Vermeule notes that these lines had at one time been taken as evidence of the “lateness” of the Doloneia, but that Spruytte’s (1977) reconstruction of a Bronze Age chariot shows that it could indeed “be lifted by any healthy man, and conventional thinking on the Doloneia must be rethought, with hundreds of other conventions” (Vermuele 1986:83). See also Littauer and Crouwel 1983 on Bronze Age chariots. If Diomedes does choose to take the chariot, whether by the pole or by picking it up, he presumably does so in order to move it to where Odysseus has led the horses so they can tie the horses to the chariot for the getaway (see also below on 10.513–514). But such a supposition makes it seem as though Odysseus, at least, did not take the chariot when he took the horses from where they had been tied to it (facing it, it seems, rather than in a position to pull it, at 10.475, or else why untie them?).