Representations
Among very few representations of Protesilaus, a sculpture by Deinomenes is just a passing mention in Pliny's Natural History; the outstanding surviving examples are two Roman copies of a lost mid-fifth century Greek bronze original represent Protesilaus at his defining moment, one of them in a torso the British Museum, the other at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Metropolitan's sculpture of a heroically nude helmeted warrior stands on a forward-slanting base, looking down and slightly to his left, with his right arm raised, prepared to strike, would not be identifiable, save by comparison made by Gisela Richter with a torso of the same model and its associated slanting base, schematically carved as the prow of a ship encircled by waves: Protesilaus about to jump ashore.
If Euripides' tragedy, Protesilaos, had survived, his name would be more familiar today.
The poem in the Palatine Anthology (VII.141) on Protesilaus by Antiphilus of Byzantium in turn inspired F. L. Lucas's poem 'The Elms of Protesilaus' (1927).
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