1. Little in this essay is new, though much may be unfamiliar to those brought up on the kind of Homeric studies which have prevailed in Britain and America for some half a century now. I have been especially helped by three essays on the shield: Schadewaldt, W., Von Homers Welt und Werk (Stuttgart, 4th edn. 1965) [hereafter HWW], pp. 352–74Google Scholar (first published in 1938), Reinhardt, K., Die Ilias und ihr Dichter (Göttingen, 1961), pp. 401–11Google Scholar (first published in 1956), andMarg, W., Homer über die Dichtung (Münster, 1st edn. 1957, 2nd edn. 1971)Google Scholar. Their influence has been pervasive and I shall not try to single out every concurrence. For a list of those renegades who have taken the shield seriously in English see n.30 below. I am indebted to Colin Macleod and Malcolm Willcock for some helpful suggestions and corrections.

2. For the contrasts between these two crucial decisions to fight seeSchadewaldt's, superb essay ‘Die Entscheidung des Achilleus’ in HWW, pp. 234–67Google Scholar.

3. See Armstrong's, J.excellent article on arming scenes, AJP 79 (1958), 337 ff., esp. 344–5Google Scholar. All the translations are Lattimore's, with slight alterations where necessary.

4. The useful introduction and commentary by C. F. Russo (Florence, 2nd edn. 1965), esp. pp. 29–35 date the poem to the sixth century. Anyone who has read the Shield of Heracles can hardly continue to believe that the Iliad and Odyssey were merely typical products of a tradition in which the author submerged his individual genius. I am not sure why Jasper Griffin does not make more use of this third-rate cyclic-type blustering in his excellent article‘The Epic Cycle and the Uniqueness of Homer’, JHS 97 (1977), 39 ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5. See the useful pamphlet on the shield of Achilles byFittschen, K. in the series Archaeologia Homerica: Bildkunst, Kapitel N, Teil 1 (Göttingen, 1973), esp. p.2Google Scholar; and compare the plates to be found on pp. 93–109 and 181–3 of Johansen, K. Friis, The Iliad in Early Greek Art (Copenhagen, 1967)Google Scholar.

6. First published in Poetry for Oct. 1952. I can find no external reason to think the poem was written earlier than 1952.

7. ‘Who would not live long’: ὠκ⋯μορος, μινυνθάδιος. The motif is introduced in book 1 (352,416f.) and recurs throughout: see Schadewaldt, , HWW, pp.260 fGoogle Scholar.

‘iron-hearted’: the meraphor is rare in the Iliad, but is used by Hector of Achilles as he dies at 22.357 (otherwise only of Priam at 24.205,521). ‘Man-slaying’: is it not likely that Auden derived the epithet from the phrase χεῖρας ⋯π' ⋯νδροΦόους at 18.317? The only other times the epithet is used of hands are also about Achilles: 23.18 and 24.479–the latter at the greatest moment of the entire Iliad. I shall return to the subject of Auden and Iliad 24 at the end (p. 17 below).

8. For the less orthodox scholars see n.30 below.

9. See Fittschen, op. cit., passim. For a bibliography of such views see Fittschen, pp.4–5.

10. 18.148–238 is the only fighting in between 18.1 and 20.156 ff.

11. Quoted fromBowra, C. M., Tradition and Design in the Iliad (Oxford, 1930), p.126Google Scholar. I have found the most thoroughgoing and readable assertion of the paratactic approach the article by Notopoulos, J. A., TAPA 80 (1949). 1 ffGoogle Scholar. The notion has been adapted and updated by Kirk, G. S. under the term ‘cumulation’, particularly in his paper ‘Verse-structure and Sentence-structure’ in Homer and the Oral Tradition (Cambridge, 1976) [hereafter HOT], pp. 146 ff., esp. pp. 167 ffGoogle Scholar. (originally in YCS 20 (1966), 73 ffGoogle Scholar.). Note this on p. 171: ‘Arming scenes, descriptions of pieces of armour, developed similes, the description of minor figures and their genealogy whether or not in a catalogue—these are the typical loci for cumulation.’

12. Lessing, Laocoon, chs. 17–19. This point has been stressed by Gaertner, H. A., ‘Beobachtungen zum Schild des A.’ in Studien zum antiken Epos, hsgb. Görgemanns, H. and Schmidt, E. A. (Meisenheim, 1976), pp. 46 ff.,Google Scholar

13. It would undoubtedly make most sense if line 483 (‘land, heaven, sea’) were a summary of the entire shield, and 484–9 the details of the first circle, showing only the heavens; this is maintained by Fittschen, , op. cit., p.10Google Scholar. But there are difficulties, above all the construction of line 484; this interpretation is impossible without emendation.

14. Cf. in various circumstances the rebukes and taunts at Il. 3.54, 15.508, 16.617, 16.745–50, 24.261.

15. Those who are inclined to fall for the stuff about women and wives in Finley, M. I., The World of Odysseus (London, 2nd edn. 1977) [hereafter WO], pp. 126 ff.Google Scholar, should read Iliad book 6 as an antidote. They might also take note of od.6.180–5 (overlooked by Finley).

16. See notably Hommel, H. in Palingenesia iv (Festschr. für R. Stark, Wiesbaden, 1969), 11 ff.Google Scholar, andAndersen, Ø., SO 51 (1976), 5 ff., esp. 11–16Google Scholar.

17. Cf. Andersen, , op. cit. 9Google Scholar.

18. Achilles had once come upon Aeneas herding on the slopes of Ida, but Aeneas ran and escaped (20.187 ff.). Achilles would often spare the Trojans he captured, like Lycaon whom he caught in Priam's garden cutting fig branches to make a chariot rail: but the death of Patroclus changes all that—see 21.99–113.

19. On pathos in the Iliad see the exceptionally perceptive and well-argued article by Griffin, J., CQ 26 (1976), 161 ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20. Solmsen, F., Hermes 93 (1965), 1–6Google Scholar. Further points against 535–8 are added by Lynn-George, J. M., Hermes 106 (1978), 396–405Google Scholar; Lynn-George defends 539–40 as Homeric, but unconvincingly to my mind. On the promitive notion of κ⋯ρο;ς see Redfield, J., Nature and Culture in the Iliad (Chicago, 1975), pp. 184 fGoogle Scholar.

21. For full details see West, S., The Ptolemaic Papyri of Homer (Cologne, 1967), pp. 132–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22. It is often said that the division of the year into four seasons is not to be found before Alcman (fr.2O). But all four of Alcman's seasons—ἒαρ, θ⋯ρος, ⋯πώρη, and ϰεϢα—are to be found in Homer.

23. Kirk, , HOT, p. 12Google Scholar asserts that the king is going to eat all the roast beef while the workers will have barley mash. I can not see any reason for preferring this to the interpretation well argued for by Leaf. The heralds have performed the slaughter and jointing; the women are actually cooking it, and this involves sprinkling the meat with barley, exactly asat Od. 14.77.

24. Cf. Gaertner, , op. cit., pp. 61–3Google Scholar. For some examples of such temene in the Iliad compare 6.194 (Bellerophon), 9.576 (Meleager), 12.313 (Glaucus and Sarpedon), 20.184 (Aeneas).

25. Who is to say that it is pure coincidence that the unusual verb ỏαρ⋯ζειν also occurs at 6.516 used of the conversation of Hector and Andromache? See the good remarks of Owen, E. T., The Story of the Iliad (see n.30 below), pp.121–2Google Scholar; cf.Segal, C., The Theme of the Mutiliation of the Corpse in the Iliad (Mnem. Supp. 17, Leiden, 1971), p. 36Google Scholar.

26. Kakridis, J. has produced comparative material which confirms that the main scene of an ‘imagined ecphrasis’ should come last: see Homer Revisited (Lund, 1971), pp. 108Google Scholar ff., esp. 123 (originally in WSt 76 (1963), 7 ff.Google Scholar). Gaertner, (op. cit., p. 53 n.18)Google Scholar argues that the king's temenos is the climactic scene of the shield, but he does not refute Kakridis.

27. Most editors since Wolf have included the line and believed that it was wrongly ejected by Aristarchus. This rests on a long stretch of fictional pedantry in Athenaeus book 4 (180a–181c). But all the experts on Aristarchus are quite clear that Athenaeus cannot have got his facts right—perhaps he did not try to. For full bibliography see Scholia Graeca in Homeri Iliadem IV, ed. Erbse, H. (Berlin, 1975), p.509CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The case for the line must stand or fall without Athenaeus.

28. 141, ⋯ργεννῇσι ⋯θ⋯νῃσιν; 385, νοκταρ⋯ου ⋯ανο⋯; 419, ⋯ανῷ ⋯ργ⋯τι Φαεινῷ 3.385 surely gives extra point to Athena's taunt at 5.421–5: but at the time in book 3 Aphrodite's treatment of Helen is no joke.

29. See Schadewaldt's, brilliant essay on the death of Hector in HWW, pp. 268 ff.Google Scholar, esp.331–2; alsoSegal, , op. cit., pp. 46–7Google Scholar.

30. Pride of place must go to Owen, E. T., The Story of the Iliad (Toronto, 1946Google Scholar, repr. Ann Arbor, 1966), pp. 186–9; there is a quotation on p.12. This admirable book is directed to students rather than research scholars, but that does not explain the unjust neglect of it. I suspect that it has been axiomatic that any Homeric study which does not take due account of oral composition must be totally valueless: I see no justification for this attitude. Other works in English which say things worth saying about the shield of Achilles are Sheppard, J. T., The Pattern of the Iliad (London, 1922), pp. 1–10Google Scholar, esp. 8, Whitman, C. H., Homer and the Heroic Tradition (Harvard, 1958), pp. 2O5f.CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Duethorn, G. A., Achilles' Shield and the Structure of the Iliad (Amhurst, 1962)Google Scholar, Beye, C. R.The Iliad, the Odyssey and the Epic Tradition (Garden City, 1966), pp. 143–4Google Scholar, Redfield (see n.20), pp. 187–8. I find Atchity, K. J., Homer's Iliad, the Shield of Memory (Southern Illinois, 1978)Google Scholar disappointingly diffuse and fanciful.

31. Works and Days 14–15; see West's note on 15.

32. HOT, pp. 1 ff. (first published in 1972); compare also HOT, pp. 50–2 (first published in 1968).

33. ‘Achilles’ temporary compassion for Priam … is more unnerving … but then Achilles sees his own father in Priam, and in any case he rapidly suppresses the unheroic emotion and threatens a renewal of anger, the proper heroic reaction to an enemy.' This is not the place to explain why I take this to be a fundamental misconstruction of book 24 and of the whole Iliad. It will have to serve for now to observe that what lines 560–70 do is to show what an effort of willpower it is for Achilles to overcome the ‘proper heroic reaction’; but the whole point is that, unlike Agamemnon in book 1, he succeeds. The lines do not mark the end of his compassion but its continuation (see especially 633 f., 671 f.).

34. See notably 2.796 f.; 18.288 ff.; 9.403, τ⋯ πρ⋯ν ⋯π' ε⋯ρ⋯νης, πρ⋯ν ⋯λθεῖν υἲας Ἀϰαι⋯ν = 22.156 (see p. 11 above).

35. Only some similes, not all. I consider it a great mistake to try to isolate a single function for all Homeric similes: on the contrary Homer seems to expect his audience to be alert to a wide variety. Far from providing relaxation the similes are especially taxing because of the very unpredictability of the relation of each to its context.

36. See in generalPorter's, excellent article ‘Violent Juxtaposition in the Similes of the Iliad’, CJ 68 (1972), 11–21 (the quotation is from p. 19); also Redfield (see n.20), pp. 186 ff. On the Agamemnon simile see alsoGoogle ScholarMoulton, C., Similes in the Homeric Poems (Göttingen, 1977), pp. 98–9Google Scholar, on Silk, Gorgythion M., Interaction in Poetic Imagery (Cambridge, 1974), p.5CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

37. It is clear that the construction of battle narratives was highly traditional. This is one of many important points which receive interesting confirmation inFenik, B., Typical Battle Scenes in the Iliad (Wiesbaden, 1968)Google Scholar. The tradition was evidently chauvinistically pro-Greek: on Homer's departure from this see the fine essay “Ἀε⋯ Φιλέλλην ό ποιητής?’ in Kakridis (see n.26), pp. 54 ff. (originally in WSt 69 (1956), 26 ff.Google Scholar).

38. See the brief but telling remarks by J. Griffin (see n.19), 186 f.

39. Note especially 24.110, spoken by Zeus to Thetis, αὑτ⋯ρ ⋯γὼ τ⋯δε κ⋯δος Ἀϰιλλ⋯ι προτιάπτω. The κ⋯δος is to pity Priam and accept the ransom, thus proving Zeus' estimate of him in 24.157–8 right rather than Apollo's in 24.39 ff.

40. Originally in Cahiers du Sud 1940–1, and reprinted in La Source grecque (Paris, 1952); translated into English as a pamphlet by M. McCarthy (New York, 1945, repr. 1967), and in the collection Intimations of Christianity among the Ancient Greeks (London, 1957)Google Scholar by E.C. Geissbuhler.