#Especially Diomedes’s Italian wanderings (in this case—including me) which could be a lot easier for it to happen with Aegialeia’s betrayal

[lyculuscaelus]

How easy it was to blame all these misadventures the Achaeans suffered upon their homecoming on a man in revenge for his son.

Yes, we know what Palamedes did, and we know that he deserved it. We know that the disaster near Cape Caphereus did happen, and Nauplius was the one behind this. But we have not learned of anything else about the other part of Nauplius’s revenge from any sources earlier than pseudo-Apollodorus’s Epitome (and we know that the entire chapter 6 of Epitome is very likely tampered by Tzetzes already). Since, to be fair, Homer wasn’t the only one who neglected all this resettlement of Achaean heroes.

There was no mention of the name “Nauplius” in Proclus’s summary of the epic Nostoi, and the only chance for him to show up is in “the description of the storm around the Capherian rocks”. We know that Nauplius would make an appearance in the Nostoi through, again, pseudo-Apollodorus. But nothing more. The corruption of Argive wives did not happen in the Epic Cycle, and both the Nostoi and the Odyssey did not elaborate on any exile of any Achaean leader especially Diomedes.

And Aegialeia was still a steadfast wife of Diomedes in Homer’s epics. And Clytemnestra could still find her justice in her lament for Iphigeneia in Aeschylus’s and Euripides’s plays. Any role Nauplius could play in this would be redundant—prudent Aegialeia simply wouldn’t comply, and Clytemnestra wouldn’t need him to convince her.

So, why the attribution then? A likely explanation would be the attempt to connect the hero with those foundation myths in places outside the Mainland Greece like Magna Graecia. And what better way to get the hero there than exile? And what better way to exile a hero than the betrayal of their wife if they had one? (Well there are better ways but you know what I mean) The thing is, why did it have to be Nauplius? I mean, the tragedy at Cape Caphereus was infamous indeed. I could totally see people blaming Nauplius the Wrecker for more things than simply lighting a false beacon and throwing rocks. So now we have our avenger Nauplius traveling around Greece contriving the corruption of Argive wives and causing shipwreck for the returned fleet and in some versions even bringing false news to Anticleia which led to her suicide (again, not the version in the Odyssey)…Nauplius just seemed to be such a convenient device to connect these events.

But does that have to be the only case for their nostoi? I mean, Homer certainly did not include anything about this exile in his epics, and we could totally have our Nauplius simply causing shipwreck, without messing up with other heroes’ families. Is it tragic? Certainly. But in the meantime, it is cathartic. Heroes like Diomedes, Idomeneus, Philoctetes still get to stay in their homeland, even if it’s just in a few versions—one of them being Homer’s version.