Shield Of Achilles In Homer's Iliad
Shield of Achilles
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For other uses, see Shield of Achilles (disambiguation).
The shield 's design as interpreted by Angelo Monticelli, from Le Costume Ancien ou Moderne, ca. 1820.
The Shield of Achilles is the shield that Achilles uses in his fight with Hector, famously described in a passage in Book 18, lines 478–608 of Homer 's Iliad.
In the poem, Achilles has lost his armour after lending it to his companion Patroclus. Patroclus has been killed in battle by Hector and his weapons taken as spoils. Achilles ' mother Thetis asks the god Hephaestus to provide replacement armor for her son.
The passage describing the shield is an early example of ecphrasis (a literary description of a work of visual art) and influenced many later poems, including the Shield of Heracles once attributed to Hesiod.[1] Virgil 's description of the shield of Aeneas in Book Eight of the Aeneid is clearly modelled on Homer. The poem The Shield of Achilles …show more content…
One interpretation is that the shield is simply a physical encapsulation of the entire world. The shield’s layers are a series of contrasts – i.e. war and peace, work and festival, although the presence of a murder in the city at peace suggests that man is never fully free of conflict. Wolfgang Schadewaldt, a German writer, argues that these intersecting antitheses show the basic forms of a civilized, essentially orderly life.[3] This contrast is also seen as a way of making “us…see [war] in relation to peace.[4]" The shield’s description falls between the fight over Patroclus’ body and Achilles’ reentry into battle, the latter being the impetus to one of the poem’s bloodiest parts. Consequently, the shield could be read as a “calm before an impending doom,” used to emphasize the brutality of violence during the Trojan War. It could also be read as a reminder to the reader of what will be lost once Troy ultimately
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For other uses, see Shield of Achilles (disambiguation).
The shield 's design as interpreted by Angelo Monticelli, from Le Costume Ancien ou Moderne, ca. 1820.
The Shield of Achilles is the shield that Achilles uses in his fight with Hector, famously described in a passage in Book 18, lines 478–608 of Homer 's Iliad.
In the poem, Achilles has lost his armour after lending it to his companion Patroclus. Patroclus has been killed in battle by Hector and his weapons taken as spoils. Achilles ' mother Thetis asks the god Hephaestus to provide replacement armor for her son.
The passage describing the shield is an early example of ecphrasis (a literary description of a work of visual art) and influenced many later poems, including the Shield of Heracles once attributed to Hesiod.[1] Virgil 's description of the shield of Aeneas in Book Eight of the Aeneid is clearly modelled on Homer. The poem The Shield of Achilles …show more content…
One interpretation is that the shield is simply a physical encapsulation of the entire world. The shield’s layers are a series of contrasts – i.e. war and peace, work and festival, although the presence of a murder in the city at peace suggests that man is never fully free of conflict. Wolfgang Schadewaldt, a German writer, argues that these intersecting antitheses show the basic forms of a civilized, essentially orderly life.[3] This contrast is also seen as a way of making “us…see [war] in relation to peace.[4]" The shield’s description falls between the fight over Patroclus’ body and Achilles’ reentry into battle, the latter being the impetus to one of the poem’s bloodiest parts. Consequently, the shield could be read as a “calm before an impending doom,” used to emphasize the brutality of violence during the Trojan War. It could also be read as a reminder to the reader of what will be lost once Troy ultimately