Palamedes (Greek mythology)

Statue of Palamedes sculpted by Antonio Canova.

In Greek mythology, Palamedes of Argos, son of Nauplius, was a hero of proverbial ingenuity.

History

When the Trojan prince Paris kidnaps Helen, wife of Menelaus, king of Sparta, the Trojan War breaks out. Odysseus (Ulysses), king of Ithaca, is reluctant to abandon his wife and son for the wife of a Spartan, and tries to get out of the obligation to go to war by pretending to be crazy: dressed as a farmer, with a plow drawn for an ox and a donkey (or a horse) he digs furrows into which he sprinkles salt instead of seeds. But Palamedes cunningly discovers the deception using Telemachus, son of Odysseus: he takes the child from the cradle and places it on the ground in the path of the plow.

Therefore, when he learned that some emissaries would come before him, pretended to be mad, he put on a hat and plowed a horse and an ox. Palamedes, nothing else to see him, realized he was pretending. Then he brought the son of Ulysses out of the cradle, put it under the plow, and said, “Stop pretending and join the conjured». Then Ulysses gave the word he would go. That was the reason for his enmity with Palamedes

Higino, fable 95, 2

In revenge, Odysseus forged a letter claiming that the King of Troy, Priam, had proposed to Palamedes to betray the Greeks in exchange for gold. Odysseus hid the gold in Palamedes's tent and Palamedes was stoned to death by the Greek army. Alternate versions narrate that Diomedes and Odysseus drowned him while he was fishing, or that Diomedes and Odysseus plugged the entrance of a well where Palamedes had descended. to search for a supposed treasure, or that Paris killed him in battle or that Odysseus murdered him after slandering him before Agamemnon.

Nauplius avenged the death of his son by making part of the Greek fleet crash against rocks by false signals around Troy. Furthermore, he toured Greece inciting various wives of Achaean warlords to commit adultery.

Inventions

De Palamedes was said to have invented chess and the game of dice. Hyginus, in his Fables, credits him with the invention of part of the Greek alphabet.

Filostratus attributes to him the inventions of the lighthouses, the scales, the disk and the guard with sentinels. The inventions attributed to Palamedes probably originated in Crete.