Lost Epics and Newly Found Vases: Sources for the Sack of Troy

Abstract The Ilioupersis was a component of the Epic Cycle that is lost to us but for some fragments and later re-workings such as Euripides’ Troades. But the visual tradition of the Sack of Troy starts very early, with the famous relief pithos found on Mykonos in the 1960’s and dated to the early seventh century, probably close in date to the epic. This paper focuses on an Attic red-figure cup that came to light in the 1980’s and gives us the fullest panorama of many episodes that comprised the Sack. It was made at a time when the Ionian Revolt and the Persian threat to Greece gave the story a new currency in Athens.