English: Pictures 20 and 21 of the Ambrosian Iliad, Battle scenes from
Iliad Book 5. According to Richard Brilliant, "Mythology," in Kurt Weismann, ed.,
Age of Spirituality: Late Antique and Early Christian Art, Third to Seventh Century: Catalogue of the Exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, November 19, 1977 Through February 12, 1978, New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1979, p. 216, the lower scene features a wounded
Sarpedon resting under an oak tree, as in
Iliad 5.684-698. Above this battle scene hover Athena, Zeus, and Hera. The main character in the upper scene is identified as
Menelaus from
Iliad 5.562-3. C. P. Bare,
Achilles and the Roman Aristocrat: The Ambrosian Iliad as a Social Statement in the Late Antique Period, Dissertation, Florida State University, 2009, p. 194
[1] suggests that picture 20 may have Ajax drawing the spear from the body of Amphius and Menesthes and Anchialus killed by Hector, while picture 21 may have Tleopolemus killed by Sarpedon, Odysseus raging against the Lycians, and Sarpedon placed under a tree