The Landing: Protesilaos, Kyknos, and the Embassy to Troy (page 595, with art)

Chapter 16, The Trojan War

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♦ Vatican Museums, Museo Gregoriano Etrusco K40099 (Astarita Krater): Late Corinthian column krater, Greek embassy seeking the recovery of Helen

flickr image: seated Greeks Menelaos, Odysseus and Talthybios are greeted by Trojan Theano (wife of Antenor) and two maids

flickr image: Trojan trophos (nurse) and Trojan cavalry

Vatican Museums

Digital LIMC (no image)

♠ Bakchylides, Odes 15 (Dithyrambs 1: The Antenoridai or the Demand for Helen)

The [wife] of godlike [Antenor], priestess of Athena … of battle-rousing Pallas … golden … [5] of the Argives, to Odysseus [son of Laertes] and Menelaus, the royal son of Atreus, [deep]-waisted Theano … … spoke … [10] well-built … with the gods … … heart [at midnight] … … led … and their father, the wise hero, made the whole speech of the Achaeans known to king Priam and his sons. [40] Then heralds rushed through the broad town and brought together the ranks of the Trojans into the assembly-place of the army. Loud rumor ran everywhere; [45] and raising their hands to the immortal gods, they prayed for an end to their griefs. Muse, who was the first to begin the words of justice? Menelaus son of Pleisthenes spoke with enchanting words and voice, having conferred with the Graces with beautiful robes: [50] “Battle-loving Trojans: Zeus, the ruler on high who sees all, is not to blame for the great woes of mortals; all men have a chance to reach unswerving Justice, the attendant of holy [55] Eunomia and prudent Themis. Prosperous are they whose children take Justice to live with them. But shameless Hybris, flourishing with shifty greed and lawless empty-headedness, who will swiftly bestow on a man someone else’s wealth and power, [60] and then send him into deep ruin—Hybris destroyed the arrogant sons of the Earth, the Giants.” Greek Text

♠ Sophokles, Helenes Apaitesis (The Request for Helen) – Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta vol. 4, pp. 177-80, ed. S.L. Radt. Göttingen 1977.

♠ Sophokles, Aias Lokros fr 11 R – Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta vol. 4, pp. 109-10, ed. S.L. Radt. Göttingen 1977.

♠ Strabo, Geography 13.1.53

the sons of Antenor and Antenor himself, survived because of the hospitality shown Menelaüs at Antenor’s house. At any rate, Sophocles says that at the capture of Troy a leopard’s skin was put before the doors of Antenor as a sign that his house was to be left unpillaged; and Antenor and his children safely escaped to Thrace with the survivors of the Heneti, and from there got across to the Adriatic Henetice, as it is called. Greek Text

♠ bT Scholia to Homer, Iliad 3.205-6 – Scholia Graeca in Homeri Iliadem 5, p. 110, ed. W. Dindorf and E. Maass. Oxford 1887.

Greek Text

♦ Knidian Lesche, Delphi: lost painting by Polygnotos of Trojan Sack (known though Pausanias’ description and modern reconstructions)

♠ Pausanias, Description of Greece 10.27.3

There is the house of Antenor, with a leopard’s skin hanging over the entrance, as a sign to the Greeks to keep their hands off the home of Antenor. There are painted Theano and her sons, Glaucus sitting on a corselet fitted with the two pieces, and Eurymachus upon a rock. Greek Text

Detail of reconstruction from C. Robert, Die Iliupersis des Polygnot (1893)

♠ Pausanias, Description of Greece 10.26.8

Lescheos says that Helicaon, wounded in the night battle, was recognized by Odysseus and carried alive out of the fighting. So the tie binding Menelaus and Odysseus to the house of Antenor makes it unlikely that Agamemnon and Menelaus committed any spiteful act against the wife of Helicaon. Greek Text

♠ Livy, Ab urbe condita (From the Founding of the City) 1.1

First of all, then, it is generally agreed that when Troy was taken vengeance was wreaked upon the other Trojans, but that two, Aeneas and Antenor, were spared all the penalties of war by the Achivi, owing to long-standing claims of hospitality, and because they had always advocated peace and the giving back of Helen. Latin Text

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