Sarpedon

Sarpedon is the pre-eminent Lycian hero of Greek epic, a son of Zeus who ruled the Lycians and brought them to Troy as allies of Priam. In the Iliad his death at the hands of Patroclus is one of the poem's great set-pieces: Zeus weeps tears of blood over his son but permits his fall, and Sleep and Death carry the corpse back to Lycia for burial. He was remembered by the Lycians themselves as a founding ancestor — Herodotus links the migration of the Termilae from Crete to his leadership — and a sanctuary and games in his honour, the Sarpedoneia, are reported at Xanthos.

Domains

• kingship
• warfare

Powers

• to lead the Lycian host in battle

Epithets

• Σαρπηδὼν ἄναξ ΛυκίωνTrevor R. Bryce, The Lycians in Literary and Epigraphic Sources (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 1986) (secondary)

Relations

• companion: GlaukosSarpedon and Glaukos are kinsmen and joint commanders of the Lycian force at Troy, fighting side by side at the wall of the Achaean camp.Homer, Iliad (Book XII), trans. A. T. Murray, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1924) (primary)

Sources

• Sarpedon is the demigod king of the Lycians, son of Zeus, leader of the Lycian contingent at Troy and a founding ancestor-hero of the Lycians who received cult at Xanthos.: Trevor R. Bryce, The Lycians in Literary and Epigraphic Sources (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 1986) (secondary); Antony G. Keen, Dynastic Lycia: A Political History of the Lycians and Their Relations with Foreign Powers, c. 545–362 B.C. (Leiden: Brill, 1998) (secondary); Aslı Saraçoğlu, 'Hero Concept in the Light of Homer's Iliad and the Death of Sarpedon, Lycian Warrior,' Anadolu/Anatolia 29 (2006): 57–79 (secondary)