The Shield of Heracles (
Aspis Hērakleous) is a fragment of Greek epic, of 481 lines of
hexameterHexameter is a literary and poetic form, a line consisting of six metrical feet, as in the Iliad. It was the standard epic metre in Greek and became standard for Latin too. It was also used in other types of composition -- in Horace's satires, for instance, and Ovid's Metamorphoses...
s. The theme of the episode is the expedition of
HeraclesIn Greek mythology, Heracles or Herakles , Alcides or Alcaeus , was a divine hero, the son of Zeus and Alcmene, foster son of Amphitryon and great-grandson of Perseus...
and
IolausIn Greek mythology, Iolaus was a Theban divine hero, son of Iphicles, Heracles's brother, and Automedusa.He was famed for being Heracles's nephew and for helping with for some of his Labors...
against
CycnusIn Greek mythology, four people were known as Cycnus or Cygnus. Most of them ended up being transformed into swans. The most famous Cycnus however, was the son of Ares.-Son of Ares:Cycnus was sired upon Pelopia or Pyrene...
, the son of
AresIn Greek mythology, Ares is the son of Zeus and Hera. Though often referred to as the Olympian god of warfare, he is more accurately the god of bloodlust, or slaughter personified: "Ares is apparently an ancient abstract noun meaning throng of battle, war."-Etymology:Ares is the god of war...
, who challenged Heracles to combat as Heracles was passing near Itonus, told in a turgid and laboured diction; the section has apparently survived because of the pleasure taken in its meticulous description of the imagery and vignettes presented in extravagantly high relief on the shield made for Heracles by
HephaestusHephaestus was a Greek god whose Roman equivalent was Vulcan. He was the god of technology, blacksmiths, craftsmen, artisans, sculptors, metals, metallurgy, fire and volcanoes. Like other mythic smiths but unlike most other gods, Hephaestus was lame, which gave him a grotesque appearance in Greek...
.
The Shield of Heracles (
Aspis Hērakleous) is a fragment of Greek epic, of 481 lines of
hexameterHexameter is a literary and poetic form, a line consisting of six metrical feet, as in the Iliad. It was the standard epic metre in Greek and became standard for Latin too. It was also used in other types of composition -- in Horace's satires, for instance, and Ovid's Metamorphoses...
s. The theme of the episode is the expedition of
HeraclesIn Greek mythology, Heracles or Herakles , Alcides or Alcaeus , was a divine hero, the son of Zeus and Alcmene, foster son of Amphitryon and great-grandson of Perseus...
and
IolausIn Greek mythology, Iolaus was a Theban divine hero, son of Iphicles, Heracles's brother, and Automedusa.He was famed for being Heracles's nephew and for helping with for some of his Labors...
against
CycnusIn Greek mythology, four people were known as Cycnus or Cygnus. Most of them ended up being transformed into swans. The most famous Cycnus however, was the son of Ares.-Son of Ares:Cycnus was sired upon Pelopia or Pyrene...
, the son of
AresIn Greek mythology, Ares is the son of Zeus and Hera. Though often referred to as the Olympian god of warfare, he is more accurately the god of bloodlust, or slaughter personified: "Ares is apparently an ancient abstract noun meaning throng of battle, war."-Etymology:Ares is the god of war...
, who challenged Heracles to combat as Heracles was passing near Itonus, told in a turgid and laboured diction; the section has apparently survived because of the pleasure taken in its meticulous description of the imagery and vignettes presented in extravagantly high relief on the shield made for Heracles by
HephaestusHephaestus was a Greek god whose Roman equivalent was Vulcan. He was the god of technology, blacksmiths, craftsmen, artisans, sculptors, metals, metallurgy, fire and volcanoes. Like other mythic smiths but unlike most other gods, Hephaestus was lame, which gave him a grotesque appearance in Greek...
. The work was in antiquity uncritically ascribed to
HesiodHesiod was a Greek oral poet. His date is uncertain but leading scholars , agree that Hesiod lived in the latter half of the eighth century BCE. Since at least Herodotus's time , Hesiod and Homer have generally been considered the earliest Greek poets whose work has survived, and they are often...
, but was probably written in the sixth century BCE, in conscious imitation of a Homeric style: "...even so he fell, and his armour adorned with bronze clashed about him."
To serve as an introduction, fifty-six lines have been taken from a continuation of Hesiod's
Eoiai or
Catalogue of WomenThe Catalogue of Women is an Ancient Greek poem. Ancient writers sometimes attributed it to Hesiod, although the poem contains a few references to events and things after Hesiod's time that could suggest that they were later added or that the epic is of a completely different author...
book IV, in which each section begins,
e oiai, "or, like her who...". The late third-early second century BCE critic
Aristophanes of ByzantiumAristophanes of Byzantium was a Greek scholar, critic and grammarian, particularly renowned for his work in Homeric scholarship, but also for work on other classical authors such as Pindar and Hesiod. Born in Byzantium about 257 BC, he soon moved to Alexandria and studied under Zenodotus and...
noted the borrowing, which was the basis for his conclusion that the Hesiodic poem was not in fact by Hesiod; in modern times two fragments of
papyrus from OxyrhyncusThe Oxyrhynchus papyri are a very numerous group of manuscripts discovered by archaeologists at an ancient rubbish dump near Oxyrhynchus in Egypt. They include thousands of Greek and Latin documents, letters and literary works. They also include a few vellum manuscripts, and more recent Arabic...
have confirmed what critics have understood all along: they give the preceding lines of the
Eoiai continuing into the first lines of the poem itself, demonstrating its place as an interpolation embedded in the Hesiodic poem. The poem takes its cue from the extended description of the shield of Achilles in
IliadThe Iliad is an epic poem recounting significant events during a portion of the final year of the Trojan War — the Greek siege of the city of Ilion — hence the title...
xviii, from which it borrows directly:
- "Strife and Panic were shown at their work, and there was the dreadful Spirit of Death laying her hands on a freshly wounded man who was still alive and another not yet wounded, and dragging a corpse by its foot through the crowd. The cloak on her shoulders was red with human blood" (Iliad xviii.535ff, E.V. Rieu translation).
- "Strife also, and Uproar were hurrying about, and deadly Fate was there holding one man newly wounded, and another unwounded; and one, who was dead, she was dragging by the feet through the tumult. She had on her shoulders a garment red with the blood of men." (Shield of Heracles, lines 156-9).
The
Iliad gives enough detail for its hearers to marvel at
HephaestusHephaestus was a Greek god whose Roman equivalent was Vulcan. He was the god of technology, blacksmiths, craftsmen, artisans, sculptors, metals, metallurgy, fire and volcanoes. Like other mythic smiths but unlike most other gods, Hephaestus was lame, which gave him a grotesque appearance in Greek...
' workmanship. The
Shield of Heracles piles on repetitive description, without gaining added effect:
- "They were bringing the brides through the streets from their homes, to the loud music of the wedding-hymn and the light of blazing torches. Youths accompanied by flute and lyre were whirling in the dance, and the women had come to the doors of their houses to enjoy the show." (Iliad).
- "The men were making merry with festivities and dances; some were bringing home a bride to her husband on a well-wheeled car, while the bridalsong swelled high, and the glow of blazing torches held by handmaidens rolled in waves afar. And these maidens went before, delighting in the festival; and after them came frolicsome choirs, the youths singing soft-mouthed to the sound of shrill pipes, while the echo was shivered around them, and the girls led on the lovely dance to the sound of lyres." (Shield of Heracles).
The round shield's "whole orb shimmered with enamel and white ivory and electrum, and it glowed with shining gold; and there were zones of cyanus drawn upon it."
Cyanus denotes a blue low-fired glass-paste or smalt. At the center was a mask of Fear (
PhobosPhobos is the embodiment of fear and horror in Greek mythology. He is the offspring of Ares and Aphrodite. He was known for accompanying Ares into battle along with his brother, Deimos, the goddess Enyo, and his father’s attendants. Timor is his Roman equivalent.-Genealogy:Phobos is the son of...
) with the staring eyes and teeth of a
gorgonIn Greek mythology, the Gorgon was a terrifying female creature. While descriptions of Gorgons vary across Greek literature, the term commonly refers to any of three sisters who had hair of living, venomous snakes, and a horrifying gaze that turned those who beheld it to stone...
. Though Achilles' shield has nothing about it that might mar its function, the shield of Heracles is a
tour de force of high relief: the vineyard has "shivering leaves and stakes of silver" and the snake heads "would clash their teeth when Amphitryon's son was fighting" and in the ocean vignette the "fishes of bronze were trembling." As for "the horseman
PerseusPerseus , the legendary founder of Mycenae and of the Perseid dynasty there, was the first of the mythic heroes of Greek mythology whose exploits in defeating various archaic monsters provided the founding myths in the cult of the Twelve Olympians...
: his feet did not touch the shield and yet were not far from it—very marvellous to remark, since he was not supported anywhere; for so did the famous
Lame OneHephaestus was a Greek god whose Roman equivalent was Vulcan. He was the god of technology, blacksmiths, craftsmen, artisans, sculptors, metals, metallurgy, fire and volcanoes. Like other mythic smiths but unlike most other gods, Hephaestus was lame, which gave him a grotesque appearance in Greek...
fashion him of gold with his hands."
The extravagant description seems to have encouraged
rhapsodeA rhapsode or, in modern usage, rhapsodist, refers to a classical Greek professional performer of epic poetry in the fifth and fourth centuries BC . Rhapsodes notably performed the epics of Homer but also the wisdom and catalogue poetry of Hesiod and the satires of Archilochus and others...
s to contribute their interpolations, which have been identified and teased apart by modern scholarship. Some similes may strike the careful listener as infelicitous, such as the contrast of glowering with fierce action in "fiercely he stared, like a lion who has come upon a body and full eagerly rips the hide with his strong claws..."
The popularity of
The Shield of Heracles in sixth-century Athens may be assessed from instances where H.A. Shapiro detected its presence in
Attic vase-paintingThanks to its relative durability, pottery is a large part of the archaeological record of Ancient Greece, and because there is so much of it it has exerted a disproportionately large influence on our understanding of Greek society...
between
ca 565 and
ca 480. A
calyx-kraterA krater was a large vase used to mix wine and water in Ancient Greece.-Form and function:...
by
EuphroniosEuphronios was an ancient Greek vase painter and potter, active in Athens in the late 6th and early 5th centuries BC. As part of the so-called "Pioneer Group," Euphronios was one of the most important artists of the red-figure technique...
depicting the minor episode of Heracles' combat with the Thessalian brigand Kyknos occasioned Shapiro's examination of the myth's creative reworking among Attic vase-painters, who based their imagery of Heracle's shield on the literary model. The likelihood of both oral and literary transmission during the same time is noted by Janko (1986:40).
The
Shield of Heracles was first printed, included with the complete works of Hesiod, by
Aldus ManutiusAldus Pius Manutius , the Latinized name of Teobaldo Mannucci, sometimes called Aldus Manutius, the Elder, to distinguish him from his grandson, Aldus Manutius, the Younger, was an Italian humanist who became a printer and publisher when he founded the Aldine Press at Venice.His publishing legacy...
, in Venice, 1495; the text was from
ByzantineThe word Byzantine may refer to:Topics directly related to the Byzantine Empire* A citizen of The Byzantine Empire, or native Greek during the Middle Ages...
manuscripts. In modern times several
papyriPapyrus is a thick paper-like material produced from the pith of the papyrus plant, Cyperus papyrus, a wetland sedge that was once abundant in the Nile Delta of Egypt....
have offered sections of the text, notably a first-century papyrus in Berlin (Berlin Papyri, 9774), a second-century papyrus from
OxyrhynchusOxyrhynchus is a city in Upper Egypt, located about 160 km south-southwest of Cairo, in the governorate of Al Minya. It is also an archaeological site, considered one of the most important ever discovered...
(Oxyrhynchus Papyri 689), and the fourth-century Rainer Papyrus (L.P. 21-29) at Vienna. There are numerous texts from the twelfth to the fifteenth century.
Compare
VirgilPublius Vergilius Maro was a classical Roman poet, best known for three major works—the Eclogues , the Georgics, and the Aeneid—although several minor poems are also attributed to him.The son of a farmer, Virgil came to be...
's "Shield of Aeneas" (
AeneidThe Aeneid is a Latin epic poem written by Virgil in the late 1st century BC that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Trojan who traveled to Italy, where he became the ancestor of the Romans. It is written in dactylic hexameter...
viii.617-731) and the much briefer description of Crenaeus' shield in
ThebaidThe Thebaid or Thebais is the region of ancient Egypt containing the thirteen southernmost nomes of Upper Egypt, from Abydos to Aswan...
ix.332-338.
Marcus Mettius EpaphroditusMarcus Mettius Epaphroditus of Chaeroneia was an Ancient Greek grammarian of the first century.Epaphroditus was a disciple of Archias of Alexandria, and became the slave and afterwards the freedman of Modestus, the prefect of Egypt, whose son Pitelinus had been educated by Epaphroditus...
wrote a commentary on the
Shield of Heracles in the first century CE.
Sources
- The Shield of Heracles: e-text (English translation by Hugh G. Evelyn-White, 1914)
- Lattimore, Richmond
Richmond Alexander Lattimore was an American poet and translator known for his translations of the Greek classics, especially his versions of the Iliad and Odyssey, which are generally considered as among the best English translations available.Born to David and Margaret Barnes Lattimore in...
, Hesiod: The Works and Days, Theogony, and the Shield of Heracles (Ann Arbor) 1970.
- Athanassakis, Apostolos
Apostolos N. Athanassakis is a classical scholar and Argyropoulos Chair in Hellenic Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara . Professor Athanassakis, or "Professor A" as he is often referred to by students, currently serves as the faculty in residence in Manzanita Village....
. Hesiod: Theogony, Works and Days and The Shield of Heracles (1983) Translation, introduction and commentary.
- Janko, Richard "The Shield of Heracles and the Legend of Cycnus" The Classical Quarterly New Series, 36.1 (1986), pp. 38-59. Bibliography of the genesis of The Shield of Heracles p 38 note 1.