Disobedience in the Courtroom: Iliad 18.497–508

This article aims to combine a literary and a detailed linguistic approach to the “trial scene” in the Shield of Achilles. Legal historians attempt to reconstruct a judicial system, encountering textual issues and incompatibilities. Ekphrasis is rarely mentioned, and writings on ekphrasis rarely treat the trial scene in detail when discussing the Shield. A close reading, underpinned by the theory of ekphrasis, is able to address these difficulties. This passage describes a series of alternative dispute solutions, rather than a coherent judicial process. This presentation argues that this makes the passage central to the poetics of the Shield, not an outlier.

PECTORAL FROM TOVSTA MOHYLA AS A REMINISCENCE OF THE SHIELD OF ACHILLES: SEARCHING THE ORIGIN OF IDEA

Pectorals in form of breast decoration of a moon-like shape were not peculiar for the Scythian culture. Many ideas on manufacturing the pectoral, which was found by B. Mozolevsky in 1971 during the Tovsta Mohyla excavations, were borrowed by the craftsman from the other culture environment. By the opinion of many researchers, the influence of different traditions of the ancient Greek art is easy-to-see in the pectoral’s composition. Besides, it is inheriting in frieze forming similarelly to sculptural compositions fronton of the Parthenon, borrowing motives of floral ornaments, coin plots etc. But the creative work of the author of pectoral could have been influenced not only by decorative art but the literary monument too. To the latter the Homer’s «Iliad» can be named, especially its 18th playsong, which describes Hephaestus manufacturing the Shield of Achilles. It is interesting that the Pectoral from Tovsta Mohyla was compared with the Shield of Achilles by many researchers (I. V. Yatsenko, L. A. Lelekov and D. S. Rayevsky, V. Y. Mukhaylin). As at its core both Shield of Achilles and the pectoral are pieces of art of high artistic merit, which represent world cosmologic pictures with the help of the opposite action areas made with high relief figures. The breast collars, which are widely known by the findings of Thrace and Macedonia, could lead to generation of ideas that influenced the pectoral’s invention. Such breast collars actually were small hanging shields, which protected in battle the warrior’s weakest spot. By their form and functions they are close to peltes — light skin shields of a moon-like shape. Such peltes were not only well known by toreuts who worked on the Scythians’ orders, but also were recreated by them in battle-pieces on the comb from Soloha and on the calathus from Vylyka Blysnytsya. So it can be considered that the pectoral’s conception was based on the different but connected ideas, borrowed by the craftsman from the military sphere. As a result of the composed transformation of the association chain the Shield of Achilles — Peltes shield — breast collars (or vise versa) and synthesis of several ideas, there was formed a general vision of the pectoral with the corresponding shape, composition structure and separate ornamental patterns.

Virgil’s Solitary Spheres

This chapter argues that Virgil was a poet not only of cosmos and of empire, but also of individuals. It analyzes, by turns, the solitude of figures, of language, and of literature in the Georgics and the Aeneid. It argues that the Georgics is a poem for humans, but not of them, culminating in the story of Orpheus and in the mannered circularity suggested by the Georgics’ revolutionary envoi. The chapter looks to Virgil’s adaptation of Homer’s Shield of Achilles as a touchstone for the poet’s solitary model of poetic composition and of reading, testing it against the poem’s narrative joints. From scenes of soliloquy to dream scenes, solitude, it shows, is a characteristic quality of the poem’s settings, figures, form and its poet’s persona, that last of which, the chapter argues, contributed to the biographical tradition’s Lives of Virgil from antiquity to the Renaissance.

VISUALIZING THE SHIELD OF ACHILLES: APPROACHING ITS LANDSCAPES VIA COGNITIVE PATHS

My investigation into the cognitive aspects of landscape description takes as its focus the landscapes that the poet evokes on the Shield of Achilles (Il. 18.478–608). Drawing on studies in cognitive psychology I note the extent to which an audience might derive a ‘spatial mental model’ from the topographical or ‘locative’ indicators that the Homeric poet offers. Then I consider the ‘non-locative’ information that the poet conveys about the landscapes of the Shield. In this connection I develop Barbara Tversky's notion of landscape representation as a ‘cognitive collage’. What makes the scenes on the Shield vivid, however, is human presence. Finally, therefore, I draw on enactivist theories of cognition, recently introduced into Classics, which offer a valuable supplementary approach to ‘reading’ and enjoying landscape descriptions in Homer.

Metapoetic Readings around Ekphrasis and Fu 賦

The author argues that the Greek tradition of ekphrasis and the Chinese genre of fu 賦 share at least two essential characteristics: they are devoted to exhaustive descriptions and are manifestly nonmetaphorical. The six texts under scrutiny—Mei Sheng's fu poem “Qi fa,” book 6 of Quintilian's Institutio oratoria, Zuo Si's preface to his “Sandu fu,” Xunzi's analysis of Zhou tombs and funerary rituals in his “Li lun” essay, the “Shield of Achilles” episode in the Iliad, and the metaphorical section of Sima Xiangru's “Shanglin fu”—all employ a similar set of rhetorical strategies but with different emphases. A reading of one in light of the others reveals new information about Chinese and Western theories of representation and metaphoricity. For example, Homer makes his audience alternate between belief and disbelief in the scenes engraved on Achilles's shield. A similar to-and-fro movement in Xunzi's ekphrastic text is configured very differently. By contrast, the abrupt change in mode of expression from ekphrasis to metaphor at the end of “Shanglin fu” emphasizes the key themes of that poem: the shift from excess to frugality, from hedonistic pleasure seeking to ritualized asceticism, and from aristocratic (and thus vulgar) display of wealth to a royal celebration of purity and introspection.

The Shield of Achilles using 3D Technologies to Support Teaching Scenarios of Homeric Epics

The “Shield of Achilles” is an effort to teach in an interdisciplinary way both the teaching subjects of Ancient Greek (Omer’s Iliad) and Informatics (3D modelling and printing), that took place in the 1st Junior High School of Vrilissia, Athens, during the school year 2017-2018 [13]. Students of B grade of Junior High School (ages 13-14), on a voluntarily basis, separated into groups of 4, created in a 3D design environment the “Shield of Achilles” as were taught during the subject of Ancient Greek and according to the description of the shield given by Homer in his poem “Iliad”. The most of the shields were eventually printed out using the 3D printer of the computer lab. The aim of the project was to support teaching between STEM and Classical subjects, co-create and implement integrated models inspired by STEM and classical disciplines and to investigate the behavior of students through a school program based in both formal and non-formal educational approaches. Part of the program was supported through the school’s curriculum, part of the program had to be implemented out of school hours. After the completion of the project students responded to a questionnaire prepared by the teachers in a google form format. The most important results of this questionnaire are discussed in this work.

A Debate on the Relationship between Poetry and Politics in W.H. Auden’s In Memory of W.B. Yeats and A. Ostriker’s Elegy before the War

W.H. Auden’s In Memoriam W.B. Yeats and A. Ostriker’s Elegy Before the War are two pre-war elegies, in which personal and political dimensions are juxtaposed. W.H. Auden’s poem portrays the death of a celebrity against the background of the perplexing 1930s when there was evident growing anxiety about Facism and its repercussions. In her long, 7-section work, A. Ostriker not only commemorates her dead mother, she also formulates a very powerfully articulated anti-war manifesto, in which she both denounces American imperialism during the 2nd Iraq war and questions the meaning of war and violence. W.H. Auden’s elegy serves as a starting point for a debate A. Ostriker sparks over the role of poetry and its relationship with politics. When analysed together with the author’s essays on poetry, their other famous poems and their post-war elegies (The Shield of Achilles and TheEight and Thirteenth), the two poems taken under examination display that the poets’ stance concerning the role of poetry is neither explicit nor consistent. It is interesting also how the debate can be perceived in the context of a dilemma signaled in A. Ostriker’s Poem Sixty Years After Auschwitz where the poet deliberates over what should be the appropriate shape and tone of poetry after the Holocaust.