This offer of ransom for being taken alive rather than killed is another example of both the traditional language of Iliad 10 and the Doloneia’s place within the Iliadic tradition. Donna Wilson has demonstrated that, although there are references to ransoming practices that occur before the direct action of the Iliad, within that direct action the taking of prisoners does not happen, and all appeals to ransom are rejected (2002:29–34). As she notes, “The Iliad develops the compensation theme temporally in such a way that all offers of apoina mentioned as taking place before Chryses’ offer in Book 1 or after Priam’s in Book 24 are successful or potentially successful. But all offers of apoina in the time between Chryses’ and Priam’s offers fail” (Wilson 2002:31, original emphasis). Thus the refusal to ransom Dolon (and killing him instead) fits into the overall treatment of this theme in the Iliad. See Iliad 21.34–44 for the example of Lykaon as a prisoner taken alive during a nighttime ambush (which temporally happens before Chryses’ offer).
The offer that Dolon makes uses the traditional, formulaic language of such offers of apoina in the Iliad. We see the same language of 10.379–381 used at Iliad 6.48–50, when Adrestos supplicates Menelaos to ransom him, and also at Iliad 11.133–135, when two brothers, Peisandros and Hippolokhos, supplicate Agamemnon (with the necessary changes of singular and dual/plural pronouns in each of the three situations). In all three cases, just as Wilson has observed, the plea is rejected and the supplicant is killed instead (Dol
on will attempt a supplicatory gesture just before he is killed, see 10.454–456).