PALAMEDES

in Greek legend, the son of Nauplius, king of Euboea, and a hero of the Trojan War. Palamedes is a prominent figure in post-Homeric legends about the siege of Troy. Before the war he exposed the trickery of Odysseus, who had feigned madness to avoid military service; by placing the infant Telemachus in the path of Odysseus' plow in the field, he forced that king to admit his sanity. During the siege of Troy, Palamedes alternated with two other Greek heroes, Odysseus and Diomedes, in leading the army in the field, but his ability aroused their envy. In the epic version the other two drowned Palamedes while fishing or persuaded him to seek treasure in a well, which they thereupon filled with stones. In the tragic version Agamemnon (king of Mycenae, or Argos), Diomedes, and Odysseus had an agent steal into his tent and conceal a letter that contained money and purported to come from King Priam of Troy. They then accused Palamedes of treasonable correspondence with the enemy, and he was stoned to death. Palamedes had a reputation for sagacity, and the ancients attributed a number of inventions to him, including the alphabet, numbers, weights and measures, coinage, and the practice of eating at regular intervals. He is now generally considered to be a personification of Phoenician culture, the source of many of these developments.