Narative in ancient relief sculpture

fibi ducks

Active Member
i was reading the description in the Illiad of the shield of Achilles (that Hephaestus makes for him).

the description gives a story - maybe a couple of stories. Like - there's a town, and around it are a beseiging army, and then the warriors from the town go outside and set up and ambush, but as they are on their way to set it up they are intercepted...

That sort of thing. Obviously the shield is just one scupture. How could it represent a story like this?

Could it have been like a comic strip?
 

Nadai

Active Member
Well there are lots of myths depicting the journey of such artifacts. Remember Cephalus' spear given to him by his wife Procris. In one of Ovid's poems he describes where the spear came from and how his wife came to have it and then how she gave it to him which then lead to her demise.
Ovid also talks about Achilles' weapons. I can't remember the name of the men, but after the war and Achilles was dead there was a competition to see who would get to own his weapons. Of course we learn how they came to be, his sword and shield. Unfortunately Achilles' cousin who feels he has rights to the weaponry loses the competition to claim them and so kills himself.
I'm not really sure if every myth is meant to teach a lesson. I think some are just stories, true or false.
 

fibi ducks

Active Member
Ah - no - I mean something else. What I'm talking about is the sculpture that Hephaestus made on the shield itself. Homer describes this sculpture and he says that it depicts all this action - with this event, and then that event and then...
But how can a sculpture show a sequence of events? - its almost as if Achilles has a flat screen television for a shield. All I could think of was that the stories could be set out like in a comic book. So I wondered if anyone knew about this sort of thing?

By the way, I agree wholeheartedly that not all myths are supposed to teach a lesson.
Cheers
 

Caburus

Active Member
It sounds like a variety of one-off scenes, and sequences of connected scenes. The shield was round, so I would guess the pictures appear in a circular format, maybe as a spiral or in separate bands, starting with the sun and constellations in the middle, and finishing with the ocean running around the edge.

Attempts have been made to recreate the shield. It was either really big, to get all the images on it, or Hephaestus made the figures really small yet easily visible (he was a god afterall!) http://piratesandrevolutionaries.blogspot.com/2009/03/achilles-shield-shield-of-achilles-as.html has a number of images for the shield.
 
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