Laomedon's Corpse, Laomedon's Tomb Robertson, Martin Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies; Spring 1970; 11, 1; ProQuest pg. 23

Laomedon's Corpse, Laomedon's Tomb 
Martin Robertson 

A ND LAOMEDON'S CORPSE is being carried out by Sinon 
(Odysseus' companion) and Anchialos. And another dead 
man is drawn, with the name Eresos; but of Eresos and 

Laomedon, so far as we know, no poet has sung."! So Pausanias, to­
wards the end of his description of Polygnotos' Troy Taken in the 
Lesche of the Cnidians at Delphi. He is listing the dead, shown lying 
within the city, not far from the house of Antenor, which seems to 
have closed the picture at one end. The commentators have little to 
say on these sentences. Frazer,2 and Hitzig and Bliimner,3 refer to 
Tzetzes4 on Sinon's relationship to Odysseus; and the latter mention 
Anchialos as the name of a Greek killed by Hector in the Iliad (5.609),5 

and of Mentes' father in the Odyssey (1.181). They refer also to a 
Trojan Laomedon mentioned by Quintus Smyrnaeus (2.293). Gunning 
in Pauly-Wissowa6 and Hofer in Roscher,7 make the same reference, 
and the latter suggests the possibility of identifying the figure in the 
painting with Quintus' man; adding that obviously Polygnotos cannot 
have meant to show the great Laomedon, Priam's father and builder 
of the walls of Troy. This opinion is clearly implied also in the other 
comments, and was evidently Pausanias' own. Only one scholar, so 
far as I know, M. Charles Vellay,8 has expressed the view that Polyg­
notos' Laomedon is no other than the great one. This seems to me 

1 Paus. 10.27.3, Aaoflil3oVToc 13£ T<lv VEKPOV Clvwv TE ~Taipoc 'OSvcdwc KaL 'AYXlaAOC Elctv 

EKKOJL[~OVTEC. y€ypa1T'Tat /)€ KaL elUoc TE(}VE6JC· OVOJLCt ot wEpECOC· Ta S€ EC -EPEC6v TE KaL 

AaoJL£SoVTa, Dca yE ~JLEic €1I'tCTaJLE(}a, VCEV ovSdc. 
2 Pausanias's Description of Greece, transl. and comm. J. G. Frazer, V (London 1898) p.371 

ad loc. 
3 Pausanias, Graeciae descriptio, ed. H. Hitzig / H. Bliimner, 111.2 (Leipzig 1910) p.775 ad loc. 
, Schol. vet. ad Lycophronis Alexandram 344. 
5 There are a few other occurrences of the name Anchialos (RE and Roscher, s.v.). Eresos 

is cited as the eponymous hero of the Lesbian city of that name: RE and Roscher, S.V.; 

Hitzig and Bliimner, op.cit. (supra n.3) p.776; Carl Robert, Die Iliupersis des Polygnot (Hal­
lisches Winckelmannsprogramm 70, Halle 1893) 53. 

6 RE 12 (1924) col. 755 S.V. LAOMEDON 2. 
7 Roscher, Lex. II (1894-97) col. 1846 S.V. LAOMEDON 3. F. Vian, ed. Quintus de Smyrne, La 

Suite d'Homere, I (Bude, Paris 1963) p.67 n.1, makes the reference in reverse. 
S Charles Vellay, "Le Regne de Laomedon," CIMed 8 (1946) 84. 

23 



24 LAOMEDON'S CORPSE, LAOMEDON'S TOMB 

demonstrably right; and since M. Vellay's reference is almost paren­
thetic and it was no part of his purpose to consider the description of 
the painting, it is perhaps worth arguing it more fully; for the group, 
properly interpreted, seems to me of some importance to the under­
standing of the artist's intentions. 

To take the negative arguments first: the hero named by Quintus 
Smymaeus was killed in the battle between Achilles and Memnon 
outside the walls of Troy, before the deaths of Achilles and Paris. His 
body has no place in a picture of the sacked city, and at most the pas­
sage shows that the name could be used for a casual Trojan.9 The 
figure shown in the painting, however, must have been someone of 
major importance. The other bodies, including Priam's own, are left 
lying; but this is being carried out by two Greeks. This fact led Robert 
(who can be relied on to see and face difficulties) to conjecture that this 
Laomedon was a Greek, killed in the night battle.Io He can cite 
Apollodorusll for a son of Herakles by that name; but in a picture of 
Troy, surely such a famous Trojan name could be given only to a 
Trojan, and there was only one famous Trojan Laomedon. Moreover, 
although he had died so long before, a positive reason for his corpse 
being seen here can be found. 

In Plautus' Bacchides the slave Chrysalus, making the famous com­
parison of his achievements to the sack of Troy, says: «For Ilium I've 
heard there were three dooms, which should bring about its ruin: if 
the image should be lost from the citadel; a second likewise the death 
of Troilus ; the third when the upper lintel of the Phrygian gate should 
be riven"; and later, «Now the upper lintel is riven; now ruin is here 
for Ilium; the wooden horse is making trouble nicely."12 Servius, 
commenting on Aeneid 2.13, fatisque repulsi, says: "According to 
Plautus there were three; to wit, the life of Troilus, the preser­
vation of the Palladium, the inviolability of Laomedon's tomb, 

9 Gunning, loc.cit. (supra n.6), caUs this Laomedon a grandson of the great one, son of 
Lampos, Klytios or Hiketaon, but he does not cite his authority, which I cannot find. The 
appearance of the name as that of a son of Hector and Andromache (ibid., S.V. LAOMEDON 3) 
seems, as there noted, to be a mistake for Laodamas. 

10 loc.cit. (supra n.5). 
11 ApoUod. Bib!. 2.7.8. He also (Epit. 7.29) gives the name to one of the 44 Zakynthians 

among the 136 suitors he assigns to Penelope. 
111 953ff: Ilio tria fuisse audivi fata quae Wi forent exitio: I signum ex arce si periisset; alium 

etiamst Troili mors; I tertium cum portae Phrygiae limen superum scinderetur. 987f: Nunc superum 
limen scinditur, nunc adest exitium Ilia, I turbat equos lepide ligneus. 



MARTIN ROBERTSON 25 

which had been in the Scaean gate" ;13 on 2.241: "For we know that 
while Laomedon's tomb, which had been above the Scaean gate, was 
inviolate, the fate of Troy was safe."14 On 3.351 he gives the origin of 
the Scaean gate's name as "from Laomedon's corpse, that is Scenoma, 
from the cK~vwp-a; which had been in it above the lintel."15 

The wooden horse was introduced into Troy by enlarging the 
Scaean gate, eVidently upward,16 so violating the tomb. In the brief 
allusions by which we know the story nothing is said of the Greeks 
moving the corpse; but such a detail must have occurred in a version 
current in the fifth century and known to Polygnotos. That one of 
those taking part in the removal is Sinon must be significant. Pre­
Virgilian treatments of this anti-hero are not well documented, but 
it is beyond doubt that his name was early associated with the tricks 
by which the Greeks secured entry to the cityP 

I have elsewhere argued that Polygnotos probably showed a foun­
tain outside the wall of the city, and pointed out that to a contem­
porary this must immediately have suggested the ambush of Troilus 
by Achilles.Is The fallen statue of Athena, clasped in Cassandra's arms, 

13 Secundum Piau tum tribus, scilicet vita Troili, Palladii conservatione, integro sepu/cro Lao­
medontis, quod in Scaea porta fuerat. 

14 Nam novimus integro sepulcro Laomedontis, quod super portam Scaeam fuerat, tuta fuisse 
fata Trojana. 

15 A eadavere Laomedontis, hoe est Scenomate, a1T6 TOV CKT)vcfJp.aToc, quod in ejus fuerat super­
liminio. This very odd expression seems to suggest that its author conceived of the body as 
exposed on a kind of stage above the lintel ("Give orders that these bodies I High on a stage 
be placed to the view," Hamlet 5.370-71). As Vellay, loc.cit. (supra n.8), has well noted, the 
idea of entombing a great monarch over the city-gate finds a perfect parallel in Herodotus' 
story of Queen Nitocris at Babylon (1.187). The idea that a hero's spirit can protect the spot 
where his body is laid also recurs: for example Eurystheus, killed and buried on one of the 
roads into Athens (Eur. Herae!. 1027-44). 

18 See R. G. Austin, ed. Vergil, Aeneidos, Liber secundus (Oxford 1964) n. on line 234, 
dividimus muros. 

17 Austin, op.cit. (supra n.16), introductory note to lines 57-75; RE and Roscher, s.v. 
18 BSA 62 (1967) 5-12. To the references ibid. p.6 n.lO, for the idea that water-carrying is 

properly a task for women, not for men, add the scholiast's comment on Ap.Rhod. Argon. 
1.1207f (Tocppa a' ·YAac xaAK€-n dv KaAma, voccp'v op.{)\Ov I at'7JTO KP~V7JC t€P6V poov) in Scholia 
in Apollonium Rhodium Vetera, ed. C. Wendel (Berlin 1935) p.lIO: a1Tpmte all v€avtav vaptav 
{3acTcf,€w' ·Op.7Jpoe (7J 20) at 1Tp€1TOVTWe 1TapOevov. mOa.vcfJT€pOV at 1}v ap.c/>opea d1T€i:V, we Kallt­
p.axoc (fg 546 Schn.). lowe this reference to N. G. Wilson. Whether the last sentence of 
the scholion is to be taken closely with the rest is not clear. If so, it perhaps implies that a 
boy might properly carry the water to put in the wine at a feast, if this was normally 
brought in an amphora and not in a hydria or kalpis. Certainly in pictures of symposia I do 
not remember seeing hydriai shown, while of two pointed amphorae brought to the mixing­
bowl on Smikros' Brussels stamnos (A 717; Beazley, ARV2 I p.ZO no. 1; idem, Paralipomena 



26 LAOMEDON'S CORPSE, LAOMEDON'S TOMB 

will likewise have called to mind the Palladium stolen from the 
citadel ;19 and in the group of Sinon and Anchialos carrying out the 
body of Laomedon, the artist made more direct allusion to the vio­
lated tomb above the gate: the third and last spell broken. 

LINCOLN COLLEGE, OXFORD 

January, 1970 

to ABV and ARV [Oxford, forthcoming] 322 with refs., including AntK 8 [1965] pI. 14) one 
might be thought to hold wine, the other water; and when Herakles himself goes to the 
fountain it is with pointed amphorae, not hydriai (BSA 62 [1967] 9 nn.30 and 31; Berlin 
4027, now illustrated by A.-B. Follmann, Der Pan-Maler [Bonn 1968] p1.8,2 and 3). 

19 Paus. 10.26.3; Robertson, op.cit. (supra n.18) loff.