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[1] Above the women between Aithra and Nestor are other captive women, Clymene, Kreousa, Aristomache, and Xenodice. Now Stesichorus, in the Sack of Troy, includes Clymene in the number of the captives; and similarly, in the Returns, he speaks of Aristomache as the daughter of Priam and the wife of Kritolaos, son of Hicetaon. But I know of no poet, and of no prose writer, who makes mention of Xenodice. About Kreousa, the story is told that the mother of the gods and Aphrodite rescued her from slavery among the Greeks, as she was, of course, the wife of Aeneas. But Lescheos and the writer of the epic poem Cypria make Eurydikē the wife of Aeneas.
[2] Beyond these are painted on a couch Deinome, Metioche, Peisis, and Kleodike. Deinome is the only one of these names to occur in what is called the
Little Iliad; Polygnotus, I think, invented the names of the others. Epeios is painted naked; he is razing to the ground the Trojan wall. Above the wall rises the head only of the Wooden Horse. There is Polypoetes, the son of Peirithoös, his head bound with a fillet; by his side is Akamas, the son of Theseus, wearing on his head a helmet with a crest on it.
[3] There is also Odysseus […] and Odysseus has put on his corselet. Ajax, the son of Oileus, holding a shield, stands by an altar, taking an oath about the outrage on Cassandra. Cassandra is sitting on the ground, and holds the image of Athena, for she had knocked over the wooden image from its stand when Ajax was dragging her away from sanctuary. In the painting are also the sons of Atreus, wearing helmets like the others; Menelaos carries a shield, on which is figured a serpent as a memorial of the prodigy that appeared on the victims at Aulis.
[4] Under those who are administering the oath to Ajax, and in a line with the horse by Nestor, is Neoptolemos, who has killed Elasus, whoever Elasus may be. Elasus is represented as a man only just alive. Astynous, who is also mentioned by Lescheos, has fallen to his knees, and Neoptolemos is striking him with a sword. Neoptolemos is the only one of the Greek army represented by Polygnotus as still killing the Trojans, the reason being that he intended the whole painting to be placed over the tomb of Neoptolemos. The son of Achilles is named Neoptolemos by Homer in all his poetry. The epic poem, however, called Cypria says that Lykomedes named him Pyrrhos, but Phoenix gave him the name of Neoptolemos (young warrior) because Achilles was but young when he first went to war.
[5] In the picture is an altar, to which a small boy clings in terror. On the altar lies a bronze corselet. At the present day, corselets of this form are rare, but they used to be worn in days of old. They were made of two bronze pieces, one fitting the chest and the parts about the belly, the other intended to protect the back. They were called
gyala. One was put on in front, and the other behind; then they were fastened together by buckles.
[6] They were thought to afford sufficient safety even without a shield. That is why Homer
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speaks of Phorcys the Phrygian as without a shield, because he wore a two piece corselet. Not only have I seen this armor depicted by Polygnotus, but in the temple of Ephesian Artemis, Kalliphon of Samos has painted women fitting on the gyala of the corselet of Patroklos.
[7] Beyond the altar he has painted Laodice standing, whom I do not find among the Trojan captive women enumerated by any poet, so I think that the only probable conclusion is that she was set free by the Greeks. Homer in the
Iliad speaks of the hospitality given to Menelaos and Odysseus by Antenor, and how Laodice was wife to Helicaon, Antenor’s son.
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[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 Menelaos and Odysseus to the house of Antenor makes it unlikely that Agamemnon and Menelaos committed any spiteful act against the wife of Helicaon. The account of Laodice given by the Chalcidian poet Euphorion is entirely unlikely.
[9] Next to Laodice is a stone stand with a bronze washing basin upon it. Medusa is sitting on the ground, holding the stand in both hands. If we are to believe the ode of the poet of Himera, Medusa should be reckoned as one of the daughters of Priam. Beside Medusa is a shaved old woman or eunuch, holding on the knees a naked child. It is represented as holding its hand before its eyes in terror.
Description of Greece. Pausanias. ed. W. H. S. Jones, ed. H. A. Ormerod, ed. Gregory Nagy. . .