Rhesus of Thrace

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Odysseus and Diomedes stealing Rhesus' horses, red-figure situla by the Lycurgus Painter, ca. 360 BC

Rhesus (Rhêsos) was a Thracian king who fought on the side of Trojans in Iliad, x, where Diomedes and Odysseus steal his team of fine horses during a night raid on the Trojan camp. Homer gives his father as Eioneus— a name otherwise given to the father of Dia, whom Ixion threw into the firepit rather than pay him her bride-price— although the name is undoubtedly connected to the historic city of Eion in western Thrace, at the mouth of the Strymon. The event is portrayed in book X of Homer's Iliad and in the play Rhesus, transmitted among the plays of Euripides. Scholia to the Iliad episode and the Rhesus agree against Homer's version in giving Rhesus a more heroic stature, incompatible with Homer's version.^[1]

Later writers provide Rhesus with a more exotic parentage, claiming that his mother was one of the Muses (Calliope, Euterpe, or Terpsichore), his father the river god Strymon, and he was raised by fountain nymphs. Rhesus arrived late to Troy, because his country was attacked by Scythia, right after he received word that the Greeks had attacked Troy. He was killed in his tent, and his famous steeds were stolen by Diomedes and Odysseus. His name (a Thracian anthroponym) probably derives from PIE *reg-, 'to rule', showing a satem-sound change.

There was also a river in Bithynia named Rhesus, with Greek myth providing an attendant river god of the same name. Rhesus the Thracian king was himself associated with Bithynia through his love with the Bithynian huntress Arganthone (see the Erotika Pathemata ["Sufferings for Love"] by Parthenius of Nicaea, chapter 36).