The Shield of Achilles--Again!

Many artists have created their own image of the shield of Achilles so that we can see it the way Homer did and understand its meaning in the Iliad. We are also to understand, I think, that the shield belongs with us now as much as it did twenty-seven-hundred and some years ago.

W. H. Auden, in his poem "Shield of Achilles," gives us a glimpse of the armor of an immortal Achaean hero going to his destiny and compares him with our latter-day anti-heroes. (On this theme, I highly recommend the graphic novel, Watchmen, by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. New York: Warner Books, 1987.)

Cy Twombly, in his painting Shield of Achilles, shows us the passion that drove Achilles to absent himself from the fight as well as the resolution that led him to return. Now he can take up the battle and triumph over Hector.

And my friend Todd, reference librarian, artist, and Bronze-Age reenactor, will soon present us with a
 a bronze replica of the shield as Homer describes it in Richmond Lattimore's translation of the Iliad of Homer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951). He has created a sketch similar to the diagram Malcolm  M. Willcock gives in A Companion to the Iliad (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1976) and has drawn the figures that will populate each round of the shield.  He plans to incise the figures in the bronze.

Diagram of the shield of Achilles as shown in Malcolm M. Willcock's work.