Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Teucer.
The gallery
Statue of an Archer from the West Pediment of the Temple of Aphaia (traditionally identified as Teucer)
Unknown (Late Archaic Greek sculptor, Aegina), ca. 505-500 BC
This Late Archaic marble figure from the west pediment of the Temple of Aphaia on Aegina, now in the Glyptothek in Munich, shows a kneeling warrior drawing his bow, and is traditionally identified as Teucer, the foremost archer among the Greeks at Troy and half-brother of Ajax. The pediment depicted an earlier expedition against Troy, peopled by Aeginetan heroes, and the bowman captures the figure for which Teucer was renowned in the Iliad: crouched behind the cover of Ajax's great shield, loosing arrows into the Trojan ranks. The taut, balanced pose and the lingering 'Archaic smile' make it one of the finest surviving images of a Greek archer-hero in monumental sculpture.
Teucer
Sir William Hamo Thornycroft, 1881 (plaster); bronze cast 1882
Hamo Thornycroft's life-size bronze, a landmark of the British New Sculpture movement, portrays Teucer at the climax of his greatest feat in Homer's Iliad: the half-brother of Ajax, best of the Achaean archers, taking aim at Hector with his bow. The nude figure stands with the bow thrust out in an outstretched left hand, the body coiled in the instant of release, modelled from the sculptor's favourite model, the Italian Orazio Cervi. First shown as a full-scale plaster at the Royal Academy in 1881 to great acclaim, the large bronze was acquired in 1882 by the Chantrey Bequest for the national collection; this cast is held by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA).