Ekphrasis at the forge and the forging of ekphrasis: the ‘shield of Achilles’ in Graeco-Roman word and image
2013; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 29; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/02666286.2012.663612
ISSN1943-2178
Autores Tópico(s)Classical Antiquity Studies
ResumoAbstract The Homeric description of the shield of Achilles (Iliad 18.478–608) is Western literature's earliest and most influential attempt to evoke images in words. This article examines the passage anew, demonstrating not only its paradigmatic concern with the collaborative and competing resources of word and picture, but also its significance in forging ideas about ekphrasis in the ancient world. By revisiting the passage and subsequent Graeco-Roman responses to it, the study analyses the complex ways in which Homeric epic figured and described image–text relations. At the same time, the article uses the reception of the passage among subsequent writers and artists to showcase the sophistication with which ancient critical traditions theorised ekphrasis at large. Keywords: shield of AchillesHomerekphrasisancient Greece and Rome Acknowledgements This paper (submitted in June 2011) has grown out of a larger project on the Tabulae Iliacae and the cultures of Graeco-Roman ekphrasis, funded by the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung between 2008 and 2010, and carried out in the wonderful surroundings of the Winckelmann-Institut für Klassische Archaäologie, Humboldt-Universitaät zu Berlin. In addition to the journal's editors and two anonymous reviewers, I am grateful to Luca Giuliani (my academic host in Berlin), John Henderson (the most generous of readers), and Georg Gerleigner (who assisted in the final copy-editing). Needless to say, all errors are my own. Notes 1 – Of the many discussions of Il. 18.478–608, I have particularly benefited from the following: Walter Marg, Homer über die Dichtung (Münster: Aschendorff, 1957), 20–37; Wolfgang Schadewaldt, Von Homers Welt und Werke : Aufsätze und Auslegungen zur homerischen Frage, 4th ed. (Stuttgart: K.F. Koehler, 1965), 352–74; Kenneth John Atchity, Homer's Iliad: The Shield of Memory (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1978), 158–87; Oliver Taplin, 'The Shield of Achilles within the Iliad,' Greece and Rome 27 (1980): 1–21; Michael Lynn-George, Epos: Word, Narrative and the Iliad (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1987), 174–200; Mark W. Edwards, ed., The Iliad: A Commentary, vol. 5, Books 17–20 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 200–33; Calvin S. Byre, 'Narration, Description, and Theme in the Shield of Achilles,' The Classical Journal 88 (1992): 33–42; Thomas K. Hubbard, 'Nature and Art in the Shield of Achilles,' Arion 2 (1992): 16–41; James A.W. Heffernan, The Museum of Words: The Poetics of Ekphrasis from Homer to Ashberry (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1993), 10–22; John Henderson, 'Illuminatio mea: Hendanceson (Taplin's Shield),' Liverpool Classical Monthly 18 (1993): 58–62; Keith Stanley, The Shield of Homer: Narrative Structure in the Iliad (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1993), 3–26; Andrew Sprague Becker, The Shield of Achilles and the Poetics of Ekphrasis (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1995); Erika Simon, 'Der Schild des Achilleus,' in Beschreibungskunst — Kunstbeschreibung: Ekphrasis von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, ed. Gottfried Boehm and Helmut Pfotenhauer (Munich: W. Fink, 1995), 123–41; Danièle Aubriot, 'Imago Iliadis: Le bouclier d'Achille et la poésie de l'Iliade,' Kernos 12 (1999): 9–56; Maureen Alden, Homer Beside Himself: Para-Narratives in the Iliad (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 48–73; Françoise Frontisi-Ducroux, "'Avec son diaphragme visionnaire: ἰ δ υ ί ῃ σ ι π ρ α π ί δ ε σ σ ι", Iliade XVIII, 481. À propos du bouclier d'Achille', Revue des études grecques 115 (2002): 463–84; Oliver Primavesi, 'Bild und Zeit: Lessings Poetik des natürlichen Zeichens und die Homerische Ekphrasis,' in Klassische Philologie Inter Disciplinas: Aktuelle Konzepte zu Gegenstand und Methode eines Grundlagenfaches, ed. Jürgen Paul Schwindt (Heidelberg: Winter, 2002), 187–2011, esp. 192–208; Luca Giuliani, Bild und Mythos:Geschichte der Bilderzählung in der griechischen Kunst (Munich: C.H. Beck, 2003), 39–47; Stephen Scully, 'Reading the Shield of Achilles: Terror, Anger, Delight,' Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 101 (2003): 29–47; James A. Francis, 'Metal Maidens, Achilles' Shield and Pandora: The Beginnings of "Ekphrasis",' American Journal of Philology 130 (2009): 1–23, esp. 8–13; Anne-Marie Lecoq, Le bouclier d'Achille: un tableau qui borge (Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 2010); Alex C. Purves, Space and Time in Ancient Greek Narrative (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 46–55; Matteo d'Acunto and Riccardo Palmisciano, eds., Lo scudo di Achille nell'Iliade: esperienze ermeneutiche a confronto (Pisa: F. Serra, 2010). 2 – For an English translation, see Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Laocoön: An Essay on the Limits of Painting and Poetry, trans. Edward Allen McCormick (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984), esp. 91–103 [chs. 18–19], along with discussion in Becker, Shield of Achilles, 13–22. 3 – Following the definition of Heffernan, Museum of Words, 3–4; cf. Murray Krieger, Ekphrasis: The Illusion of the Natural Sign (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), xv, labelling the shield of Achilles 'a verbal representation of a fictional visual representation, and thus representation at a second remove'. Typical of such approaches is Shahar Bram's article on 'ekphrasis as a shield', published in this journal, and concerned especially with the Homeric paradigm (Shahar Bram, 'Ekphrasis as a Shield: Ekphrasis and the Mimetic Tradition,' Word & Image 22, no. 4 (2006): 372–78): according to Bram, not only is the Homeric shield the paradigmatic example of ekphrasis, but it also figured its own figuratively 'defensive' role, offering 'sanctuary from the flow of time (and its concomitant, death) in the fleeting stillness of the depicted object' (375). 4 – For an excellent introduction, see Jaś Elsner, 'Introduction: The Genres of Ekphrasis,' Ramus 31 (2002): 1–18, labelling the Homeric description 'the paradigm of a leisurely descriptive intervention about a work of art within a long narrative' (p. 3). 5 – On the word's derivation, cf. below, n. 58. The bibliography on ekphrasis in Graeco-Roman literature is too large to survey here: for some critical reviews, see e.g. Elsner, 'Introduction: The Genres of Ekphrasis'; Shadi Bartsch and Jaś Elsner, 'Introduction: Eight Ways of Looking at Ekphrasis,' Classical Philology 102 (2007): i–vi; Michael J. Squire, Image and Text in Graeco-Roman Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 139–46. 6 – See Ruth Webb, 'Ekphrasis Ancient and Modern: The Invention of a Genre,' Word & Image 15, no. 1 (1999): 7–18, esp. 11–15. Webb develops her arguments elsewhere (e.g. eadem, 'Picturing the Past: Uses of Ekphrasis in the Deipnosophistae and Other Works of the Second Sophistic,' in Athenaeus and his World: Reading Culture in the Roman Empire, ed. David. Braund and John Wilkins [Exeter: Exeter University Press, 2000], 218–26, at 221, and above all eadem, Ekphrasis, Imagination and Persuasion in Ancient Rhetorical Theory and Practice [Farnham: Ashgate, 2009], 1–38). For further discussions, see e.g. Shadi Bartsch, Decoding the Ancient Novel: The Reader and the Role of Description in Heliodorus and Achilles Tatius (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), 10, n.10; M.D. Lauxtermann, 'What is an Epideictic Epigram?,' Mnemosyne 51 (1998): 525–37, esp. 528–29; Graham Zanker, 'Pictorial Description as a Supplement for Narrative: The Labour of Augeas' Stables in Heracles Leontophones,' American Journal of Philology 117 (1996): 411–23, at 412, n.5; idem, 'New Light on the Literary Category of "Ekphrastic Epigram" in Antiquity: The New Posidippus (col. X 7 — XI 19 P. Mil. Vogl. VIII 309),' Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 143 (2003): 59–62, at 59–60; idem, Modes of Viewing in Hellenistic Poetry and Art (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2004), 6–7; Michael J. Squire, 'Making Myron's Cow Moo? Ecphrastic Epigram and the Poetics of Simulation', American Journal of Philology 131 (2010): 589–634, esp. 592–93. 7 – Webb, Ekphrasis, Imagination and Persuasion, 1; eadem, 'Ekphrasis Ancient and Modern,' 13. Cf. ibid. 7: 'By a sort of etymological magic, the Greek word is even seen to bear its meaning inscribed within it'. Webb supposes that Leo Spitzer was the first to define 'ekphrasis as an essentially poetic genre' in his 1955 essay on Keats's 'Ode on a Grecian Urn' (ibid., 10–11, and eadem, Ekphrasis, Imagination and Persuasion, 33–36, on Leo Spitzer, Essays on English and American Literature, ed. Anna Hatcher [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1962], 72). 8 – Lynn-George, Epos, 178. Cf. Heffernan, Museum of Words, 14: 'Exactly what Hephaestus wrought on the shield is ultimately impossible to visualize'; John Hollander, The Gazer's Spirit: Poems Speaking to Silent Works of Art (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 8: 'nowhere does the ecphrasis of the images indicate relative placement on the shield's disc'. Others have been rather more optimistic, as when Lessing, Laocoön, 94–95 [ch. 18] declares that 'Homer … has described his shield … so exactly and in such detail that it was not difficult for modern artists to produce a drawing of it exactly in every part [eine in allen Stücken übereinstimmende Zeichnung darnach zu machen]'. 9 – Some ancient readers certainly understood the description in these terms, interpreting it as cosmological allegory — a 'replication of the cosmos' (κόσμου μίμημα), as one scholion put it (ad Aratus, Phaen. 26: see Jean Martin, ed., Scholia in Aratum Vetera [Stuttgart: Teubner, 1974], 71). When Ovid has Ajax refer to the shield, he does so in similar terms — as 'a shield engraved with the image of the vast world' (clipeus uasti caelatus imagine mundi: Met. 13.110; cf. Philip Hardie, 'Imago mundi: Cosmological and Ideological Aspects of the Shield of Achilles,' Journal of Hellenic Studies 105 [1985]: 11–23, at 16–17). 10 – On the Homeric ring-composition, with the figure of Ocean opening and closing the description, see e.g. Page DuBois, History, Rhetorical Description and the Epic (Cambridge: Brewer, 1982), 17; Stanley, Shield of Homer, 9–13; Becker, Shield of Achilles, 147–48. 11 – See Byre, 'Narration, Description, and Theme,' 33–34. Of course, the actual structure is somewhat more complicated because of the numerous internal connections: see Stanley, Shield of Homer, esp. 9–13. 12 – According to Taplin, 'Shield of Achilles,' 12, 'it is as though Homer has allowed us temporarily to stand back from the poem and see it in its place — like a "detail" from the reproduction of a painting — within a larger landscape, a landscape which is usually blotted from sight by the all-consuming narrative in the foreground'. Edwards, The Iliad: A Commentary, 200–09, provides a good survey of different perspectives, while Alden, Homer Beside Himself, 48–73, analyses how the passage serves as 'the nearest thing in the whole poem to the poet's view of the events he is describing' (p. 54). Frontisi-Ducroux, "'Avec son diaphragme visionnaire"', 481, n.60, nicely captures the point when she writes that 'le bouclier d'Achille serait ainsi à l'Iliade ce qu'est la lanterne magique à la Recherche du temps perdu.' 13 – See Stanley, Shield of Homer, esp. 3–26. 14 – Mark Stansbury-O'Donnell, 'Reading Pictorial Narrative: The Law Court Scene of the Shield of Achilles,' in The Ages of Homer: A Tribute to Emily Townsend Vermeule, ed. Jane B. Carter and Sarah P. Morris (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995), 315–34, provides one of the best Anglophone discussions. 15 – Klaus Fittschen, 'Der Schild des Achilleus,' Archaeologia Homerica 2 (1973): N.1.1–28, lists some of the various attempts to reconstruct the shield from the sixteenth century onwards (pp. 3–4); cf. the more detailed discussion of Lecoq, Le bouclier d'Achille, 117–237. For a stimulating analysis of the rhetoric that underlies such material reconstructions of literary ekphrasis, see Jodi Cranston, 'Longing for the Lost: Ekphrasis, Rivalry, and the Figuration of Notional Artworks in Renaissance Painting,' Word & Image 27, no. 2 (2011): 212–19: Cranston relates the phenomenon 'to the longing for presence central to representation and foregrounded in the gap that exists between texts and images' (p. 217). 16 – Crucial here is Becker, Shield of Achilles, 51–77, comparing the descriptions of other artworks in the Iliad; Becker argues that these 'establish the patterns and expectations for ekphrasis in the epic' (p. 51). 17 – Heffernan, Museum of Words, 19. As Heffernan writes, the 'subtle and ambiguous instances of representational friction suggest that the mind of Homer — or at any rate the mind of the text — is continuously engaged in meditating, sometimes playfully, on the complexities of representation itself: on the startling oppositions and equally startling convergences between the media of visual representation and the referents' (p. 20). 18 – See Becker, Shield of Achilles, esp. 87–130. More generally on the Archaic phenomenology of 'wondering' before an artwork, compare Raymond Adolph Prier, Thauma Idesthai: The Phenomenology of Sight and Appearance in Archaic Greece (Tallahassee: Florida State University Press, 1989), along with Jean-Pierre Vernant, Mortals and Immortals: Collected Essays, ed. and trans. Froma Zeitlin (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), 164–85, and Richard T. Neer, The Emergence of the Classical Style in Greek Sculpture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010), esp. 57–69. 19 – For discussion, see Becker, Shield of Achilles, 128–30, who nicely compares scholion T ad Il.18.548–9 (Hartmut Erbse, ed., Scholia Graeca in Homeri Iliadem (Scholia Vetera), 7 vols [Berlin: De Gruyter, 1969–1988], vol. 4, Scholia ad libros OT continens, 551): 'This is unbelievable, and Homer himself made it believable through his amazement' (ἄπιστον δέ, καὶ αὐτὸς διὰ τοῦ θαυμάζειν πιστὸν εἰργάσατο; cf. Andrew Sprague Becker, 'Contest or Concert? A Speculative Essay on Ecphrasis and Rivalry between the Arts,' Classical and Modern Literature 23 [2003]: 1–14, at 11). All this seems to reinforce the conclusion of Hubbard, 'Nature and Art,' 35: namely, that 'the Shield must be read/heard/seen as a pivotal moment of self-awareness for both the poem's hero and its creator'. 20 – Heffernan, Museum of Words, 4 (his emphasis); cf. ibid., 19. There are other examples of things seeming other than they are in the description. Particularly interesting is the description of Hate, Confusion and Death at vv.535–40. These appear not as abstract entities, but rather as personifications: as they fight on, they look as though they are living mortals (ὡμίλεον δ' ὥς τε ζωοὶ βροτοὶ ἠδ' ἐμάχοντο, v.539), even though they are not. 21 – Heffernan, Museum of Words, 22. Cf. e.g. Francis, 'Metal Maidens,' 13: 'Although the god's skill makes the figures so realistic they (seem to?) move and speak, and although the poet aims at vivid realism, the audience is deliberately reminded that these are but images, representations in metal.' Ancient readers seem to have recognised the conceit. Recording the wise comments of the sage Apollonius on the subject of mimetic imitation, for instance, Philostratus records how Apollonius compared a set of bronze reliefs at Porus with those of the Homeric description; just as with the Homeric description, Apollonius is said to have added, one 'would say that the ground was smeared with blood, even though it is of bronze' (καὶ τὴν γῆν ᾑματῶσθαι ϕήσεις χαλῆν οὖσαν, VA 2.22). 22 – This recession of metallic armour is developed in two other places, both in association with the city at war: at v.510, we hear of warriors who are said to be 'gleaming in their armour' (τεύχεσι λαμπόμενοι, v.510); and at v.522, we encounter further warriors 'clothed in ruddy bronze' (εἰλυμένοι αἴθοπι χαλκῷ). In both cases, the detail raises the question: what in turn might have been represented on the armour depicted on the armour of Achilles? There are numerous other metallic objects forged within this metallic shield: talents of gold (v.507), for example, bronze-tipped spears (v.534), silver poles (v.563), a fence of tin (vv.565–66), gold daggers (vv.595–96), and silver baldrics (v.598). It is often left unclear whether these metals refer to the medium of the representation, or else more figuratively to the represented scenes themselves: when a vineyard is said to be 'fair and golden' (καλήν, χρυσείην, v.562), for instance, does this refer to some figurative quality of the scene ('golden'), or else to its mediating material ('made of gold')? 23 – On the recourse to Daedalus and the 'daedalic' here, see Sarah P. Morris, Daidalos and the Origins of Greek Art (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 3–35, esp. 12–14. 24 – Lessing, Laocoön, 95 [ch. 18]. Lessing develops the point most clearly in the eighteenth and nineteenth chapters (ibid., 91–103), esp. when comparing the Homeric and Virgilian descriptions of the shield (ibid., 95–97). As Lessing himself notes, Servius's Virgilian commentary had also reached a related conclusion when comparing the Homeric and Virgilian shields in the fourth century AD (ibid., 215–16; cf. Andrew Laird, 'Ut figura poesis: Writing Art and the Art of Writing in Augustan Poetry,' in Art and Text in Roman Culture, ed. Jaś Elsner [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996], 75–102, at 78–79). 25 – On the underlying ideological stakes, see Squire, Image and Text, 90–113. 26 – Compare esp. Atchity, Homer's Iliad, 176–87; cf. Francis, 'Metal Maidens,' 9: 'the context of the description is not a static appreciation of the completed work but rather the dynamic process of the god fabricating it'. Oliver Primavesi also discusses this feature, arguing that the durative aspect of the description is reflected in its preponderance of perfect and imperfect tenses (Primavesi, 'Bild und Zeit,' 194–201; cf. Giuliani, Bild und Mythos, 40–42; Purves, Space and Time, 50). Primavesi counts eighty-eight verbs with a 'durativen oder perfektischen Aspekt', as opposed to just fourteen 'Prädikate im Aorist'. Of course, Homeric differentiations of tense were never quite as clear cut as they were for later Greek authors, but the general point nevertheless stands. 27 – Hence, we might think, the cosmological opening of the description, where we see both the sun and moon — and therefore day and night — simultaneously (vv.483–84). This establishes not just a universal spatial framework, but also one removed from the ordinary linearity of narrative time (and indeed the linear markers of narrative time within the poem): 'there are no trajectories telling time in the plenitude of this image of simultaneity and totality…. In its opening design … the shield offers a divine comprehension of all at once' (Lynn-George, Epos, 177). The description of the shield constructs an amazingly complex image of time, not only combining multi-temporal sequences of events in almost every evoked scenario, but also drawing attention to the processual and reiterative (e.g. the ploughmen going backwards and forwards before and after each cup of wine, vv.544–46). 28 – This early image of the judgment scene demonstrates the point with particular clarity: two talents sit on the floor ready to be assigned to the winner of the legal dispute; but they will be given to 'whichever among them should utter the straightest judgment' (ὃς μετὰ τοῖσι δίκην ἰθύντατα εἴποι, v.508). Within the epos of the poem, the prospective potential optative (εἴποι) speaks volumes about the picture and this verbal description's relationship to it: 'the action is suspended in a stillness which awaits that which is still to be spoken … both a scene on the shield and the epic itself are constructed in the expectation of what "someone will say"' (Lynn-George, Epos, 183–84). Something similar happens at v.524, when two scouts sit on the look-out until they should catch sight of the enemy (ὁππότε… ἰδοίατο). 29 – The best discussion is once again Lynn-George, Epos, 176–86, on scenes 'constructed as an anticipation of an end which is always still to come', 183; cf. Byre, 'Narration, Description, and Theme,' 38–40; Heffernan, Museum of Words, 17–18; and Primavesi, 'Bild und Zeit', 200–01. I would only add that this aspect of the representation appears itself to have been represented within the narrative frame of the Iliadic description: the shield, we might say, is set up as something both with and without end — the Greek notion of telos. When greeting Thetis, Hephaestus promises to accomplish/bring to an end/fulfil [telesai] Thetis's request, 'if fulfil it I can, and if it is something that is able to be fulfilled' (τελέσαι δέ με θυμὸς ἄνωγεν / εἰ δύναμαι τελέσαι γε καὶ εἰ τετελεσμένον ἐστίν, vv.426–27). In his final words to Thetis before crafting the shield, however, Hephaestus characterises its effect not in terms of the past or present, but only ever the future: whoever sees the shield will marvel in the future (θαυμάσσεται, v.467). This paradoxical sense of something both completed and forever unfinished is developed in the description of Achilles's response at Il. 19.21–22: the arms that Hephaestus has given are necessarily the product of immortal gods, Achilles proclaims, 'such as no mortal man could fulfil' (μηδὲ βροτὸν ἄνδρα τελέσσαι v.22). To my mind, this framework is of the utmost relevance within the narrative and temporal structure of the poem. The timelessness of Achilles's armour serves as a figurative substitute for the timely mortality of Achilles himself: Thetis promises to commission it even though it will speed Achilles's demise (vv.127–37); moreover, Hephaestus promises to create the armour precisely because he cannot protect him from the timeliness of death, when 'dread fate comes on him' (vv.462–67). 30 – For an excellent discussion, see Irmgard Männlein-Robert, Stimme, Schrift und Bild: Zum Verhältnis der Künste in der hellenistischen Dichtung (Heidelberg: Winter, 2007), 13–17: 'so wird in der Schildbeschreibung ausdrücklich geschrieen, gesungen, gebrüllt und musiziert' (p. 15). In this connection, note how, when Thetis delivers the armour to Achilles in the following book, it sounds before it is seen: as Thetis rests the armour before her son, the 'many adornments' evoked in the previous book 'clamour' (τὰ δ' ἀνέβραχε δαίδαλα πάντα, Il. 19.13). Later epideictic epigrams would develop the conceit by making the shield speak: compare e.g. Anth. Pal. 9.116. 31 – For discussion, see esp. Maria Moog-Grünewald, 'Der Sänger im Schild — oder: Über den Grund ekphrastischen Schreibens,' in Behext von Bildern? Ursachen, Funktionen und Perspektiven der textuellen Faszination durch Bilder, ed. Heinz J. Drügh and Maria Moog-Grünewald (Heidelberg: Winter, 2001), 1–19. Männlein-Robert, Stimme, Schrift und Bild, 13–14, compares the scene of the singer at (what she labels) v.604, although only Ath. 180c–d preserves the verse, and it is usually rejected (cf. Martin Revermann, 'The Text of Iliad 18.603–06 and the Presence of an Aoidos on the Shield of Achilles,' Classical Quarterly 48 [1998]: 29–38, esp. 34–35). Earlier, in the context of the city at peace, we hear the depiction of a bridal song (v.493). 32 – Cf. Becker, Shield of Achilles, 131–32. As Francis, 'Metal Maidens,' adds, silence is a 'condition paradoxically easy to describe in words but difficult to do in mute images' (p.10). 33 – For a related conclusion, compare Francis, 'Metal Maidens,' 3, 16: 'The relationship between word and image in ancient ekphrasis is, from its beginning, complex and interdependent, presenting sophisticated reflection on the conception and process of both verbal and visual representation' (p.3); 'the very idea of representing a visual work of art with artistic words entailed a level of sophistication which had already begun to think abstractly about these modes of representation' (p.16). 34 – For comparison of the Homeric shield scenes with other Greek oral traditions, see Johannes Th. Kakridis, Homer Revisited (Lund: Gleerup, 1971), 108–24. Among the most important readings of Homeric poetry as products of oral composition are those by Gregory Nagy: e.g. Homeric Questions (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996), esp. 13–27. On the inadequacies of oralist approaches for understanding the shield description, on the other hand, see Taplin, 'Shield of Achilles,' 3–4, along with Hubbard, 'Nature and Art,' interpreting the passage as a 'focal point of Homer's poetic self-conceptualization' (p. 35). 35 – See esp. Becker, Shield of Achilles, 23–40 on Sc. 139–320. Despite conspicuous (and knowing) adaptations, the passage is 'clearly written in imitation of Homer' (George Kurman, 'Ecphrasis in Epic Poetry,' Comparative Literature 26 [1974]: 1–13, at p. 2): cf. Elsner, 'Introduction: The Genres of Ekphrasis,' 5–6. 36 – Cf. Plut. Mor. (De glor. Ath. 346f): πλὴν ὁ Σιμωνίδης τὴν μὲν ζωγραϕίαν ποίησιν σιωπῶσαν προσαγορεύει, τὴν δὲ ποίησιν ζωγραϕίαν λαλοῦσαν. As Lecoq, Le bouclier d'Achille, 79 rightly observes, the Simonidean 'définition... n'aurait sans doute pas pu voir le jour sans le grand exemple d'Homère'. Among the many discussions of the aphorism attributed to Simonides, I have particularly benefited from the following: Anne Carson, 'Simonides Painter,' in Innovations of Antiquity, ed. Ralph J. Hexter and Daniel Seldon (New York and London: Routledge, 1992), 51–64; Alessandra Manieri, 'Alcune riflessioni sul rapporto poesia–pittura nella teoria degli antichi,' Quaderni Urbinati di Cultura Classica 50 (1995): 133–40; Michael Franz, Von Gorgias bis Lukrez: Antike Ästhetik und Poetik als vergleichende Zeichentheorie (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1999), 61–83; Gabriele K. Sprigath, 'Das Dictum des Simonides: Der Vergleich von Dichtung und Malerei,' Poetica 36 (2004): 243–80; and Männlein-Robert, Stimme, Schrift und Bild, 20–22. On the evidence for the Simonidean dictum, and Plutarch's later re-interpolations of it, see Bravi's discussion in Luigi Bravi and Sara Brunori, 'Il racconto mitico fra tradizione iconografica e tradizione poetica: il pensiero dei moderni e il modello simonideo,' in Tra panellenismo e tradizioni locali: generi poetici e storiografia, ed. Ettore Cingano (Alessandria: Edizioni dell'Orso, 2010), 451–81, at 463–69. 37 – Cf. Männlein-Robert, Stimme, Schrift und Bild, 13–35. 38 – The Progymnasmata are conveniently collected and translated in George Alexander Kennedy, Progymnasmata: Greek Textbooks of Prose Composition and Rhetoric (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2003). The most pertinent Greek passages concerning ekphrasis are collected (together with translation) in the appendix of Webb, Ekphrasis, Imagination and Persuasion, 197–211: Theon, Prog. 118.6–120 (see Michel Patillon and Giancarlo Bolognesi, eds., Aelius Théon, Progymnasmata [Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1997], 66–69); Hermog. Prog. 10.47–50 (see Hugo Rabe, ed., Hermogenis Opera [Leipzig: Teubner, 1913], 22–23); Aphthonius, Prog. 12.46–49 (see Hugo Rabe, ed., Aphthonius, Progymnasmata [Leipzig: Teubner, 1926], 36–41); Nicolaus, Prog. (see Joseph Felten, ed., Nicolaus, Progymnasmata [Leipzig: Teubner, 1913], 67–71). There is a growing bibliography, of which the following are particularly important: Erich Pernice and Walter Hatto Gross, 'Beschreibungen von Kunstwerken in der Literatur. Rhetorische Ekphrasis,' in Allgemeine Grundlagen der Archäologie, ed. Ulrich Hausmann (Munich: C.H. Beck 1969), 395–496; Hans C. Buch, Ut pictura poiesis: Die Beschreibungsliteratur und ihre Kritiker von Lessing bis Luk´cs (Munich: Hanser, 1972), 18–20; Bartsch, Decoding the Ancient Novel, 7–14; Liz James and Ruth Webb, '"To Understand Ultimate Things and Enter Secret Places": Ekphrasis and Art in Byzantium,' Art History 14 (1991): 1–17, at 4–7; Sonia Maffei, 'La sophia del pittore e del poeta nel proemio delle Imagines di Filostrato Maggiore,' Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa 21/2 (1991): 591–621, at 591–93; Jaś Elsner, Art and the Roman Viewer: The Transformation of Art from the Pagan World to Christianity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 24–26; idem, 'Introduction: The Genres of Ekphrasis,' 1–3; idem, 'Seeing and Saying: A Psychoanalytical Account of Ekphrasis,' Helios 31, no. 1 (2004): 157–86, at 157–58; Webb, 'Ekphrasis Ancient and Modern,' 11–13; eadem, 'Picturing the Past,' 221–44; eadem, Ekphrasis, Imagination and Persuasion; Simon Goldhill, 'What Is Ekphrasis For?,' Classical Philology 102 (2007): 1–19, at 3–8. More generally on the function of these handbooks, see: Graham Anderson, The Second Sophistic: A Cultural Phenomenon in the Roman Empire (London and New York: Routledge, 1993), 47–53; Ruth Webb, 'The Progymnasmata as Practice,' in Education in Greek and Roman Antiquity, ed. Yun Lee Too (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 289–316, esp. 294–95; and eadem, Ekphrasis, Imagination and Persuasion, 39–59. 39 – The earliest discussion is usually said to be that of Theon, sometimes dated to the first century AD. More recently, however, Malcolm Heath has argued for a later date, associating Theon with a known fifth-century rhetorician of the same name, and questioning the attribution of another Progymnasmata to Hermogenes ('Theon and the History of the Progymnasmata,' Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 43 [2002/2003]: 129–60). Webb, Ekphrasis, Imagination and Persuasion, 14, n.3 may or may not be right 'to prefer to retain the earlier date because of the parallels with Quintilian and the unusual use of Hellenistic historians while acknowledging that these are by no means decisive criteria'. 40 – The best recent discussion is Webb, Ekphrasis, Imagination and Persuasion, 87–130, on both Greek and Latin discussions of enargeia and phantasia and their connection to ideas about ekphrasis in the Progymnasmata; cf. Italo Lana, Quintiliano, Il 'Sublime' e gli 'Esercizi preparotori' di Elio Teone: ricerca sulle fonti greche di Quintiliano e sull'autore
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