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Teaching the Sarpedon Krater

Date of this vase: 520-510 BCE

The Scene in the Iliad  (Book 16.455-716, pages 90-95 of The Essential Iliad)

The death of Sarpedon is a set-piece in the Iliad, one of the most important of all the combat deaths in the poem. Readers of Sunjata will recognize the poet using all the devices in the repertory of oral (or derivatively oral) composition to expand and elaborate on a piece of action that might have needed only a few lines. Compare the death of Pyraechmes, 16.290-297 (page 87):
 

Patroclus' spear shot out like stabbing light
To where the Trojans were clustered
Around the stern of Protelisaus' ship
And hit a certain chariot commander
Named Pyraechmes, a Paeonian
Who had led a contingent of chariots
From the Axius river in Amydon.
He went down now, growning in the dust
With Patroclus' spear in his right shoulder.


Here the key elements are:
 

A.    Patroclus hits his man
B.    The man is named and given a geographical origin.
C.    The man groans and dies
In the Sarpedon scene:
 
A.       Well before Patroclus fires, we have 46 lines of dialogue between the King and Queen of the gods. Zeus is the father of Sarpedon. We have also met Sarpedon before, in a moving speech (12.320-342, p. 74) that sums up the key Iliadic proposition that  wealth and glory are outward and visible signs of inner qualities. (This scene also shapes Sarpedon's "buddy" relationship with Glaucus as a doublet of the Achilles-Patroclus pairing. )
Patroclus fires, but hits… Thrasymelus, (line 497)
Sarpedon fires back and hits … Pedasus. (line 501)
Sarpedon fires again and … misses, (line 511)
Patroclus fires and hits Sarpedon, (line 513)
B.     Similes for Sarpedon's fall (line 517):
Tree
Bull
C.    Speech of Sarpedon (line 526)
Death scene (line 535)
Prayer of Glaucus (line 546)
Fight over the body
Speech of Zeus (line 700)
Apollo gives the body to Sleep and Death (line 709) Comparing the deaths of Pyraechmes and Sarpedon we see that the epic poet can add speeches, can himself comment on the action, and can extend a scene infinitely, retarding the climax until the time seems right.  "Epic retardation" (for instance in section A just above, the number of near misses) is one of the poet's chief skills; another is the ability to create doublets or parallel actions that reflect on each other (e.g. the doublet of Patroclos and Sarpedon).