Diomedes kills Dolon before Dolon can touch him in a gesture of supplication. On supplication in Homeric epic, see Crotty 1994, Wilson 2002, and Naiden 2006. According to these analyses of the act of supplication, Dolon’s supplication begins at 10.378–381 with his offer of ransom (apoina) if he can be taken alive (see also our comments at 10.378–381). At that point, Odysseus and Diomedes have grabbed Dolon’s hands, so that he is unable to make this clasping gesture. (Such a scene is visualized by the Dokimasia painter on a kylix cup from c. 480 BCE [St. Petersburg, Hermitage B.1539], with Dolon pictured in his wolf skin.) According to Naiden’s arguments, the person being supplicated always has the freedom to reject the request, as Diomedes does here (see Naiden 2006:181 for this particular example of supplication).