Achilles' Shield

What It Is

Achilles' shield is the central piece of the new armor that Hephaestus forges at the request of Thetis, after Hector took from the body of Patroclus the armor the gods had given to Peleus. It is a large, strong shield of five layers, with a triple, gleaming rim and a silver strap, and on it the god engraves first the world, with earth, sky, sea, sun, moon, and the constellations, and then two cities of men, the plowing, the vineyard, the herd, a dance, and, on the rim, the river Oceanus. The poet spends more than a hundred verses on the shield and dispatches the cuirass, the helmet, and the greaves in four.

Where It Appears

The scene begins in Book XVIII. Achilles has accepted that he will die soon after Hector, but he cannot return to battle without arms, and Thetis goes up to Olympus to fetch them. She finds Hephaestus in his bronze house, busy with twenty tripods that walk on their own to the assembly of the gods. The god recalls that she saved him when he was flung from heaven, promises the arms, and says in advance what his craft cannot reach:

The shield comes first, and the poet describes it scene by scene. Hephaestus engraves the world first of all:

Two cities follow. In the first there are weddings, with brides led out by torchlight, and a dispute in the square over the price of a dead man, which the elders judge, with two talents of gold placed in the middle for whoever pronounces the straightest verdict:

Around the other city two armies encamp, the besieged set an ambush by the bank of a river, and the fighting brings the powers of war into the midst of men:

Then come the plowed field, where reapers receive a cup of wine at each turn, the estate of the king, where harvesters work under the silent gaze of the sovereign with a scepter in hand, the golden vineyard with a boy who plays the lyre, the herd attacked by two lions, and the sheep pasture. In front of the field, the narrator interrupts the description to praise the work:

The last scene of people is a dance, which the poet compares to another, made by a human craftsman:

And the rim closes the circle that earth, sky, and sea had opened:

In Book XIX, Thetis places the armor before Achilles, and it rings: the Myrmidons recoil, without the courage to look at it, and Achilles feels his wrath grow and delights in holding the god's splendid gifts.

As he arms himself in the middle of the army, he takes up the shield, whose brilliance carries as far as the moon's and which the narrator compares to the light of a bonfire seen by sailors carried off by a storm.

The shield undergoes its first test in Book XX. Aeneas throws a spear at it, Achilles holds the shield away from his body, fearing that the point will pierce it, and the gold that Hephaestus set among the five layers, two of bronze, two of tin, and one of gold, stops the spear. Achilles replies and pierces two rings of Aeneas's shield. In Book XXI, Asteropaeus throws two spears at once: one strikes the shield, and the gold given by the god stops the point. In the final duel, in Book XXII, Achilles advances, covering his chest with the beautiful shield, and Hector's spear strikes the center of it and falls far off.

What It Means

The description shows peace and war in the same object. Most of the scenes are of people outside the war, with marriage, tribunal, plowing, harvest, vineyard, herd, and dance. War appears in a siege and in an ambush, and it is there that Strife, Tumult, and Ker enter the scene and drag the dead away from one another, without the poet adding any judgment. In the ambush, the figures act like living mortals, and the next image is already of soft plowed field, plowed three times.

Whoever is to use this object has just accepted his own death. The text does not say what Achilles sees in the scenes: the description is the poet's, and the first time the hero holds the shield in his hands comes in the next book. The tribunal on the shield invites comparison with Book I, where a dispute over a prize ended in a quarrel between chiefs, whereas in the engraved square it is resolved in public, with an arbiter and a reward for the straightest verdict. The shield does not draw the comparison; the reader is the one who draws it. In Book XXIII, the same Achilles concedes, corrects, and interrupts at the games, as arbiter.

Hephaestus separates with precision what his craft can and cannot do: he gives arms that everyone will admire and does not hide the hero from death. The arms are beautiful and the end remains the same, and Thetis, who knows this, goes up to Olympus nonetheless to fetch them.

The shield places war within the world, not at its center. The ambush and the Ker that drags the dead take up one panel, and soon after, the field, the harvest, the vineyard, and the dance go on as if nothing had happened. One can read this as a reminder of what war interrupts, the life that Achilles stops living when he accepts a short death, or as an extension of the world, in which war is one thing men do, alongside the tribunal and the dance. The poet does not choose, and the gold that darkens like plowed earth, a wonder according to the narrator, reminds us that the object is a work of art before it is a commentary.

Relationships

• Standard themes: War, Death, Loss and Grief.
• Characters: Achilles, Thetis, Hector, Patroclus.
• Neighboring symbols: the armor of Achilles, of which the shield is the central piece, and the scepter of Agamemnon, because the elders of the tribunal and the king of the harvest hold scepters on the shield.