The Shield of Achilles (Ilias XVIII, 478-608) and Simonides' Apothegm on Painting and Poetry (T101...

Leopoldo Iribarren (Paris)

THE SHIELD OF ACHILLES (Ilias XVIII 478-608) AND SIMONIDESrsquo APOTHEGM ON PAINTING AND POETRY (T101 Poltera) Some thoughts on the fruitfulness of a well-matched couple1

Le dottrine debbono cominciare da quando cominciano le materie che trattano(Giambattista Vico Scienza Nuova [1744] I CVI)

This essay traces the intertwined reception of two texts the shield of Achilles in the Iliad and Simonidesrsquo apothegm stating that ldquopainting is silent poetry and poetry is silent paintingrdquo Although there is not a historical connection or intertextual relation between them these texts came to be bound through a common posterity in works that are central to the history of aesthetic thought ranging from the Plutarchean Essay on the Life and Poetry of Homer to Gotthold E Lessingrsquos Laocooumln with treatments by Angelo Poliziano Guillaume Budeacute Giorgio Vasari Charles Perrault Andreacute Dacier Jean Boivin and Alexander Pope In this shared posterity the apo-thegm serves as a theoretical framework for the Shield and the Shield offers an anticipated application of the apothegmrsquos postulate The connection between these texts raises two questions which I embrace in this essay The fi rst concerns the ldquoelective affi nityrdquo of the couple why did the Shield and not some other passage of the epic become the privileged object of Simonidesrsquo apothegm in subsequent aes-thetic theory The second question pertains to the functionality of the couple in the larger context of aesthetic theory Far from being a rhetorical commonplace with a standardized role in discourse the couple formed by the Shield and the apothegm shows a remarkable versatility in both the scope of theories that appeal to it (rheto-ric poetics art history philosophy of art) and the range of specifi c functions it ac-complishes within them (e g the Shield can either be a paradigm of ldquospeaking paintingrdquo or of ldquosilent poetryrdquo) I argue that the couple formed by the Shield and the apothegm ndash considered as ldquotheoretical objectrdquo in its own right ndash helped to shape the critical exploration of relations between the verbal and the visual over the course of at least fi fteen centuries

1 An earlier version of this essay was presented at the colloquium ldquoAux origines de la theacuteorie et de la litteacuterature artistiquesrdquo held at the Sorbonne in December 2012 I would like to thank in particular Pierre Caye for inviting me I am also grateful to Mark de Kreij Glenn Most and Alexandra Pappas who commented on my arguments and generously shared their own thoughts with me

Poetica-44 3-4indd 289Poetica-44 3-4indd 289 260313 1102260313 1102

Leopoldo Iribarren 290

Relations between poetry and the visual arts in terms of their ways and means of representation have been a topic of poetic refl ection since archaic Greece Although only relatively few passages of epic and lyric poetry remain the range of questions raised by the existing texts is an invitation to speculate on the signifi cance of this topic in early Greek poetry as well as in aesthetic theory in general2 Two texts in particular have come to dictate the terms for conceiving the relationships between the arts since late antiquity The fi rst of these is the iconic text of Achillesrsquo shield in the Iliad the second is the apothegm attributed to Simonides of Ceos the lyric poet and rival of Pindar which states that lsquopainting is silent poetry and poetry speaking paintingrsquo3 Each text in its own right has left a durable imprint on ancient and modern theories of aesthetics4 At the same time it is interesting to note that both texts have repeatedly been associated so much so that in poetic and artistic theory from late antiquity to the eighteenth century the Shield and the apothegm have become a sort of matched couple

This essay will trace the history of this coupling taking into account the various sources that to my knowledge have matched the two texts As I will show these came to be bound through a common posterity in works that are central to the history of aesthetic thought ranging from the Plutarchean Es-say on the Life and Poetry of Homer to Gotthold E Lessingrsquos Laocooumln with treatments by Angelo Poliziano Guillaume Budeacute Giorgio Vasari Charles Perrault Andreacute Dacier Jean Boivin and Alexander Pope In this shared pos-terity the apothegm serves as a theoretical framework for the Shield and the Shield offers an anticipated application of the apothegmrsquos postulate As we shall see the couple ndash considered as lsquotheoretical objectrsquo in its own right ndash

2 Cf in Homeric poetry Helenrsquos web (Ilias III 125-28) the shield of Achilles (Il XVI-II 478-608) Odysseusrsquo brooch (Odyssee XIX 225-31) in Hesiod the moulding of Pandora (Theogonia 571-84 Erga kai hemerai 69-82) the Hesiodic shield of Hera-cles (Scutum 139-320) in Simonides T101 Poltera in Pindar Nemeen 5 1-5 Isth-mien 2 43-48 frg 194

3 Simonides T101 Poltera (= 47b Campbell) Cf Plutarch Gloria Atheniensium 3 [346F] ldquoπλὴν ὁ Σιμωνίδης τὴν μὲν ζωγραφίαν ποίησιν σιωπῶσαν προσαγορεύει τὴν δὲ ποίησιν ζωγραφίαν λαλοῦσανrdquo Cf De audiensis poetis 3 [18A] De adulatore et amico 15 [58B] Quaestiones Convivialis 9 15 [748A] [Plutarch] Vita et poesis Homeri 216

4 The Shieldrsquos reception in the fi eld of aesthetics was the subject of a recent study by Anne-Marie Lecoq Le bouclier drsquoAchille Un tableau qui bouge Paris Gallimard 2010 As for the intellectual posterity of Simonidesrsquo apothegm which has mainly been considered in light of ut pictura poesis rhetoric see Rensselaer W Lee Ut Pictura Poesis Humanisme et theacuteorie de la peinture XVe-XVIIIe siegravecles transl by Maurice Brock Paris Macula 31998 [11940] and Hans Christoph Buch Ut Pictura Poesis Die Beschreibungsliteratur und ihre Kritiker von Lessing bis Lukaacutecs Mu-nich Hanser 1972


The shield of Achilles 291

helped to shape the critical exploration of relations between the verbal and the visual over the course of at least fi fteen centuries

Any speculation as to how and with what purpose these two texts came to be associated in aesthetic theory raises the more general question of the relationship between the beginning and the source of a theoretical discourse Indeed since the Shield has consistently been considered the iconic source of Western thought on representation and Simonidesrsquo apothegm the begin-ning of its theoretical elaboration their successive couplings constitute a compelling case study of the historical emergence of theoretical discourses Despite some semantic ambiguity underlying these two functional notions we can understand lsquobeginningrsquo as referred to a distinct event ndash defi ned with-in time and space ndash as opposed to lsquosourcersquo whose referent is usually credited with a deferred if not undetermined causal effect5 Thus the status of Simo-nidesrsquo apothegm as a theoretical beginning can be attributed to Plutarch who incidentally is the fi rst extant author to paraphrase it Plutarchrsquos theoretical gesture however entails a considerable contextual displacement of the apo-thegm As I develop below Plutarch imposes a Peripatetic reading on the Simonidean comparison between poetry and painting which results in a fun-damental anachronism although Plutarch uses the apothegm to underscore his thoughts on the wordrsquos expression of pictorial vividness (enargeia)6 it may well have had quite different implications in its earliest instantiation by Simonides7 This semantic dissonance as we shall see is the fi rst of several such shifts that occur in the successive theorizing of Simonidesrsquo dictum and in particular in its analysis alongside Homerrsquos iconic ecphrasis

Indeed the apothegm indicates a specifi c moment in archaic thought when there was a need to formalize the relationship between poetry and painting However the meaning of this relation seems to have been more polemical than aesthetical In fact as Andrew Ford has pointed out the apo-thegm can be understood in terms similar to those of Pindarrsquos fi fth Nemean and second Isthmian odes in which the poet states that poems are superior to

5 On a similar distinction opposing the terms lsquobeginningrsquo and lsquooriginrsquo see Edward W Said Beginnings Intention and Methods New York Basic Books 1975 p 5

6 Aristotle Rhetorica 1411a-b 7 There are reasons to believe that Plutarchrsquos version of the dictum is a reformulation

of Simonidesrsquo ipsissima verba Giuliana Lanata (Poetica pre-platonica Testimoni-anze e frammenti Florence La nuova Italia 1963 p 68) notes that Plutarchrsquos use of lsquoποίησιςrsquo for lsquopoetryrsquo is not otherwise attested before Herodotus Donald W Lucas (Aristotle Poetics Oxford Clarendon Press 1968 p 269 note 2) points out that Plutarchrsquos use of lsquoλαλεῖνrsquo as a synonym for lsquoλέγεινrsquo sounds post-Simonidean On the particular diction of the Simonidean apothegmata see Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff Sappho und Simonide Untersuchungen uumlber griechische Lyriker Ber-lin Weidmann 1913 p 148-150



those notoriously silent and immobile statues8 If artworks (lsquosilent poetryrsquo) are a common way of immortalizing a victor for a lyric poet the song (lsquospeaking paintingrsquo) represents the truest embodiment of fame9 Thus the connection between poetry and the visual arts implied by Simonidesrsquo apo-thegm was one of artisanal rivalry rather than of aesthetic emulation as it became for Plutarch Furthermore there are no grounds on which to con-sider the Shield as the metaphorical referent for Simonidesrsquo lsquospeaking paint-ingrsquo per se As I elaborate below the coupling of these two texts results from a double anachronism those who theorize representation by means of Simo-nidesrsquo apothegm likewise enforce the status of the Shield as its iconic source

The connection between the source and the beginning in this case raises two questions which I embrace in this essay The fi rst concerns the lsquoelective affi nityrsquo of the couple why did the Shield and not some other passage of the epic become the privileged object of Simonidesrsquo apothegm in subsequent aesthetic theory Or to be more specifi c to what extent does the Shield con-tain embedded in its narrative the virtual elements of a thesis of which it will later be held up as an anticipated application The second question per-tains to the functionality of the couple in the larger context of aesthetic the-ory Far from being a rhetorical commonplace with a standardized role in discourse the couple formed by the Shield and the apothegm shows a re-markable versatility in both the scope of theories that appeal to it (rhetoric poetics art history philosophy of art) and the range of specifi c functions it accomplishes within them (e g the Shield can either be a paradigm of lsquospeaking paintingrsquo or of lsquosilent poetryrsquo) As we shall see a good deal of this couplersquos appeal as a locus for exploration lies in the methodological possi-bilities it offered to the range of theories that relied upon it

8 Andrew Ford The Origins of Criticism Literary Culture and Poetic Theory in Clas-sical Greece Princeton Oxford Princeton Univ Press 2002 p 93-99 Cf Pindar Nem 5 1-3 Ist 2 44-48

9 Anne Carson (ldquoSimonides Painterrdquo in Ralph Hexter [ed] Innovations of Antiquity New York e a Routledge 1992 p 51-64) suggests that the metaphor of lsquosilent po-etryrsquo could have alluded to the great frescoes depicting scenes of epic poetry such as those Pausanias (10 25-31) attributes to Polygnotus (middle of the fi fth century B C) the earliest painter whose name has come down to us As a matter of fact Pausanias affi rms that Polygnotusrsquo painting in the Cnidian Hall at Delphi (1027) in-cluded the following couplet by Simonides ldquoPolygnotus of Thasos son of Aglao-phon painted the sack of the acropolis of Troyrdquo



1 The Shield as a theoretical object within the Iliad

I will start with the following hypothesis for the Shield to become the icon-ic source of a theory of representation it must contain in the immanence of its forms and images the virtual principles of the very theory claiming it as an anticipated application Thus before being extricated from its Homeric context and projected into anachronic theoretical positions the Shield must already deploy a specifi c theoretical potency within the Iliad I believe that primary potency is linked to the status of the Shield as a fabricated image and may be explained by its articulation of two different aesthetic dimen-sions Borrowing the terms from Louis Marinrsquos theory of representation these are the lsquorefl exiversquo and the lsquotransitiversquo dimensions10 The refl exive dimension in which the text presents itself representing something is exem-plifi ed by the mise-en-scene of Hephaestusrsquo demiurgic activity which imple-ments the arts involved in the fabrication of the Shield On the other hand the transitive dimension namely what the text ostensibly represents is con-stituted in this case by the diverse scenes that unfold on the Shield Needless to say the text itself undermines any clear distinctions between the refl exive and the transitive aesthetic dimensions by consistently putting them into productive tension Each of these dimensions nevertheless highlights a spe-cifi c relationship between the arts that will be exploited by the successive theoretical adjoining of Simonidesrsquo apothegm to the Shield

With regard to the refl exive dimension I have referred to the uniqueness of the Shield as a verbal icon lies in its demiurgic narrative Unlike other famous iconic textual objects inspired by it such as the Hesiodic shield of Herakles or Aeneasrsquo shield in Virgilrsquos epic where the ecphrasis focuses ex-clusively on the content of the images depicted the shield of Achillesrsquo narra-tive is centered on its process of fabrication By describing the very coming into existence of the images as well as the aesthetic effect they create the Shieldrsquos narrative conjoins the artistic means of poetry and metal forging thereby creating an impression of unity or at least of inextricable intercom-munication between verbal and visual arts This idea is fi rst evinced in the scene of Thetis asking Hephaestus to forge a new set of arms for Achilles (Il XVIII 369-477) The godrsquos answer underscores the aesthetic rather than the defensive qualities of the panoply as he promises a set of arms such that anyone among many men will marvel at whoever sees itlsquo (ldquo[hellip] ἀνθρώπων

10 Louis Marin Opaciteacute de la peinture Essais sur la repreacutesentation au Quattrocento Paris e a Usher 1989 p 10-17 I fi nd this a more productive theoretical model for my purpose than the typology proposed by Andrew S Becker The Shield of Achilles and the poetics of Ekphrasis London e a Rowman amp Littlefi eld 1995 p 41 which distinguishes four ldquolevels of responserdquo to which the description is directed



πολέων θαυμάσσεται ὅς κεν ἴδηταιrdquo 467) The many men that will marvel at the artistry of Hephaestusrsquo work metaphorically fi gure the aoidosrsquo audi-ence marveling at the in-progress poetic composition of the Shield A fi rst parallel is thus made between poetic and material craftsmanship with regard to the effect these have on the audience At a structural level the association between these two modes of production is stressed by the poetic form of the Shield embedded in a ring composition11 Within it each one of the scenes depicted is introduced by a verb with demiurgic connotations that produces an overlap of the craft of Hephaestus and that of the poet12 The refl exive dimension of the Shieldrsquos narrative is also manifest at another level one that pertains to the symbolic capacities of language I am referring here to the discourses that are so to speak lsquofi guredrsquo on the Shieldrsquos surface such as the deliberation that takes place in the trial scene (499-508) and in the city at war the dilemma that arises concerning the destruction or the pillage of the besieged city (510-513) We may add to these lsquospeakingrsquo vignettes the self-representation of the aoidos in the dancing place-scene ndash if we accept the authenticity of a verse athetized by Aristarchus (604605) In any case these discourses are the product of the poetrsquos intentional split of languagersquos sym-bolic function language creates an image and simultaneously becomes the object of that very image

Within what I have called the transitive dimension I concentrate here on just the choral and lyrical scenes depicted on the Shield The inclusion of these among the other human activities represented on its surface (war as-sembly work feast etc) testifi es in the fi rst place to a totalizing artistic form as if the Shield which is Hephaestusrsquo aristeia paid homage to forms of art other than the epic Furthermore these scenes reveal two ways in which in-teractions among the arts were thematized on the Shield One concerns a certain aesthetic effect produced by two or more arts and the other a formal identity between them That different performances can lead to similar aes-thetic effects is manifest in the choral scenes depicted in the Shield In one of them Hephaestus displays a Hymenaion song being performed at the city in peace (491-496) Music is played with fl utes and lyres bringing together young people who dance in a circle The circularity of the dance articulated by the verb ldquoδινεύωrdquo formally matches that of Shield itself (607-608) while the whole event is said to call forth the spectatorsrsquo admiration (ldquoθαύμαζονrdquo

11 The ring composition is contained within the iteration of the hemistiches of 478b and 608b On other lsquoringing devicesrsquo employed in the composition see Keith Stanley The Shield of Homer Narrative structure in the Iliad Princeton Princeton Univ Press 1993 p 9-13

12 ldquoποιέωrdquo (478 490 573 587) ldquoδαιδάλλωrdquo (479) ldquoτεύχωrdquo (483) ldquoτίθημιrdquo (541 550 561 607) ldquoποικίλλωrdquo (590)



496) Homer creates a specifi c connection between poetry music dance and image and the audience must regard their combined aesthetic effect Similar features can be found in an otherwise more complex choral scene where Hephaestus constructs a dancing-place that the poet compares to the one Dae-dalus built at Knossos (590-592) The physical movement executed in this scene is compared in turn to the circular movement of a potterrsquos wheel (600-601) Circularity is reiterated a few verses later by the movement of two ac-robats in the middle of the chorus (again the verb is ldquoδινεύωrdquo 606) As with the previous scene the formal exchange between the arts actually mirrors the form of the Shield itself The successive fi tting-together of these circles into a totalizing artistic construction has an aesthetic effect on the audience for which the poet employs the plural participle lsquodelightedrsquo (ldquoτερπόμενοιrdquo 604605) with its directive for how we should experience each element of careful craftsmanship whether Hephaestusrsquo or Homerrsquos

A full account of the Shieldrsquos refl exive and transitive dimensions exceeds the purpose of this essay What I have intended to highlight by way of these few examples is that the Shield might have provided to the bardrsquos audience ndash certainly well-versed in interpreting this kind of composition ndash some elements to problematize two related questions that of the interconnectedness between visual and verbal arts on the one hand and that of the mimetic nature of po-etry on the other Simonidesrsquo dictum offered a fi rst theoretical formulation to precisely these questions at least according to later authors who perceived the Shield as its iconic source

2 The matched couple

Plutarch quotes Simonidesrsquo apothegm or some variations of it on four occa-sions and never in the context of Homer in general or the shield of Achilles in particular13 The only pertinent occurrence for our topic is found in the treaty On the Glory of the Athenians where the main subject of the passage is not poetry but historical narrative and its vivid representation Plutarch discusses here the best way of writing history and compares the pictorial vividness (ldquoγραφικὴ ἐνάργειαrdquo) of Thucydides with Euphranorrsquos painting of the battle of Mantineia

13 See note 3 In Aud poet 3 [18A] the apothegm is cited as traditional with no author specifi ed in Quaest Conv 9 15 [748A] dance is substituted for painting as the anal-ogon of poetry in Adul ab amico 15 [58B] the formula becomes ldquojust as some have defi ned painting as silent poetry so there is a kind of praise that is silent poetryrdquo (Frank C Babbit Plutarch Moralia vol I Cambridge London Loeb Classical Li-brary 1927)



πλὴν ὁ Σιμωνίδης τὴν μὲν ζωγραφίαν ποίησιν σιωπῶσαν προσαγορεύει τὴν δὲ ποίησιν ζωγραφίαν λαλοῦσαν ἃς γάρ οἱ ζωγράφοι πράξεις ὡς γιγνομένας δεικνύ-ουσι ταύτας οἱ λόγοι γεγενημένας διηγοῦνται καὶ συγγράφουσιν εἰ δ᾽ οἱ μὲν χρώ-μασι καὶ σχήμασιν οἱ δ᾽ ὀνόμασι καὶ λέξεσι ταὐτὰ δηλοῦσιν ὕλῃ καὶ τρόποις μιμήσεως διαφέρουσι τέλος δ᾽ ἀμφοτέροις ἓν ὑπόκειται καὶ τῶν ἱστορικῶν κρά-τιστος ὁ τὴν διήγησιν ὥσπερ γραφὴν πάθεσι καὶ προσώποις εἰδωλοποιήσας (Glor At 3 [346F-347C])

But Simonides calls painting silent poetry and poetry speaking painting for actions which painters represent as taking place at the moment words set out in detail and describe after they have taken place Even though they represent the same subjects the one with color and design the other with words and phrases they differ in the material and the manners of imitation and yet the underlying end of both is one and the same and so the best historian is he who by a vivid representation of emotions and characters forms an image of his narrative like a painting (Translation L Ir-ibarren)

Despite the specifi c context in which Plutarch quotes the apothegm ndash the passagersquos main purpose remains the praise of Thucydidesrsquo qualities as a his-torian rather than aesthetic speculation as such ndash the author puts forward a general interpretation of Simonidesrsquo formula which displaces the scope of its original intention (to the extent that we can know what that was) The fi rst conclusion that Plutarch derives from the comparison between pictorial and verbal arts is one that will be exploited much later by Lessing in reference to the Shield This is the well-known characterization of painting as an art of spatial presence in opposition to poetry which operates temporally Not by accident will Lessing choose Plutarchrsquos distinction as the epigraph to the Laocooumln ldquoὕλῃ καὶ τρόποις μιμήσεως διαφέρουσιrdquo14 The other fundamental point Plutarch deduces from the apothegm is that while painting and poetry lsquodiffer in the material and the manners of imitationrsquo they both seek the same end the vividness of expression In Plutarchrsquos Peripatetic interpretation of the apothegm15 enargeia is the clear goal of both arts however the kind of paradigmatic vividness he advocates lies within the realm of painting rather than writing it somehow pertains more naturally to visual than to discursive arts in his estimation Hence the lsquobest historianrsquo i e Thucydides lsquomakes his narration like a paintingrsquo For Plutarch painting provides the model of vividness that is to be achieved by literature On the other hand what literary discourse ndash whether poetry or historical narrative ndash has to offer to painting is

14 Gotthold Ephraim Lessing Laokoon [1766] ed by Wilfried Barner Frankfurt a M Deutscher Klassiker Verlag 1990 p 11

15 Cf Aristotle Poetica 1447a18-22



not explicitly stated by Plutarch but we can deduce from the context of the passage that it might provide the visual arts with models of human action16

If Plutarch does not relate Simonidesrsquo apothegm to the Shield his com-mentary prepares ndash although does not require ndash the future associations of these two texts Their successive encounters in theoretical literature will in-volve with varying degrees of explicitness the two features emphasized in Plutarchrsquos interpretation of the apothegm namely the notion of pictorial viv-idness on the one hand and the distinction between the arts with regard to their material and manners of imitation on the other From this point of view Plutarch can be credited with having deduced from Simonidesrsquo apho-rism the lsquoconditions of possibilityrsquo so to speak of a paragone between both arts As we shall see the Shield will come to be held as the fi rst if not the most conspicuous example of this kind of agonistic comparison between artistic forms

As far as we can tell the Shield and Simonidesrsquo apothegm were put into explicit dialogue for the fi rst time in the Essay on the life and poetry of Homer a text long thought to be Plutarchrsquos but in fact written by an anony-mous grammarian between the fi rst and the second centuries A D17 The Essay is an encyclopedic work whose main purpose is to celebrate Homer by demonstrating that he is the primary source of all sorts of knowledge and human skills Its author is less concerned with the interpretation of the po-ems as such than with the idea of establishing Homer as a universal procirctos heuretecircs Indeed the skills of painting and sculpture fi gure among the mass of accomplishments attributed to Homer in the Essay The proof for the claim is based on an ingenious application of Simonidesrsquo apothegm to the shield of Achilles

εἰ δὲ καὶ ζῳγραφίας διδάσκαλον Ὅμηρον φαίη τις οὐκ ἂν ἁμαρτάνοι καὶ γὰρ εἶπέ τις τῶν σοφῶν ὅτι ἐστὶν ἡ ποιητικὴ ζῳγραφία λαλοῦσα ἡ δὲ ζῳγραφία ποιητικῆ σιωπῶσα τὶς οὖν πρῶτος ἢ τίς μᾶλλον Ὁμήρου τῇ φαντασίᾳ τῶν νοη-μάτων ἔδειξεν ἢ τῇ εὐφωνίᾳ τῶν ἐπῶν ἐκόσμησε θεοὺς ἀνθρώπους τόπους πράξεις ποικίλας ἀνέπλασε δὲ τῇ ὕλῃ τῶν λόγων καὶ ζῷα παντοῖα καὶ μάλιστα τὰ ἀλκιμώτα λέοντας σύας παρδάλεις ὧν τὰς μορφὰς καὶ διαθέσεις ὑπογράψας καὶ ἀνθρωπείος πράγμασι παραβαλών ἔδειξεν ἑκατέρας τὰς οἰκειότητας ἐτόλμησε δὲ καὶ θεοῖς μορφὰς ἀνθρώπων εἰκάσαι ὁ δὲ τὴν ἀσπίδα τῷ Ἀχιλλεῖ κατασκευά-σας Ἥφαιστος καὶ ἐντορεύσας τῷ χρυσῷ γῆν οὐρανὸν θάλασσαν ἔτι δε μέγεθος Ἡλίου καὶ κάλλος Σελήνης καὶ πλῆθος ἄστρων στεφανούντων τὸ πᾶν καὶ πόλεις

16 Plutarch in fact celebrates Euphranorrsquos depiction of the Atheniansrsquo ldquostout resistance plentiful of boldness courage and vigourrdquo in rescuing Mantineia from Epameinondas (Glor At 346 E-F)

17 On the controversy over the dating and the authorship of the Vita et poesis Homeri see [Plutarch] Essay on the life and poetry of Homer ed and transl by John J Keany and Robert Lamberton Atlanta Scholars Press 1996 p 3-10



ἐν διαφόροις τρόποις καὶ τύχαις καθεστώσας καὶ ζῷα κινούμενα καὶ φθεγγόμενα τίνος οὐ φαίνεται τέχνης τοιαύτης δημιουργοῦ τεχνικώτερος (Essay 54B sect216)

If one were to say that Homer was a teacher of painting as well this would be no exaggeration for as one of the sages said lsquoPoetry is painting which speaks and painting is silent poetryrsquo And so who before or who better than Homer made vis-ible to the mindrsquos eye gods men places and various deeds or adorned them with the euphony of words He even moulded in the material of language all kinds of beasts and in particular the most powerful lions boars leopards ndash and by describ-ing their forms and dispositions and tracing them in human terms for comparison he demonstrated the special properties of each He dared also to give the gods hu-man shapes Hephaestus making the shield of Achilles and sculpting in gold the earth the heavens the sea even the mass of the sun and the beauty of the moon the swarm of the stars that crowns the universe cities of various sorts and fortunes and moving speaking creatures ndash what practitioner of arts of this sort can you fi nd to exceed him18

The topic of Homer as a master of painting was in all probability already a rhetorical commonplace by the time the Essay was composed its origin can actually be traced to Cicero who uses it to emphasize the vividness of Homeric descriptions despite the legendary blindness of the poet19 What strikes as novel in the above-quoted passage is the use of the Shield as a testimony to his painting skills In order to demonstrate that Homer was among many other things an art teacher Pseudo-Plutarch begins by revers-ing the traditional order of Simonidesrsquo formula in which lsquopainting is called silent poetryrsquo occupied the fi rst part of the comparison Instead by stating fi rst that lsquopoetry is painting which speaksrsquo20 the author seems to intimate that Homer is primarily a poet but also as corollary a teacher of painting Then follows what can be characterized as an exegetical homage to the shield of Achilles Pseudo-Plutarch states that not only could Homer display and make everything visible but he also lsquoadornedrsquo (ldquoποικίλαςrdquo) his subject mat-ter with the sound of words The use of the verb ldquoποικίλλωrdquo by the anony-mous grammarian who composed the Essay is signifi cant to the extent that the fi rst occurrence of this verb in Greek literature is in the Shield passage itself where it introduces the famous scene of the dancing place (Il XVIII 590) As I argued above the verbs with demiurgic connotations methodi-

18 P 306 et sqq (Translation J J Keany and R Lamberton [modifi ed]) 19 Cicero Tusc V sect114 ldquoTraditum est etiam Homerum caecum fuisse At eius pictur-

am non poesin videmus Quae regio quae ora qui locus Graeciae quae species for-mae quae pugna quae acies quod remigium qui motus hominum qui ferarum non ita expictus est ut quae ipse non viderit nos ut videremus effecerit Quid ergo aut Homero delectationem animi ac voluptatem aut cuiquam docto defuisse umquam ar-bitramurrdquo

20 Notice the introduction of an explicit copula (ldquoἐστίνrdquo) which is absent in previous formulations of the dictum



cally used in the composition of the Shield often help connect two different levels of representation one refers to the image that Hephaestus sculpts on the metal surface the other relates back to the linguistic medium through which the poet verbalizes that image visual and verbal arts are thus made parallel in regard to the effects they have on the audience The acknowledge-ment of the double referent conveyed by ldquoποικίλλωrdquo in the Shield is con-fi rmed by Pseudo-Plutarchrsquos use of a craftsmanship metaphor in the next sentence to underscore the poetrsquos linguistic artistry lsquoHe even moulded in the material of languagersquo (ldquoἀνέπλασε δὲ τῇ ὕλῃ τῶν λόγων [hellip]rdquo) every imagi-nable creature animal human or divine

Employing the Shield however for praising Homer as a visual artist is double-edged In fact when the Shield is explicitly evoked in the following sentence as the ultimate compendium of Homerrsquos artistic skills the Essayrsquos author raises a paradox that will not escape the attention of his future read-ers That is while Homer is to be considered an art teacher the result he achieves on the Shieldrsquos surface lies beyond the reach of any conceivable visual representation a comprehensive picture of the universe whose fi gures move and speak The Essay picks up on just one of the aspects of Plutarchrsquos interpretation of the apothegm that of pictorial vividness failing to consider the no less important feature of the distinction between visual and verbal arts in regard to lsquothe material and the manners of imitationrsquo Accordingly the introduction of the Shield as paradigm of pictorial vividness proves poten-tially problematic what is meant to be a quintessential illustration of vivid-ness one to be emulated by visual artists is in fact an aporia of representa-tion Pseudo-Plutarch does not seem to acknowledge the problems that emerge from his particular application of Simonidesrsquo apothegm to the Shield his main concern is the praise of the Homeric skills for displaying things as if in a painting21 However as we shall see later this baffl ing lsquosurplusrsquo of vividness will not go unnoticed in French seventeenth-century aesthetic the-ory

3 The couplersquos accommodation in the Renaissance

The Essay on the life and poetry of Homer survived fortuitously from late antiquity to the Renaissance as part of the Planudean corpus of Plutarchrsquos Moralia and eventually as an appendix to editions of Homer We actually

21 In the next paragraph (sect218) he actually quotes the scene of Odysseusrsquo recognition by Eurycleia (Odyssey XIX 467-68 470-77) as yet another example of pictorial vivid-ness



fi nd it included in the editio princeps (Florence 1488) along with the Life of Homer attributed to Herodotus and Dio Chrysostomrsquos essay On Homer22 In the fi fteenth and sixteenth centuries Pseudo-Plutarchrsquos Essay became the primary source (acknowledged or not) for the conventional encomia of Homer that fl ourished in that period This rhetorical exercise essentially con-sisted of listing the diversity of knowledge and skills Homer possessed along with the ideas of later philosophers that were to be traced back to him Among the earliest examples of such praises fi gures Polizianorsquos Oratio in expositione Homeri a text derived from his lessons on Homer given at the Studio fi orentino between 1485 and 1490 Teeming with Plutarchean mate-rial Polizianorsquos oration takes up the topic of Homer the master of painters in terms that would have been familiar to any Renaissance scholar

Quid si eundem picturae quoque magistrum auctoremque vocemus Num opinor mentiemur cum praesertim sapientis dictum feratur poesin esse loquentem pictu-ram sicut e contrario pictura ipsa muta poesis vocatur Quod si cui fortasse aut absurdum videtur aut magnifi cum nimis legat obsecro vel illam in Achillis clypeo caelaturam vel si hoc gravatur locum certe hunc de Euryclea anu Ulyssem ex ci-catrice agnoscente diligenter consideret cuius equidem imaginem statumque et habitum non tam accipere auribus quam ipsis plane oculis videor usurpare23

What if we call Homer the master and inventor of painting Would we be lying Surely not I think since as a wise man said poetry is speaking painting just as on the other hand painting is called mute poetry If perhaps that strikes someone as absurd or exaggerated let him read I beg the description of the sculpted shield of Achilles or if this is a burden to him let him carefully consider the passage where Eurycleia recognizes Ulysses from his scar her image her condition her attitude seem less perceived by the ears than enjoyed by the eyes (Translation L Iribarren)

For Poliziano as for Pseudo-Plutarch who is the evident source of this pas-sage Homerrsquos pictorial vis can be synthetically formulated in Simonidesrsquo apothegm and is primarily illustrated by the Shield Nevertheless contrary to Pseudo-Plutarch whose enthusiastic encomium of the Shield led him to betray its aporetic character as a verbal icon Poliziano seems to acknowl-edge this potential inconvenience So rather than elaborating on the Shieldrsquos

22 On the other hand Pseudo-Plutarchrsquos Essay was omitted from the fi rst comprehensive edition of the Moralia the Aldine (1509) as from the Basel edition of 1542 Xylander published a Latin translation of it along with the rest of the Moralia in 1570 but omitted it from his 1574 edition of the Greek text as did Stephanus in 1572 On the transmission of the Essay in the Renaissance see Anthony Grafton ldquoRenaissance Readers of Homerrsquos Ancient Readersrdquo in John J Keany Robert Lamberton (ed) Homerrsquos ancient readers The hermeneutics of Greek epicrsquos earliest exegetes Prince-ton Princeton Univ Press 1992 p 149-172

23 Angelo Poliziano Oratio in expositione Homeri [1498] ed by Paola Megna Rome Edizione Nazionale dei Testi Umanistici 2007 p 76 et sqq (sect89)



images he anticipates its critics (ldquosi hoc gravaturhelliprdquo) and focuses instead on the otherwise less problematic scene of Odysseusrsquo recognition by Eury-cleia24 In any case the art of painting as such is considered to be something of an offshoot of Homerrsquos poetic enargeia

Polizianorsquos source of inspiration did not go unnoticed by other Renais-sance scholars such as Budeacute In his Annotationes in Pandectas (1508) a historical and philological approach to Roman law which also happened to contain a substantial discussion of Homer the French humanist exposed Polizianorsquos plagiarism of Pseudo-Plutarch Budeacutersquos own use of the Plutar-chean Essay neglects the largely conventional allegorical reading of Homer that was instrumental in establishing him as a universal procirctos heuretecircs In-stead as an example of Homerrsquos poetic eloquence he quotes a single pas-sage of the Essay precisely the fi rst part of sect216 where Simonidesrsquo apo-thegm is introduced ndash however Budeacute does not quote the second half of the passage where the Shield is evoked In addition to this according to An-thony Grafton Budeacute had inscribed in his own copy of Homer lsquoHomer is a teacher of paintingrsquo (ldquoὅμηρος ζωγραφίας διδάσκαλοςrdquo) and lsquopoetry is paint-ing which speaksrsquo (ldquoἡ ποιητικὴ ζωγρφία λαλοῦσαrdquo)25 By deliberately avoiding the mention of the Shield as the apothegmrsquos icon Budeacute essentially broadens the reach of the apothegm to Homerrsquos poetry in general At the same time he avoids the potential diffi culties that arise from the specifi c coupling of our two texts

In the Renaissance however the Shield and the apothegm are not exclu-sively confi ned to the functions of emblem and motto of Homerrsquos poetic vividness The theoretical possibilities opened by their relation also appeal to a different domain of aesthetics one that is more concerned by visual than by verbal arts This is the case of Vasarirsquos Lives of the Most Excellent Paint-ers Sculptors and Architects an encyclopedia of artistic biographies and technical methods used by artists in the Renaissance First published in 1550 the Lives were preceded by a historical proem whose narrative is based on a then widespread biological scheme according to which the history of civili-zation follows a cyclical pattern birth growth ageing death and rinasci-ta26 In the specifi c case of the visual arts Vasari develops the ahistorical

24 Which also happened to be examined by Pseudo-Plutarch in the Essay Cf note 21 25 Guillaume Budeacute Opera Omnia [1557] vol 3 Farnbourough Gregg International

1966 p 212 See Grafton ldquoRenaissance Readers of Homerrsquos Ancient Readersrdquo (see note 22)

26 On this scheme see the classic study by Ernst H Gombrich ldquoThe Renaissance Con-ception of Artistic Progress and its Consequencesrdquo [1952] in idem Norm and Form Studies in the Art of the Renaissance London Phaidon 1966 More specifi cally on Vasarirsquos sources of the biological analogy there have been different opinions Erwin



concept of disegno to defi ne the very essence of art granting a principle of continuity and permanence to the arts in their organic progression The in-tention of Vasarirsquos preface is to portray the Florentine renaissance as a para-digm of artistic progress within the larger scope of a universal history of the arts one partially based on anecdotes taken from Diodorus Siculus and Pliny Within this historical scheme the Shield stands as a witness to the perfection achieved by the visual arts in Homerrsquos era

Da le cose dunque vedute inanzi al diluvio la superbia degli uomini trovograve il modo di fare le statue di coloro che al mondo volsero che restassero per fama di immor-tali Et i Greci che diversamente ragionano di questa origine dicono che gli Etiopi trovarono le prime statue secondo Diodoro e gli Egizzii le presono da loro e da questi i Greci poicheacute insino arsquo tempi di Omero si vede essere stato perfetta la scultura e la pittura come fa fede lo scudo drsquoAcchille da quel divino poeta con tutta lrsquoarte piuacute tosto sculpito e dipinto che scritto27

From the things seen before the fl ood the pride of man found the means to make statues of those whose fame they desired to remain immortal in the world and the Greeks who assign a different origin to this say that the Ethiopians invented the fi rst statues according to Diodorus the Egyptians imitated these while the Greeks followed the Egyptians From this time until Homerrsquos day it is clear that sculpture and painting were perfect as we may see from the shield of Achilles by that divine poet with such skill that it seems sculpted and painted rather than written

With Vasari the anachronic coupling of the Shield and the apothegm leads to a new form of historical speculation concerning the origins of art one in which the commonly accepted validity of the beginning (the apothegm) suf-fi ciently demonstrates the positive existence of the source (the Shield) In fact one of the fascinating aspects of this passage is the way in which Vasa-ri acknowledges the historical existence of the Shield as visual artefact rath-

Panofsky argues that the source may be Lucio Aena Floriorsquos De gestis romanorum (cf Panofsky ldquoDas erste Blatt aus dem lsquoLibrorsquo Giorgio Vasari Eine Studie uumlber die Beurteilung der Gotik in der italienischen Renaissancerdquo in Staedel-Jahrbuch 61930 p 25-72) By another reading Eugenio Garin has pointed out that Guillaume Postel might be at the origin of Vasarirsquos conception of cyclical renaissances (cf Garin ldquoGiorgio Vasari e il tema della rinascitardquo in Mario Salmi [ed] Il Vasari Storiografo e Artista Atti del congresso internazionale nel IV centenario della morte Arezzo-Firenze 2-8 Settembre 1974 Florence Istituto nazionale di studi sul Rinascimento 1976 p 259-266) For a new approach to the question see Matteo Burioni ldquoRinas-cita dellrsquoarte o rinascita dellrsquoantichitagrave Storia antropologia e critica drsquoarte nelle Vite del Vasarirdquo in Katja Burzer e a (ed) Le Vite del Vasari Genesi topoi ricezione Venice Marsilio 2010 p 153-160

27 Giorgio Vasari Le Vite dersquo piuacute eccelenti architetti pittori et scultori italiani da Cimabue insino arsquotempi nostri [1550] ed by Luciano Bellosi Torino Einaudi 1987 p 91 (p 113 in the edition of 1550) (Translation Giorgio Vasari The lives of the painters sculptors and architects ed by Philip Joshua Jacks transl by Gaston du C De Vere New York e a Modern Library 2005 p 5 [modifi ed])



er than iconic text To achieve this the author relies on what was then a well-established commonplace of aesthetic theory the shield of Achilles is the most conspicuous example of Simonidesrsquo lsquospeaking paintingrsquo However Vasarirsquos turn of phrase (ldquopiuacute tosto sculpito e dipinto che scrittordquo) which is a clear elaboration on Simonidesrsquo apothegm puts forth the material and visual aspects of the artifact to the detriment of its original verbal substance As a result in Vasarirsquos narrative the Shield pertains more to the realm of lsquosilent poetryrsquo than to lsquospeaking paintingrsquo and to that same extent it might be con-sidered the greatest artistic achievement of Homerrsquos time

Poliziano and Vasari used the couple with different purposes the former as part of a rhetorical encomium of Homeric enargeia the latter as a funda-mental piece of evidence in the cyclic history of art Nevertheless a common feature strikes us in both cases the reference to Hephaestus as the Shieldrsquos artisan has disappeared along with the demiurgic component of the narra-tive From the moving and speaking image in Pseudo-Plutarchrsquos Essay to the static work of art in the Renaissance the Shield has somehow shifted from a paradigm of poetry (speaking painting) to that of painting (silent po-etry)

4 The Shield the Apothegm and Louis le Grand

During the last decade of the seventeenth century the lsquoQuerelle des Anciens et des Modernesrsquo permeated the whole of the French literary scene at stake were not only aesthetic implications but also considerable political and reli-gious issues With regard to the aesthetic sphere which is the one that con-cerns us here the dispute focused on the status of the Greco-Roman world as a cultural reference in the era of Louis XIV The quarrel developed between the views of the Ancients led by Nicolas Boileau and Jean Racine who sup-ported the classical tradition and its forms as an unsurpassable reference and those of the Moderns led by Perrault who promoted a conception of artistic innovation emancipated from traditional classical authority28 The Moderns were the fi rst to open fi re in 1687 with the reading of Perraultrsquos poem Le Siegravecle de Louis le Grand where the author ridicules the classical canon to celebrate the superiority of the arts and sciences of seventeenth-century France Homer is so to speak the poemrsquos piegravece de reacutesistance In fact while acknowledging that he is ldquopegravere de tous les artsrdquo (103) in a clear allusion to

28 See the preface in Anne-Marie Lecoq La querelle des anciens et des modernes XVI-Ie ndash XVIIIe siegravecles with a preface from Marc Fumaroli Paris Gallimard 2001 On Homerrsquos role in the quarrel see Noeacutemie Hepp Homegravere en France au XVIIe siegravecle Paris Klincksieck 1968



the basic theme of the Plutarchean encomium Perrault nevertheless enumer-ates Homerrsquos abundant lsquolacks of tastersquo According to him these are imputa-ble to the poetrsquos era and therefore could have been avoided had the poet been born in France ldquoau siegravecle ougrave nous vivonsrdquo (113-116) Among the passages that could certainly be improved if that had been the case the shield of Achilles has a prominent place (125-142)

Drsquoune plus fi ne entente et drsquoun art plus habile 125Aurait eacuteteacute forgeacute le bouclier drsquoAchilleChef-drsquoœuvre de Vulcain ougrave son savant burinSur le front lumineux drsquoun reacutesonnant airainAvait graveacute le ciel les airs lrsquoonde et la terreEt tout ce qursquoAmphitrite en ses deux bras enserre 130Ougrave lrsquoon voit eacuteclater le bel astre du jourEt la lune au milieu de sa brillante courOugrave lrsquoon voit deux citeacutes parlant diverses languesOugrave de deux orateurs on entend les haranguesOugrave de jeunes bergers sur la rive drsquoun bois 135Dansent lrsquoun apregraves lrsquoautre et puis tous agrave la fois Ougrave mugit un taureau qursquoun fi er lion deacutevoreOugrave sont de doux concerts et cent choses encoreQue jamais drsquoun burin quoiqursquoen la main des dieuxLe langage muet ne saurait dire aux yeux 140Ce fameux bouclier dans un siegravecle plus sageEucirct eacuteteacute plus correct et moins chargeacute drsquoouvrage29

The Shield of Achilles masterpiece of Vulcan would have been forged with a fi ner understanding and a more skillful art Over the luminous face of a sounding bronze his learned chisel had engraved the heaven the airs the waters and the earth and everything Amphitrite embraces between her arms Where we see the sun stand out and the moon in the middle of her brilliant court where we see two cities speaking various languages from which we hear the harangues of two speakers where young shepherds on the shore of a wood dance one after the other and then all at the same time where a proud lion devours a lowing bull where sweet concerts are and many other things that never a chisel even in the hand of a god could make the mute language speak to the eyes that famous shield in a wiser century would have been more correct and less overloaded with work (Translation L Iribarren)

The scenes of the Shield on which Perrault focuses his irony are mainly those whose conception requires some sort of divine craftsmanship namely the lsquomovingrsquo and lsquosoundingrsquo vignettes30 The latter are emphasized with such insistence that the predominant perception we get from Perraultrsquos account of the Shield is that of confusing noises instead of distinct visual images The

29 Charles Perrault Le Siegravecle de Louis le Grand Paris Jean-Baptiste Coignard 1687 p 9

30 This aspect had already been criticized by Julius Caesar Scaliger Poetices V (ldquoCriti-cusrdquo) Lyon Antonium Vicentium 1561 p 232



punch line quite predictably consists in an unsympathetic twist of Simon-idesrsquo apothegm ldquoQue jamais drsquoun burin quoiqursquoen la main des dieux le langage muet ne saurait dire aux yeux [hellip]rdquo (139140) The Shield is an iconic paradox for not even a godrsquos chisel would make the mute language (visual art) speak Perrault exploits precisely that lsquosupplementrsquo of pictorial vividness that was raised although not problematized by Pseudo-Plutarch and overlooked by Renaissance scholars that is Hephaestusrsquo aristeia lies beyond any conceivable visual representation to the extent that it moves and speaks

Signifi cantly coming to terms with the Shield as an iconic source at the dawn of the eighteenth century supposes the rationalization of its relation to Simonidesrsquo apothegm In other words it requires that we establish whether and in what sense the Shield is lsquospeaking paintingrsquo or lsquosilent poetryrsquo A fi rst attempt at clarifying this question was made by the French philologist Da-cier in a scholarly note to his translation of Aristotlersquos Poetics In reaction to Perraultrsquos satire Dacier seeks to reappraise the relation of Simonidesrsquo apo-thegm to the Shield In his opinion the formula sbquospeaking paintingrsquo should not be applied to the scenes of discourse depicted on the Shield as in Per-raultrsquos poem (cf 133134) instead correctly understood the formula relates back to the rhetorical device employed by Homer in the description of these very scenes

Sans avoir recours agrave cette conjecture [i e le Bouclier serait composeacute de ressorts] on peut faire voir qursquoil nrsquoy a rien de plus simple amp de plus naturel que la description de ce bouclier amp qursquoil nrsquoy a pas un seul mot qursquoHomere nrsquoeucirct pu dire quand ce bouclier nrsquoauroit eacuteteacute que lrsquoouvrage drsquoun homme car il y a bien de la diffeacuterence entre lrsquoouvrage mecircme amp la description [hellip] Peut-on parler autrement de ces deux arts [i e peinture et sculpture] qui quoique muets ne laissent pas drsquoavoir un lan-gage Et en expliquant un tableau de Raphael ou du Poussin pourroit-on srsquoempecirc-cher drsquoanimer toutes les fi gures en les faisant parler conformement au dessein du Peintre31

Without having to resort to this conjecture [i e the Shield could be composed of springs] we can see that there is nothing more simple and natural than the descrip-tion of this shield And there is not one single word in Homer that could not apply to the shield had it been a manrsquos piece of work for there is a difference between the piece of work as such and the description [hellip] Can we speak differently about

31 The passage is taken from a defense of the Shield in Andreacute Dacier La Poetique drsquoAristote traduite en franccedilois avec des remarques critiques sur tout lrsquoouvrage Par-is Claude Barbin 1692 p 466 et sqq The conjecture of an artifact containing auto-matic mechanisms moved by springs was fi rst advanced by Eustathius in his Commentary on Homerrsquos Iliad (Eustathii Archiepiscopi Thessalonicensis commen-tarii ad Homeri Iliadem pertinentes Praefationem et commentarios ad libros R-Ō complectens ed by Marchinus van der Valk vol 4 Lugduni Batavorum Brill 1987 p 245)



these two arts [i e painting and sculpture] that although being mute donrsquot lack a language When explaining a painting by Raphael or Poussin could we refrain from animating its fi gures by making them talk according to the painterrsquos intention (Translation L Iribarren)

Thus in Dacierrsquos formulation the apothegm rightly explains the Shield as long as we restrict the formula lsquospeaking paintingrsquo to an lsquoecphrasticrsquo func-tion That is as an emphasis on the power of words to transport the reader or listener32

Another aspect of the eighteenth-century debate about the Shield con-cerned its iconic plausibility The point is clearly made by Antoine Houdar de la Motte in his Discours sur Homegravere which accompanied his abridged and lsquocorrectedrsquo French version of the Iliad published in 171433 According to de la Motte the depicted scenes on the Shield neither suit the Iliadrsquos nar-rative nor more importantly could they possibly have fi t together on a real shield A fi rst response to this critique came a year later in Jean Boivinrsquos Apologie drsquoHomegravere et Bouclier drsquoAchille which constitutes a turning point in the relation between the Shield and the apothegm34 In fact although Boivin does not directly allude to Simonides his defense of the Shield takes the aphorism to its logical conclusion if poetry is lsquospeaking paintingrsquo then the poemrsquos subject matter must be visually representable However illusory this supposed permeability between poetry and painting might seem to us it was a well-established principle in the seventeenth-century doctrine of the ut pictura poesis aesthetic35 This doctrine claimed that a poem and a painting should be aesthetically analogous hence the transposition of the Shieldrsquos subject matter to a pictorial medium could be considered something of a

32 Dacierrsquos interpretation of the Shield with regard to the apothegm (cf Dacier La Po-etique drsquoAristote [see note 31] p 466 et sqq) is based on a philological remark found in Eusthatiusrsquo Commentary on Homerrsquos Iliad (see note 31) Indeed the Byzantine scholar points out that Homer actually introduces a comparison in the combat scene in the city at war where the depicted fi gures fi ght and kill each other lsquolike living menrsquo (ldquoὥς τε ζωοὶ βροτοίrdquo 539) clearly implying a descriptive distance vis-agrave-vis the ob-ject

33 Antoine Houdar de la Motte LrsquoIliade Poeumlme Avec un discours sur Homegravere Paris 1714 On de la Mottersquos project see Sophie Rabau ldquoPortrait drsquoHomegravere en lecteur mod-erne Houdar de la Motte et Marivauxrdquo in Glenn W Most e a (ed) Reacutevolutions homeacuteriques Pisa Edizioni della Scuola Normale Superiore 2009 p 69-82 Among the most outspoken critiques of the Shield we may also mention Jean Terrasson Dis-sertation critique sur lrsquoIliade drsquoHomegravere Ougrave agrave lrsquooccasion de ce poegraveme on cherche les regravegles drsquoune poeacutetique fondeacutee sur la raison et sur les exemples des anciens et des modernes Paris Fournier et Coustelier 1715

34 Jean Boivin Apologie drsquoHomegravere et Bouclier drsquoAchille Paris Franccedilois Jouenne 1715 p 234-241

35 See Lee Ut Pictura Poesis (see note 4) p 21-52



touchstone for Homerrsquos poetic qualities36 In Boivinrsquos opinion it could all be reduced to a question of disposition ldquoLes objets ne paraicirctront point trop multiple si on sait les arrangerrdquo37 He imagines thus a convex object with a perfectly round surface containing four concentric circles and twelve regular compartments where he distributes the scenes (fi g 1) The resulting object would have a diameter of about four feet Furthermore to demonstrate the visual convenience of this disposition Boivin commissioned the actual il-lustration of the scenes by the painter Nicolas Vleughels (fi g 2) most likely the fi rst modern artist to conceive a visual image of the Shield38

Far from being an antiquarian curiosity this illustration incidentally rep-resents the ultimate fusion of the couple formed by the Shield and the apo-thegm Consequently in the process of fusion the Shield loses its status as an iconic text and the apothegm loses its theoretical character The result is an anachronism both historical and theoretical not only we obtain a modern vision of the Shield but also a visual demonstration of the lsquoeternalrsquo corre-spondence between poetry and painting This at least seems to be the con-clusion drawn by Pope from Boivinrsquos arguments and Vleughelsrsquo depiction of the Shield both reproduced and commented in his ldquoObservations on the Shield of Achillesrdquo one of the essays that accompany his translation of the Iliad39 Popersquos personal contribution to the Shieldrsquos defense consists in a re-assessment of the artifact ldquoas a work of Painting [hellip] in all respects conform-able to the most just Ideas and established Rules of that Artrdquo40 In his view the Shieldrsquos description not only provides the evidence for a lost work of art as in Vasari but most importantly it contains the eternally valid principles of pictorial representation In accordance with the ut pictura poesis rule these principles happen to be deduced from analogies with verbal arts Thus the Shieldrsquos scenes manifest ldquothe invention the composition and the expres-sionrdquo41 Furthermore the Shield appears to be an anticipated application of the three unities rule in drama since each one of the depicted scenes has ldquoone principal action one instant of time and one point of viewrdquo42 Insofar as

36 The most conspicuous illustration of this aesthetic principle is to be found in the count of Anne Claude Philippe de Caylusrsquos Tableaux tireacutes de lrsquoIliade de lrsquoOdysseacutee drsquoHomegravere et de LrsquoEacuteneacuteide de Virgile Avec des observations geacuteneacuterales sur le costume Paris Tilliard 1757

37 Boivin Apologie drsquoHomegravere et Bouclier drsquoAchille (see note 34) p 236 38 Illustrations were taken from p 234 and 236 of the above-quoted edition of Boivin

The engraver Charles-Nicolas Cochin le Pegravere received the commission for the prints 39 Homerus The Iliad of Homer transl by Alexander Pope [1715-1721] vol V Lon-

don Henry Lintot 1756 p 102-118 40 P 103 41 P 109 42 P 111



the scenes represented in the Shield respond to such immutable rules Pope invites the reader to imagine some of the vignettes as if painted by modern artists the trial by Raphael the ambush by Rubens the lion attack by Giulio Romano and the dancing-place by Guido Reni43 It is then as a modern polyptych that Pope reassesses what he considers to be ldquothe noblest part of the noblest poetrdquo44

5 Lessingrsquos return to Plutarch

While the Shieldrsquos iconic plausibility and its eternal pictorial principles seem to be well-established a major aesthetic turning point one precisely aimed at ruining the ut pictura poesis doctrine takes place in Berlin in 1766 with the publication of Lessingrsquos Laocooumln An Essay on the Limits of Painting and Poetry Following Plutarchrsquos interpretation of the apothegm Lessing argues that although poetry and visual arts may share a common aim (Ziel) they differ in their methods means and techniques (Wege) This theoretical position that to some extent anticipates the aesthetics of Kantian inspiration is nonetheless a return to the source and beginning of Western thought on representation Once again a new aesthetic theory arises from a reevaluation of the couple formed by the Shield and the apothegm That the latter is at the center of Lessingrsquos speculations is manifest in the preface

Die blendende Antithese des griechischen Voltaire daszlig die Malerei eine stumme Poesie und die Poesie eine redende Malerei sei stand wohl in keinem Lehrbuche Es war ein Einfall wie Simonides mehrere hatte dessen wahrer Teil so einleuch-tend ist daszlig man das Unbestimmte und Falsche welches er mit sich fuumlhret uumlberse-hen zu muumlssen glaubetGleichwohl uumlbersahen es die Alten nicht Sondern indem sie den Ausspruch des Simonides auf die Wirkung der beiden Kuumlnste einschraumlnkten vergaszligen sie nicht einzuschaumlrfen daszlig ohngeachtet der vollkommenen Aumlhnlichkeit dieser Wirkung sie dennoch sowohl in den Gegenstaumlnden als in der Art ihrer Nachahmung (ὕλῃ καὶ τρόποις μιμήσεως διαφέρουσι) verschieden waumlrenVoumlllig aber als ob sich gar keine solche Verschiedenheit faumlnde haben viele der neuesten Kunstrichter aus jener Uumlbereinstimmung der Malerei und Poesie die cru-desten Dinge von der Welt geschlossen Bald zwingen sie die Poesie in die engern Schranken der Malerei bald lassen sie die Malerei die ganze weite Sphaumlre der Po-esie fuumlllen45

43 P 113 115 116 117 44 P 102 45 Lessing Laokoon (see note 14) p 14 Translation Gotthold Lessing Laocooumln an

essay on the limits of painting and poetry transl by Edward Allen McCormick Bal-timore e a Johns Hopkins Univ Pr 1984 p 4 et sqq



The brilliant antithesis of the Greek Voltaire that painting is mute poetry and poetry a speaking painting was doubtless not to be found in any textbook It was a sudden fancy ndash among others that Simonides had ndash and the truth it contains is so evident that one feels compelled to overlook the indefi nite and untrue statements which accompany itThe ancients however did not overlook them In restricting Simonidesrsquo statement to the effect achieved by the two arts they nevertheless did not forget to state that despite the complete similarity of effect the two arts differed both in the objects imitated as well as in the manner of imitation (ὕλῃ καὶ τρόποις μιμήσεως διαφέρουσι)Still many recent critics have drawn the most ill-digested conclusions imaginable from this correspondence between painting and poetry just as though no such dif-ference existed In some instances they force poetry into the narrower limits of painting in others they allow painting to fi ll the whole wide sphere of poetry

Lessingrsquos project is properly historical he is aiming at the art and literature of his own time namely allegoric painting and descriptive poetry His ambi-tion is to set new criteria for the judgment of art and literature However Lessing will attempt to derive the principles of a new aesthetic from an antiquity characterized as Greek rather than Roman and headed by Homer rather than by Virgil and Ovid These principles result from a few deduc-tions46 that can be summarized as follows painting relies on means and signs that are different from those of poetry for its imitations namely fi gures and colors deployed in space Poetry on the other hand articulates a succession of sounds in time Considering that a natural relation links the signs with the objects signifi ed in painting coexisting signs represent coexisting objects whereas in poetry signs that follow one another represent objects that are consecutive47

Laocooumlnrsquos chapter XVI from which I have taken these principles posits the foundations for a semiotic theory of art along with the rules fi xing the limitslsquo of painting and poetry Despite Lessingrsquos apparently speculative and systematic reasoning he claims it to be founded on philological evidence namely in ldquodie Praxis des Homers selbstrdquo48 More specifi cally the Homeric

46 The deductive method is explicitly stated at the beginning of chapter XVI ldquoDoch will ich versuchen die Sache aus ihren ersten Gruumlnden herzuleitenrdquo (Lessing Laokoon [see note 14] p 116) On the importance of this claim see Wilfried Barner ldquoLe Lao-coon de Lessing deacuteduction et inductionrdquo in Revue Germanique Internationale 192003 p 131-143

47 Lessing Laokoon (see note 14) p 116-123 On the distinction between lsquonaturalrsquo and lsquoarbitraryrsquo signs which had been previously elaborated by Moses Mendelssohn in his Hauptgrundsaumltze (1757) see Tzvetan Todorov ldquoAumlsthetik und Semiotik im 18 Jahr-hundert G E Lessing Laokoonrdquo in Gunter Gebauer Tzvetan Todorov (ed) Das Laokoon-Projekt Plaumlne einer semiotischen Aumlsthetik Stuttgart Metzler 1984 p 9-22

48 Lessing Laokoon (see note 14) p 117



procedure that supposedly inspired Lessingrsquos own theory is one clearly man-ifest in the scenes where the poet describes the fabrication of certain arti-facts49 Predictably the Shield has a preponderant role in this argumentation (chapters XVII-XIX) that will ultimately determine in what sense Simon-idesrsquo apothegm should be understood In a way Lessing argues the reason why Homer came to be considered an artist of lsquospeaking paintingrsquo lies in the fact that he did not proceed at all like a painter

Zwingen den Homer ja besondere Umstaumlnde unsern Blick auf einen einzeln koumlr-perlichen Gegenstand laumlnger zu heften so wird dem ohngeachtet kein Gemaumllde daraus dem der Maler mit dem Pinsel folgen koumlnnte sondern er weiszlig durch unzaumlh-lige Kunstgriffe diesen einzeln Gegenstand in eine Folge von Augenblicken zu set-zen in deren jedem er anders erscheinet und in deren letztem ihn der Maler erwar-ten muszlig um uns entstanden zu zeigen was wir bei dem Dichter entstehen sehn50

Even when Homer is forced by peculiar circumstances to fi x our attention longer on a single object he still does not create a picture which the artist could imitate with his brush By means of countless artistic devices he places this single object in a series of stages in each of which it has a different appearance In the last stage the artist must wait for the poet in order to show us complete what we have seen the poet making

The Shield along with other artifacts described by Homer bear testimony to an artistic device that transforms all the coexisting features of an object into a consecutive action51 This procedure implies that the poet go beyond the mere depicted image In Lessingrsquos terms the Shield can be considered lsquospeaking paintingrsquo to the extent that Homer deploys in time what the pic-tures imply within their inherent spatial limits Not quite incidentally Less-ing is the fi rst critic to propose a pictorial rendering of the Shield based not on categories of the ut pictura poesis aesthetic but on a philological approach to the passagersquos immanent structure which is lsquodelineatedrsquo by the successive demiurgic interventions of Hephaestus all of them clearly signalled by verbs of action52 Thus without discarding its iconic potential Lessing reunites the Shield with its verbal essence one that had been undermined in the previous theoretical attempts to render it into a canvasrsquo surface

All things considered it might not seem exaggerated to state that Less-ingrsquos thesis which introduced one of the major modern themes in aesthetics namely the inherent qualities of each of the arts fi rst came about as a reading of the Shield in the light of Simonidesrsquo apothegm

49 Herarsquos chariot (Il V 719-32) Agamemnonrsquos scepter (Il V 234-39) and Pandarusrsquo arch (Il IV 105-11) are among the examples quoted cf p 115 117 et sqq

50 P 118 (Translation MacCormick [see note 45] p 79-80) 51 P 134 52 P 140 et sqq Cf supra note 12



Abbildung 1

Abbildung 2



6 The couplersquos dialectic

At the beginning of this essay I suggested that the successive couplings of the Shield and Simonidesrsquo apothegm constituted a fruitful anachronism that had opened up new methodological possibilities in the theories of art and poetry over the course of several centuries Subsequently an examination of the uses of the couple by authors as diverse as Pseudo-Plutarch Poliziano Budeacute Vasari Perrault Dacier Boivin Pope and Lessing allowed us to assess a reciprocal action between the Shieldrsquos iconicity and the theory of represen-tation attributed to Simonides As a fi nal remark I would like to suggest that a dialectical relation binds the source to the beginning of the theory of repre-sentation In consequence the force of the apothegm applied to the Shield and that of the Shield defying the apothegm provokes each time a displace-ment of both texts Called into question by the apothegm the Shield exposes on each occasion one of its possible profi les conversely when applied to the Shield the apothegm reveals yet another unsuspected aspect of its own theo-retical potency

Leopoldo IribarrenCentre Leacuteon Robin de recherches sur la penseacutee antiqueUniversiteacute Paris-Sorbonne1 rue Victor Cousin75230 Paris Cedex 05France



Relations between poetry and the visual arts in terms of their ways and means of representation have been a topic of poetic refl ection since archaic Greece Although only relatively few passages of epic and lyric poetry remain the range of questions raised by the existing texts is an invitation to speculate on the signifi cance of this topic in early Greek poetry as well as in aesthetic theory in general2 Two texts in particular have come to dictate the terms for conceiving the relationships between the arts since late antiquity The fi rst of these is the iconic text of Achillesrsquo shield in the Iliad the second is the apothegm attributed to Simonides of Ceos the lyric poet and rival of Pindar which states that lsquopainting is silent poetry and poetry speaking paintingrsquo3 Each text in its own right has left a durable imprint on ancient and modern theories of aesthetics4 At the same time it is interesting to note that both texts have repeatedly been associated so much so that in poetic and artistic theory from late antiquity to the eighteenth century the Shield and the apothegm have become a sort of matched couple

This essay will trace the history of this coupling taking into account the various sources that to my knowledge have matched the two texts As I will show these came to be bound through a common posterity in works that are central to the history of aesthetic thought ranging from the Plutarchean Es-say on the Life and Poetry of Homer to Gotthold E Lessingrsquos Laocooumln with treatments by Angelo Poliziano Guillaume Budeacute Giorgio Vasari Charles Perrault Andreacute Dacier Jean Boivin and Alexander Pope In this shared pos-terity the apothegm serves as a theoretical framework for the Shield and the Shield offers an anticipated application of the apothegmrsquos postulate As we shall see the couple ndash considered as lsquotheoretical objectrsquo in its own right ndash

2 Cf in Homeric poetry Helenrsquos web (Ilias III 125-28) the shield of Achilles (Il XVI-II 478-608) Odysseusrsquo brooch (Odyssee XIX 225-31) in Hesiod the moulding of Pandora (Theogonia 571-84 Erga kai hemerai 69-82) the Hesiodic shield of Hera-cles (Scutum 139-320) in Simonides T101 Poltera in Pindar Nemeen 5 1-5 Isth-mien 2 43-48 frg 194

3 Simonides T101 Poltera (= 47b Campbell) Cf Plutarch Gloria Atheniensium 3 [346F] ldquoπλὴν ὁ Σιμωνίδης τὴν μὲν ζωγραφίαν ποίησιν σιωπῶσαν προσαγορεύει τὴν δὲ ποίησιν ζωγραφίαν λαλοῦσανrdquo Cf De audiensis poetis 3 [18A] De adulatore et amico 15 [58B] Quaestiones Convivialis 9 15 [748A] [Plutarch] Vita et poesis Homeri 216

4 The Shieldrsquos reception in the fi eld of aesthetics was the subject of a recent study by Anne-Marie Lecoq Le bouclier drsquoAchille Un tableau qui bouge Paris Gallimard 2010 As for the intellectual posterity of Simonidesrsquo apothegm which has mainly been considered in light of ut pictura poesis rhetoric see Rensselaer W Lee Ut Pictura Poesis Humanisme et theacuteorie de la peinture XVe-XVIIIe siegravecles transl by Maurice Brock Paris Macula 31998 [11940] and Hans Christoph Buch Ut Pictura Poesis Die Beschreibungsliteratur und ihre Kritiker von Lessing bis Lukaacutecs Mu-nich Hanser 1972


























































































































































Abbildung 1

Abbildung 2































































































































































Abbildung 1

Abbildung 2







The Shield of Achilles (Ilias XVIII, 478-608) and Simonides' Apothegm on Painting and Poetry (T101...

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Transcript of The Shield of Achilles (Ilias XVIII, 478-608) and Simonides' Apothegm on Painting and Poetry (T101...