Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Sarpedon.
The gallery
Hypnos and Thanatos Carry Sarpedon (Euphronios Krater)
Euphronios, c. 515 BC
Euphronios' calyx-krater — Sleep and Death lifting Zeus' Lycian son from the Trojan plain under Hermes' eye — remains the definitive image of Sarpedon's fall.
The Dead Sarpedon, Borne by Sleep and Death
David Scott, c. 1831–1832
Scott's National Galleries of Scotland canvas from the Iliad: Hypnos and Thanatos bear the fallen Lycian prince — Romantic pathos for Zeus' son whom even a father could not save.
Sleep and Death Conveying the Body of Sarpedon to Lycia
Unknown, 19th century
A nineteenth-century illustration of the Homeric cortege: Sleep and Death carry Sarpedon home to Lycia — the Iliad's most solemn funeral flight.
Death of Sarpedon (bell-krater)
Unknown (Attic), c. 5th century BC
Attic red-figure bell-krater of the Sarpedon type: winged Sleep and Death lift the hero's body — the Euphronios theme repeated for another symposium.
Death of Sarpedon
Unknown (Lucanian), c. 4th century BC
Lucanian red-figure hydria in the Museo Nazionale della Siritide, Policoro: Sarpedon's corpse amid Amazons and attendants — South Italian vase-painting keeping the Lycian prince's death in circulation.
In play
Iliad
Homer
Books XII and XVI — the rain of blood, Patroclus' spear, and Zeus deciding not to save his own son.
Euphronios Krater
The Sarpedon krater — once Met, now Cerveteri — made the Lycian hero modern archaeology's most famous corpse.
Sarpedon
Zeus' mortal son who dies at Troy — the Iliad's lesson that even a god's child is not exempt from fate.