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The Sarpedon vase was once the pride of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. This cocktail shaker, made by the Athenian potter Oxiteos and the painter Euphronios, is actually only 45.7 Centimeters high, but that does not prevent it from becoming the first ancient Greek pottery bottle to sell for a million dollars on the art market, nor does it prevent a series of bizarre events comparable to Hollywood suspense blockbusters from being related to it. In this book, British classical scholar Nigel Spivey will lead us to a "close" appreciation of this "hot pot" (the nickname of the pottery bottle) from the late 6th century BC, to see why it is so small and expensive, why it seems to always be "scandalous", and most importantly - the image of "Death and Sleep carrying Sarpedon's corpse" on the bottle, especially the arm of the dead, has affected the inheritance and development of Western art for thousands of years.