Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Pandarus.
The gallery
Troilus and Cressida, Act 1
Thomas Kirk, c. 1795–1800
Kirk's Boydell Shakespeare Gallery plate stages Act 1 of Troilus and Cressida — Pandarus as go-between for the Trojan lovers, the Homeric archer rewritten as the comic bawd of English stage tradition.
Pandarus and Cressida
Unknown (after Shakespeare), 19th century
This Metropolitan Museum print of Troilus and Cressida Act 1 Scene 2 freezes Pandarus with Cressida — Shakespeare's middleman, far from the Iliad's Lycian archer who breaks the truce, yet still named for him.
On screen
In play
Iliad
Homer
Iliad 4 makes Pandarus the Lycian archer who, urged by Athena, shoots Menelaus and shatters the truce — the wound that restarts the war.
Troilus and Criseyde
Geoffrey Chaucer
Chaucer's Pandarus is uncle and go-between for Troilus and Criseyde — the medieval rewrite that turned Homer's archer into English literature's archetype of the pander.
Troilus and Cressida
William Shakespeare
Shakespeare's bitter comedy keeps Pandarus as the bawd of Troy — the stage figure whose name English already treated as a synonym for a procurer.
pander
English 'pander' (noun and verb) derives from Pandarus' medieval role as go-between — a rare case of a Homeric name becoming ordinary moral vocabulary.