δείπνῳ ἐφιζανέτην
An older style of criticism was concerned about the so-called “unity” of Iliad 9, because the members of the embassy have multiple meals within one evening (see also Shewan 1911:186–187 for a review of scholarly objections that this is Odysseus’ third meal on this night). At Iliad 9.65–73, Nestor advises Agamemnon to prepare and host the evening meal, and the guards for the night have their dinner at their station (Iliad 9.88) while the leaders eat at Agamemnon’s tent (Iliad 9.89–92). It is after dinner that they discuss the embassy to Achilles. Three of the leaders who must have eaten with Agamemnon, Phoinix, Ajax, and Odysseus, go on the embassy. When Achilles welcomes them, he and Patroklos immediately prepare a meal (Iliad 9.205–220), and it seems that all of them eat and talk only after they have finished (Iliad 9.221–222). We should first of all note that these two lines indicating that they eat their fill are the same formulas as Iliad 9.91–92, which transition from the meal preparation scene to the conversation. So meal preparation and consumption is, from the standpoint of oral poetics, a theme that is closely associated with gatherings of leaders and, as is made explicit in the advice of Nestor to Agamemnon, with the hospitality offered by those leaders. Thus it makes sense that more than one supper is prepared for these men: there is much more to it than satiating their hunger.
Once we recognize that there are multiple associations with the poetic theme of a meal, then, how should we understand Diomedes and Odysseus eating once again here? According to the A scholia, Aristarchus marked the dual form of the verb here because the meal should apply to all, not just these two, since they are having breakfast in the early morning at this point. This objection seems to apply a similar logic to that which we have already discussed, namely keeping track of which meal the men should be eating. Instead, we can look for other associations that meals have within this tradition, focusing, as the dual verb form does, on the two warriors who have just returned from a dangerous mission. As we saw with the baths at 10.576, the meal here has associations with an arrival after a journey, and the return after a spying mission or an ambush has much in common with the theme of the journey. Indeed, there seems to be a traditional sequence of bathing and then eating after such an arrival, and we see such a thematic sequence in the examples from the Odyssey: after the arrivals in Odyssey 3, 4, 8, 10, and 17, in which a bath in an ἀσαμίνθος takes place, a meal follows the bath as part of the hospitality for a guest or the arrival home. As Foley says about baths in the Odyssey in general, its theme is securely linked to that of the feast (Foley 1999:185, 245). Thus, the bath–meal sequence here is entirely traditional and should be expected rather than suspected.