One side of this amphora (a two-handled storage vessel) features a scene from one of the most famous poems of all time: the Iliad, an epic recounting the war between allied Greek forces and the Trojans, from the kingdom of Troy, in what is now Türkiye. Aged King Priam of Troy visits the enemy Greek camp to beg the warrior Achilles for the body of his son Hektor, whom Achilles has killed in battle:

I had just one [son] who kept our town and people

safe, and you killed him a short while ago, 

while he was fighting for his fatherland—

Hector. I came here to your ships for him,

to ransom him from you. I brought with me 

a countless ransom. Please, Achilles, show

reverence towards the gods and pity me […] I have

endured what no man yet on earth has done—

I pressed my mouth into the hand of him

who killed my son.”1

Here white-haired Priam lurches toward Achilles, who heartlessly drinks over Hektor’s body. At left the god Hermes, wearing a winged cap, escorts a servant carrying the ransom to secure the body (a gold tripod and gold bowls). 

1Homer, The Iliad, trans. Emily Wilson (W. W. Norton & Company, 2023), 599.

Attributed to the Rycroft Painter (Greek), Amphora with the Ransom of Hektor. Wheel-thrown, slip-decorated earthenware with incised details, about 520–510 BCE. Height: 27 in. (68.6 cm); diameter of body: 17 23/32 in. (45 cm). Purchased with funds from the Libbey Endowment, Gift of Edward Drummond Libbey, 1972.54. On view in the Classic Court.