The Dead King and his Three Sons

In the version known to the Christian Middle Ages, a king wrote in his will that his corpse should be tied to a tree and his three sons told to shoot arrows at it.

[3] This is found in the Gesta Romanorum, a Latin work of the thirteenth century that is a "collection of moralized anecdotes and tales intended as a manual for preachers".

[3] Solomon is the chief judge of the contest in many versions, and regarding the story as an example of the kingly settlement of disputes, led to it being illustrated in some lavish biblical illuminated manuscripts for the French and other courts.

The father is variously described as a strong warrior, a very noble king, a Roman Emperor called Polemius, or a "prince de Saissone".

[6] The earliest depiction in art may be in three small roundel illustrations in an illuminated psalter of the later 14th century in the Morgan Library & Museum (MS 183), at the page with Psalm 51 (52).

[9] As printed versions in vernacular languages of the Gesta Romanorum began to appear in the late 15th century, the depiction of the scene increased.

[3] These included engravings by Mair von Landshut and Master MZ (probably Matthäus Zasinger of Munich), both of around 1500, and an anonymous early 16th-century drawing.

[13] It is typical of the obscurity of the subject that this print was called a Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian by the great cataloguer Adam Bartsch.

[14] The subject takes the full side of a cassone painted by Francesco Bacchiacca of 1523, now in the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden, probably the best known of all depictions.

[18] Diodorus does indeed recount an inheritance dispute between the sons of this king,[19] but makes it clear it was settled by more conventional means, namely a civil war.