so his status as an only son should engender some sympathy for his father. Hainsworth (1993 ad loc.) objects to any notion of sympathy because Dolon’s status as an only son is mentioned here, but not at his death. At the moment of his departure, however, we already know that Dolon will die (10.336–337), so any sympathy evoked here is not that far from the indication of his death.
The detail of Dolon’s five sisters might add to the pathos in a different way, for brothers are possible avengers, and Dolon has none. (As an example of a brother as an avenger, compare Iliad 14.478–485, where Akamas stands over his fallen brother, claiming a poinē for him and saying that a man prays to leave someone behind him in his home to avenge his death in battle.) The death of a brother often causes anger and desire for revenge (e.g. Iliad 9.567, 11.248–258, 16.320) or is offered as a standard measure of a great loss (e.g. Iliad 9.632–636, 24.46–49). Once Dolon is dead, his sisters have a potential future fate as captive women: both Andromache and Briseis mention the loss of their brothers in war as a factor in their dire straits (Iliad 6.421–424 for Andromache; Iliad 19.293–294 for Briseis). Both of these factors, then, can be seen within the Homeric tradition to potentially evoke sympathy for Dolon’s death.
Throughout the Iliad passages that introduce warriors just before they die and provide details of their biographies would likely have served a commemorative function, and, compressed though they are, often share themes and imagery with traditional female laments, such as those sung by Andromache, Briseis, and Achilles’ mother Thetis in the Iliad. Many of these passages seem to be focalized through the eyes of a mother or widow. There are several examples of this phenomenon. In Iliad 11.221–228, we hear the story of Iphidamas, who leaves behind his bride to “go after the kleos of the Achaeans.” In Iliad 4.473–489, we learn how Simoeisios comes to be named by his parents, and that he dies before he can repay their care in raising him. He is compared to a felled poplar, a use of plant imagery that is also common in lament. The death of Gorgythion at Iliad 8.302–308 is a particularly beautiful example of this kind of passage, for which we use the evocative translation of Samuel Butler:
ὃ δ’ ἀμύμονα Γοργυθίωνα
υἱὸν ἐῢν Πριάμοιο κατὰ στῆθος βάλεν ἰῷ,
τόν ῥ’ ἐξ Αἰσύμηθεν ὀπυιομένη τέκε μήτηρ
καλὴ Καστιάνειρα δέμας ἐϊκυῖα θεῇσι.
μήκων δ’ ὡς ἑτέρωσε κάρη βάλεν, ἥ τ’ ἐνὶ κήπῳ
καρπῷ βριθομένη νοτίῃσί τε εἰαρινῇσιν,
ὣς ἑτέρωσ’ ἤμυσε κάρη πήληκι βαρυνθέν.
The arrow hit Priam’s brave son faultless Gorgythion in the chest. His mother, fair Kastianeira, lovely as a goddess, bore him after she had been married from Aisyme, and now he bowed his head as a garden poppy in full bloom when it is weighed down by showers in spring—even thus heavy bowed his head beneath the weight of his helmet.
Translation based on that of Samuel Butler
We can easily imagine these words spoken in the first person by Kastianeira upon learning of the death of her son in battle. Indeed, epic poetry is infused with the imagery, themes, and language of lament, so much so that a number of scholars have speculated that women’s lament traditions played a crucial role in the development of epic. Epic poetry narrates the glory of heroes, the klea andrōn, but it also laments their untimely deaths and the suffering they cause. That these lament-filled passages are more often than not sung for the death of the Trojans and their allies, and in this case the spy Dolon, is a testament to the remarkable parity of compassion that underlies the Iliad. Both sides are mourned equally. On the relationship between lament and epic, women’s songs and men’s songs, see Murnaghan 1999, Nagy 1999, Sultan 1999, and Dué 2002 and 2006a. On the mortality of the hero as a central theme of epic, see also Schein 1984, Greene 1999, and above on 10.259. On passages that lament the death of heroes in a highly compressed form, such as the one quoted from Iliad 8 here, see also Tsagalis 2004:179–187. Tsagalis argues that lament is “the form of speech that best represents the poem’s perspective” (167). If he is right then it is illuminating to consider that Dolon may once have been understood to be as deserving of sympathy and lamentation as any of the warriors who fall in battle in the Iliad.