With some very expert help from two Textkit members, William Annis and Chad Bochan, I’ve created a document (available here) with notes for Iliad 18.478-608, the construction of Achilles’ shield by Hephaestus. It offers grammatical details for nearly every word, as well as additional notes I’ve collected about the passage.
The Shield of Achilles is a fascinating section. It reads like a self-contained section, and, indeed, some scholars have suggested that it is framed by a technique of oral poetry called ring composition, whereby the poet uses the repetition of a phrase or line that ends a “ring”, or excursion, by bringing the audience’s mind back to the beginning again (in this case, the repetitive nature of lines 478 and 609). The passage is interesting for its placement in the Iliad, right at the major turning point of the story, when Achilles has decided to return to battle, and also for its content, which is a series of scenes of everyday life, like a small tour of ancient Greece guided by Homer.
I hope it can be useful, whether you know more Greek than I do, but haven’t yet gotten around to reading this beautiful passage, or if you are just getting the hang of this Greek thing and desperately want to sink your teeth into something.
In your list of abbreviations you missed “cf.” What does it mean?
I’ve been thinking of all the work that we all do with Homer, and wondered if this would be a good place to talk about Standards. Your work seems to me to be a good starting point. I will use the same abbreviations as you do, and in the same order (I’m sure that you didn’t make them up.)
This being the XXIst century, with computers and word processing software, should we still be editing Homer like the oldies? Imagine how much cooler our work could be with the grammar as hyperlinks on the Greek! And lots of colors! Is there a better (more universal) program than MS Word to do these things?
Will, you who know about these things, is Murray’s translation of the Iliad free for all? (First published in 1924.)
I’ve been thinking of all the work that we all do with Homer, and wondered if this would be a good place to talk about Standards. Your work seems to me to be a good starting point. I will use the same abbreviations as you do, and in the same order (I’m sure that you didn’t make them up.)
I’m pretty sure all of them are standard. Nick and I discussed them a little, but nothing ever struck me as a surprise.
The longer I work on aoidoi commentaries, the more settled the standards become. I keep a standards document for myself as a reminder for how things are supposed to look. My usual sin against the standard is ordering. There are up to six things to say to identify some verb forms, and I tend to be improvisational about what order I list them in if I’m not paying attention.
At some point I have to hit older commentaries to bring them into line, which will mostly involve removing dashes from adjectives and genitives.
This being the XXIst century, with computers and word processing software, should we still be editing Homer like the oldies?
People keep saying this, but I really wonder what we’re supposed to replace the old formats with. What needs aren’t being met by that format? I’ve used them all my life, and while some are better than others, they work just fine for me.
You’re in good company by asking this question, though. Bill Harris has asked me the same thing more than once.
Imagine how much cooler our work could be with the grammar as hyperlinks on the Greek! And lots of colors!
Yikes! I hate color in text except for very special cases, so you’re not going to see me writing anything using them.
As for hyperlinks, that’s what Perseus is for. Part of the question here is what and who a marked up text is for. I would never read a text from Perseus, but I find it an invaluable research tool. There’s no way Aoidoi can compete with that, so I focus on a particular audience. Any beginner motivated to learn more about particular words in a poetic text who is able to get at Aoidoi.org can also hit Perseus for research.
Is there a better (more universal) program than MS Word to do these things?
The most flexible format would probably not be a document in Word, or in LaTeX which I use, but a plain text XML format, such as the TEI spec. It’s most remote from how people actually write, but is most flexible. Once a text has been marked up you can display it with much more flexibility.
Will, you who know about these things, is Murray’s translation of the Iliad free for all? (First published in 1924.)
I believe not. I prefer to avoid tangling with Loebs, in any case.
Yikes! I hate color in text except for very special cases, so you’re not going to see me writing anything using them.
I have a Latin textbook at home (Flecker, H.L.O. & Macnutt, D.S., Complete Latin Course Book III, Edinburgh, 1939, Longmans) where they have used different colours for masc., fem. & neuter nouns. It looks like it should work, but - try reading all the colours late at night while studying (esp red!). It’s certainly much easier to study texts if the notes are written in some standard format, even if it is not an ideal one, and preferably one which can work when printed out.
However, this might all change as I have now seen that a new electronic “book” is about to hit the market. This is something we should probably keep in mind - let’s try to design some academic word processing software for this new technology before the Microsoft “bloatware” hijacks it! (See http://www.eink.com/ for more on this new technology.)
“People keep saying this, but I really wonder what we’re supposed to replace the old formats with. What needs aren’t being met by that format? I’ve used them all my life, and while some are better than others, they work just fine for me.” ~Will
Oh my gosh, you’re turning into a Republican! My pet peeve with the format is that you have to go back and forth around a book to read the text, then to read the commentary, and then to read the grammar paragraph directed by the commentary. I have callouses in my fingers from using them as bookmarks. Nick was thoughtful enough to intersperse the text with the commentary, though.
“I hate color in text […]” ~Will
Granted that it’s not very manly, but it can save a lot of clutter and it works very well for me. I use it for Homer’s meter, semantics and syntax (in that order). By the time I’m done coloring dactyls, meanings and parts of speech, I know the line by heart!
“As for hyperlinks, that’s what Perseus is for.” ~Will
I use Perseus to click on each word and find its meaning and its grammar, and that’s much faster than a dictionary, but every word takes a good 15 seconds to load. You only want to do it once. I copy the information and paste it to a Word document, so that it appears as a tiny strip of text when you place the cursor over the word in question. There when you need it, out of the way when you don’t. In Word you do that under the “hyperlink” menu, and that’s what I was referring to, but I realize that a real hyperlink is something different.
“The most flexible format would probably not be a document in Word, or in LaTeX which I use, but a plain text XML format, such as the TEI spec.” ~Will
Thanks. In the end, you have to do the work yourself to really learn. I’ll never know as much as Nick does about the shield until I throw away his work and do it myself from scatch! So, unless there’s a general clamor among textkittens to adopt a standard text editor, I’ll stick with MS Word. Everyone here seems intent on learning Homer the masochistic way, anyway, so my work wouldn’t be of interest to anyone but me.
That wasn’t meant to be dismissive of your or anyone else’s work, Nicholas. Which leads to this question: How in Zeus’ name did folks learn Homer in the times before Allen, Benner, Cunliffe, Monro, Pharr, Smyth, Swift et al? With an ouija board?
I think most of the abbreviations are very straightforward; the only one I had to think over was “pple.” (participle). I think the most common abbreviation that I see is “part.”, but for some reason this always makes me think of “particle”. There are a few other choices, but I was most fond of “pple.”, perhaps because Cunliffe uses it.
I think it’s a great idea to talk about content and formatting matters. I want my commentaries (optimistic plural) to be as helpful as possible. I’m glad you liked the comments interspersed between the text, although the credit for that idea should go to Will. If I had attached the commentary to the end of the document, I probably would have included many more notes just for interest’s sake. For my reading tastes, I would prefer a heftier commentary in the back, leaving the Greek text as the main attraction on the page. What do other people like? What if the Greek text was made bold, to stand out from the interspersed notes? It also occured to me that perhaps the dictionary-entry form in the morphology notes could be made bold to help save look-up time.
I think your color-coded chart is fantastic! Just working that out must be a good learning aid. But I have to agree with Will that I don’t like color very much, and, besides, I usually print them out on a b&w printer to read later. I don’t have a computer at my house, so one of my favorite things about the Aoidoi texts is that I can carry around a couple of pages with me and read Greek without lugging around a sack of books (although I do that sometimes too…)
Yes, you’re right: I’ve always taken notes on what I’m reading, because the act of taking notes is helpful for me, but also so that I’ll be able to re-read something with greater ease. But taking my notes and turning them into a document for other people to use was a fantastic learning experience. I found myself paying closer attention, and looking deeper into the dictionaries, and checking over my work more often. So I wouldn’t be discouraged: I think that whatever format you like, the effort of creating a document for other people would add a helpful discipline to your studies—plus your work then becomes useful to other people. And although reading closely and taking notes yourself is an imporant exercise, seeing a lot of Greek quickly can be a great help too, and that is what Aoidoi’s commentaries do better than anything else I’ve seen.
Thanks for the feedback, Bardo. I would appreciate any other comments or complaints.
You’re welcome, Nicholas. The more I read your file, the more I wish I could find the whole of Homer done that way. What is the proper name for the work you’ve done? A commentary? A critical edition with annotations? Is it not an edition because you’ve used Allen’s and West’s editions?
"A note about Greek text images: the content on Aoidoi.org is free. If for some reason you want to use one of the text GIFs for your own purposes, please feel free. However, take a copy of the file and host it yourself. People linking directly into Aoidoi.org web pages for display elsewhere will get surprises when I notice it." ~Will on aoidoi.org
Does that include linking the page like Nicholas has done at the start of this thread for others to see?
From Harris’ Practical Approach to the D.H. on aoidoi.org:
Fear of saying it wrong will often block a good reading of a dactylic line. One must go ahead a try it out, listen to the sound see if it rings true. After getting a few dozen lines to ring right, the bad one will stand out as unsatisfying, somehow metrically inept and in need of acoustic repair..
Corrected typos:
Fear of saying it wrong will often block a good reading of a dactylic line. One must go ahead and try it out, listen to the sound and see if it rings true. After getting a few dozen lines to ring right, the bad one will stand out as unsatisfying, somehow metrically inept and in need of acoustic repair.
". . . Sidney Allen. . ." ~Will on "Reciting the Heroic Hexameter" on aoidoi.org
(Pointing out typos here as I read them is much faster for me than sending you an email, Will. All for the cause.)
I’ve always just called them commentaries, though Nicholas’ Shield is closer to that than most Aoidoi.org works, since he includes a little more literary discussion than I usually do.
“A note about Greek text images: the content on Aoidoi.org is free. If for some reason you want to use one of the text GIFs for your own purposes, please feel free. However, take a copy of the file and host it yourself. People linking directly into Aoidoi.org web pages for display elsewhere will get surprises when I notice it.” ~Will on aoidoi.org
Does that include linking the page like Nicholas has done at the start of this thread for others to see?
No, no. You may link to pages or PDF files all you want. What happens sometimes is people find the old Greek-text via GIFs system I used, and use my server to display Greek text at other sites (with an img src=http:/ trickery). This annoys me, and wastes my personal bandwidth.
(Pointing out typos here as I read them is much faster for me than sending you an email, Will. All for the cause.)
Hey thanks Bardo, I wish I could find all kinds of Greek lit done up that way. I once saw a pdf of the entire LXX parsed, but even that didn’t offer helpful vocabulary practice, like giving all genders for adjs, and the gen for third declensions, etc. I’m hoping to do more projects like that for epic grk; I’m slowing working at the Hymn to Demeter right now, which is a fun story. But I’d love to see an easy tragedy, like Prometheus Bound for instance, or maybe even some prose, like Herodotus. I’m hoping that, along with more study-guides, Textkit will produce more and more people to work on projects like this, and then think of the pdf library we could have!
Nicholas: I just found your commentary and wanted to say “Thanks” for doing it. I’ve been away from reading Homer for a while & just started re-reading him (in translation) a few days ago-I had forgotten just how super Homer is. I’ve read through “The Shield” before, but your post really clarifies things-in Greek I really appreciate a lot of support. Go on & do all of the Iliad & the Odyssey! Regards, Paige.
Interesting article (though I don’t yet know greek!).
I just finished reading Lattimore’s translation of the Iliad, the part about the shield is indeed interesting. I wondered if anyone has ever tried to recreate the shield based on the detailed description Homer gives of it? It would be interesting if someone (Weta workshop comes to mind) would attempt it.
You’re welcome Paige, and thanks for writing I love to hear that it’s being used. I hope to have some more epic poetry available in the next couple of months.
Many people have tried to sketch out the shield based on Homer’s description. You can see some attempts here. But surprisingly, the best sketch I’ve ever seen was some kind of Greek-action-hero playing card that my uncle (a big kid ) bought after getting all excited about the movie Troy. Achilles is mostly hidden behind his huge shield, which is drawn in painstaking detail.
There is also a lot of scholarly literature dealing with this issue. I left it out of my notes for the most part, but I did note some things, like the opinion that the shield is round. Leaf suggests that perhaps it was a tower-style shield, although he does so tentatively; but if I remember right, I think his main argument was that if it were round, then half of the scenes would be upside-down, which I think is pretty ridiculous.
The poet makes pretty clear that the ocean is depicted around the rim, and it seems natural to see the heavens at the center, although this isn’t directly stated. Some people like to follow Homer’s order, and see the scenes being described from the center of the shield outwards.
And then there are lots of different ways to arrange the scenes themselves. The poet mentions “five layers” of the shield, which some have taken to mean five concentric bands. For some people this means five bands minus two for the heavens and the ocean, while some think that there are five bands of scenes plus the ocean and heavens. And other people, it seems, don’t utilize the idea of concentric bands at all.
Some people claim that the use of the adverb “en” can be telling, especially with the two cities, which are not separated by the adverb, leading some to think that they comprised two halves of the same band; and some people suggest that this was the largest area of the shield, although that doesn’t necessarily follow from a long description by the poet.
Some have claimed (and I think this is a clever idea) that the dancing scene toward the end would fit nicely into a technique seen on other vases and bowls, where an entire band is filled with repeated objects (individual dancers) amounting to more of a design or border than a scene. And I’ve seen it further suggested that perhaps the lion fighting scene could be a compliment, perhaps even in the same band, and maybe even separated by the very short picture of a homestead (587-589), which seems almost out of place with the other scenes.
And there is another related topic that is interesting. Some scholars think that Homer had some of these scenes in his mind already, either from an actual shield, or maybe a bowl or vase. Most of this is based around the scene of the city at war. Homer’s description of the seige and the ambush of cattle can be a little confusing; sometimes the subject changes are obscure; and the idea of two beseiging armies is a little strange. It has been pointed out that two-dimensional pictures of a city being attacked are represented similarly in artwork all around the world: a citadel or castle at the center, and soldiers attacking from the right and the left. From this it is suggested that Homer had such a picture in mind, and developed his own story around it.
And this idea is also brought to the trial scene in the first city. Although it is clear that Homer understands the two coins as a prize for the judges, some people think that perhaps instead they represent the “blood-money” that one man is insisting that he has the right to pay, while another is denying it. They again suggest that perhaps Homer was interpreting a picture he had seen.
Now all of this, of course, is very unclear, and based on much speculation, but it is a lot of fun to read and think about. That is why I included a lot of books in my bibliography that I didn’t cite, so that people could read about this stuff.
Edward’s commentary deals with all of this stuff. Raymond Westbrook’s article on the trial scene is fascinating; and Nagy’s chapter deals with it too. And I would also recommend Sarah Morris’ book on Daidalos, which I didn’t read until after I had completed the project. I wasn’t able to find the Craddock article on the “Secrets of Achilles’ Shield”, but I still want to read it sometime.
Sorry to ramble on so much, but I found all of this fascinating when I was reading it. Thanks again,
Gang: This is all VERY interesting-Have you guys read Auden’s poem (forget the title-think it’s just "the Shield of Achilles’) ? Anyway, you ought to read it-it’s a strong poem in itself, & the grim contrast between Homer’s world & the ugliness of the modern world really makes an impact. If I had a copy handy, i would post it here, but it should be easy for you to find. Anyway, Nicholas-keep up the great work. One of the things that i really believe about Homer is he is always relevant-maybe more than any other classical author. I’ve noticed my students are always willing to listen to anything I say about him, but that’s not the case with any other classical writer. Isn’t it interesting that the oldest writer of all still seems to be the most contemporary? Regrds, Paige.
Well, I hunted down a copy of the poem (dozens available online). I don’t know Auden’s work, really, but if it really is intended to contrast Homer’s word and our “ugly” modernity, then I have to say Auden is indulging in a fantasy, romantic clap-trap. Homer’s world included corpse-desecration, sacrificed children to change the weather, and slavery (often sexual) for the women in the losing side of a war. That’s pretty ugly, too.
The last strophe, and the last two lines especially, seem to undermine this romantic reading, however, “Iron-hearted man-slaying Achilles // Who would not live long.” Man-slaying? That’s also ugly, and this ugliness was made for him, for a brief time.
William (if you don’t mind me calling you William!): That’s true, but don’t you think the point of Auden’s poem is actually the contrast in mind-set (I hate that word, but you know what I mean!) between Homer’s world and ours? Naturally, Homer describes the horror of war, but if you compare how Homer describes HIS people with the people in Auden’s modern scene, you get what Auden is saying-there isn’t any nobility left in this world, while Homer’s people , women & men, often were noble. Anyway, that’s what the poem meant to me when i first read it. If you compare the worst scenes in Homer with the daily news-it’s like comparing a description of a soccer match with a description of a loony-bin. (hope i’m not offending the loonies). Anyway, we’re getting off-topic. Regards, Paige.
My pet peeve with the format is that you have to go back and forth around a book to read the text, then to read the commentary, and then to read the grammar paragraph directed by the commentary. I have callouses in my fingers from using them as bookmarks. Nick was thoughtful enough to intersperse the text with the commentary, though.
I love to hear that it’s being used. I hope to have some more epic poetry available in the next couple of months.