Sarpedon, in Greek legend, son of Zeus, the king of the gods, and Laodameia, the daughter of Bellerophon; he was a Lycian prince and a hero in the Trojan War. As recounted in Homer’s Iliad, Book XVI, Sarpedon fought with distinction on the side of the Trojans but was slain by the Greek warrior Patroclus. A struggle took place for the possession of his body until Apollo rescued it from the Greeks, washed it, anointed it with ambrosia, and handed it over to Hypnos and Thanatos (Sleep and Death), by whom it was conveyed for burial to Lycia. This episode is illustrated on the famous Euphronius Vase, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.
In later tradition, found in Apollodorus’s Library and Epitome, Book III, Sarpedon was the son of Zeus and Europa and the brother of King Minos of Crete. Expelled from Crete by Minos, he and his comrades sailed for Asia Minor, where he finally became king of Lycia. There a sanctuary (Sarpedoneum) was erected in his honour.