(click on any image to see it at its original size)
(click on any image to see it at its original size)
I want to give you some perspective on what the Dark Age Greeks accomplished with the Iliad. I've shown you a number of Mycenaean artifacts. These show two types of Mycenaean shields. No actual shields have survived because the Mycenaeans made shields out of wood covered by animal hides, so they have disintegrated over time, unlike metal objects, like this dagger made of gold and bronze. The Homeric dagger has an inlaid decoration showing warriors with shields. The rectangular one is known as a "tower" shield. The second greatest Greek warrior of the Trojan War, Ajax, used this sort of shield.
The other type is a figure-8 shield, so-called because, well, it looks like a figure-8.
In the Dark Age, the Homeric bards had this inherited tradition of how Bronze Age shields were made, and there are short references to them in the Iliad. They also had a Dark Age tradition of decorating shields and bowls with various scenes, such as on this shield from the island of Crete. All these elements and more come together in Book 18 of the Iliad. The gods, specifically the blacksmith Hephaestus, make Achilles a brand-new shield and there is a 130-line description of the shield (18.478-608).
What can you say about a shield for 130 lines? What the Homeric poets did was describe a shield made of Mycenaean metals, assembled using Mycenaean techniques, but with scenes laid out according to a Dark Age design, and showing a panorama of Dark Age life. It is the world of the Dark Ages in Bronze Age trappings, much like the Iliad itself. The Homeric poets describe a shield inspired by and roughly designed like these decorated shields of the Dark Age. But the materials, bronze, gold and tin, are Mycenaean. The individual scenes described, however, predominantly belong to Dark Age life, though Mycenaean and even Minoan elements creep in. The passage in the Iliad has inspired scholars to attempt reconstructions of Achilles' shield, such as the two drawings you see here.
Ekphrasis
An Englishman even carved a full-scale plastic model
of the shield, as you see on the left. But the achievement of Achilles'
shield goes beyond mere description of an artifact. It is a fully
artistic, literary creation. The technical term for such a literary
description is ekphrasis. The chart on the right is designed
to give some idea of the topics and arrangement of the ekphrasis.
The poet carefully narrates a variety of vignettes, and these vignettes
open up a world different from most of what we see in the Iliad.
Read these episodes carefully. You will find the earth, sun, and
the stars of the night sky (483-489). You will learn about life in
two cities (490-540): in the first, a wedding celebration is a cause for
celebration but there is also a courtroom scene about a murder. In
the other city, armies attack, but the citizens refuse to surrender and
set out an ambush, and the gods assist. A bloody battle ensues, though
we never learn the outcome. Be sure to notice the gold and bronze
which slip in here, more reminiscient of Mycenaean times than the Dark
Ages. After the city, country life takes over. Workers plow
the fields, reap the grain, and their basileus is happy. A
vintage of grapes, herds of cattle and sheep, the former victims to a bloody
attack by a lion, round out country life. The eternally flowing
river of Ocean encircles it all. I will leave it to you to discuss
how this beautiful and violent vision of life fits into the Iliad
as a whole, but I ask you to keep one particular thing in mind when you
do.
Great People before Agamemnon
We have a tendency, and with good reason, to look back
on Homer as the beginning of so many things. The Homeric poems contain
for us the starting points of so much of our literature and culture. But
the poems are also coming after even longer progression and tradition of
cultural blending. But the Myceneaeans, the Minoans, Hittites, Luwians,
and others, more than I have time to even mention--they were very accomplished
and remarkable peoples. We rarely think of them on anything like an individual
basis, except for the occasional Egyptian Pharoah, but many of them were
as brilliant and influential as the individuals lying behind the Trojan
War. In the first century BC, centuries after Homer but two thousand years
before our own day, the Roman poet Horace said Vixere fortes
ante Agamemnona/ multi "Brave men lived before Agamemnon, many of them"
(C. 4.9.25-26). His point was that there were remarkable people
in remote antiquity whose name and accomplishments, no matter how great,
are forever lost to us. We are in a slightly better position than Horace
was to appreciate the deeds of those before Agamemnon. If you occasionally
wonder what Mycenaean or who is behind all this, and when Homer rattles
off another little vignette of some Greek or Trojan dying on the battlefield,
take a moment to honor their memory by thinking of them as an individual,
even if it is someone you only imagine and whose real name and deeds we
will never know again. Do this, so that you can continue the tradition,
so that maybe in three thousand more years, the tradition of remembering
those who came before you will still live, and someone will think of you
in the same way.
If you promise to do that for me, you can go now.
Thank you.