DIOMEDES, in Greek legend, son of Tydeus (q.v.) ; in Homer one of the bravest of the heroes of the Trojan War. In the post-Homeric story, he and Odysseus steal the Palladium, the presence of which within the walls secured Troy against capture (Virgil, Aeneid, 164). On his return to Argos, finding that his wife had been unfaithful, he removed to Aetolia, and thence to Daunia (Apulia), where he married the daughter of King Daunus. He was buried or mysteriously disappeared on one of the islands in the Adriatic called after him Diomedeae, where his companions were turned into birds (Ovid, Metam. xiv. 457 ff.). He was wor shipped as a hero not only in Greece, but on the coast of the Adriatic, as at Thurii and Metapontum.