This verse shows that the hero Diomedes has a chance to qualify as the ‘best of the Achaeans’, aristos Akhaiōn. In the long run, however, in line with the plot or narrative arc of the Iliad as we have it, Diomedes fails to qualify. Still, his greatest epic moments in the Homeric Iliad are traditionally known as his aristeiā (as in the scholia for I.06.448), which I translate here as ‘epic high point’.