The curators of this poem decry it as “spurious,” written by another, later, poet under Hesiod’s name. And perhaps it was, perhaps too was the Odyssey composed by a son or assistant of Homer, such like Plato wrote the dialogues of Solon and Socrates, Theophrastus the works of Aristotle, and without Arrian’s pen we would not have the works of his teacher, Epictetus. Yet, this briefer, and in some ways better, poem concerning a shield decorated according to the life of a classical community, speaks less to every day life and more to strife then did the work of Homer in the Iliad under The shield of Achilles. The curators also name the shield of Herakles as a mere imitation of this work, yet both were composed by contemporaries of the 700s B.C. the city described on the shield is that of Thebes, of Seven Gates, the principal city of Hesiod’s home region, the city of Antigone.

The poem begins with Herakles and Iolaos, his heroic companion and chariot driver, about to travel through a sacred precinct on diplomatic business, with full knowledge that Kidnus, a vicious bandit and demigod, a son of War [1], and his father, War Himself, would waylay them. Herakles orders Iolaos to avoid combat and leave the enemy to him, his companion agreeing to act as his squire in this affray. The lead horse is a black-maned stalion.

This alone, shows Herakles as a past master of War, as he recounts how he laid War low once, placing him as something of an Alexander, a Nathan Bedford Forest, a Patton, who throve on the battlefield that ruined most and did so in protection of those not so completely designed for battle. As an allegory, we are possibly being treated to a case of war cause, where a simple visit to an ally, brings about the jealousy of a minor war chief, who brings in those who he owes fealty to by his own rash demise. Herakles does try a parlay and is attacked by Kidnus, which assures that the heavenly sire of the bandit will seek revenge.

Gray-eyed Athena, who wields the storm-shield, “equal in Might to Zeus Almighty” and therefore the angelic agent that assures the reader that “all-seeing” Zeus whose least favorite heavenly son is War, is focused upon this act of his half-human son Herakles being attacked like a bastard by a jealous older step-brother. As the listener to Homer knew that Achilles had long ago died at Troy, the listener to Hesiod knew as well, that Herakles had been hated by most of the heavenly powers, had slain monsters, helped, tricked and aided gods, served kings, fathered a human line, committed some atrocious act upon his own wife, and in madness cut down a forest as his own funeral pyre, and mounting it, sent his own smoke up to heaven, where the immortals agreed he had earned a place in their ranks.

Achilles and Herakles, whose son and grandson would fight each other at Troy [2], were both doomed heroes with merely enough of the divine in them to dominate men in battle, but not to outwit the honor-skulking lords of men, but only to outwork them. These heroes appealed to the working man, the fighting man of low rank, and to those few war chiefs who lead rather than directed men in war, like Alexander, who sacrificed to Herakles after every battle. Their shields, both wrought by the arts of Hephastius, armorer and tinker of the gods, who used robot assistants, represents scenes of strife and concord on their faces. The shield of Herakles has a stronger focus on strife. The shields themselves have various metals and other arts used in their composition, which is a way of declaring man’s use of fire that had been taken back once by Zeus, and then stolen and gifted to man by Prometheus. The shield, along with the rage of Achilles who went to the underworld, and the dogged prowess of Herakles who was admitted into the overworld, represented a divine acceptance, even assistance, in man’s challenge to both metaphysical realms.

Made by one god, permitted by the Almighty, brought by yet another god, and used to battle rival men and extra-human powers on earth, the shields of Achilles and Herakles were the ancient equal to the swords of Roland and Arthur, of the horn of Roland. From a Christian perspective the minor helper gods are angels and the monsters and evil gods are demons and devils. The shield represents war threatening and defending humanity, the favor of heaven in war, and of the imperiled community protecting the mind and supporting the efforts of its hero. Where the modern hero is outcast for the crime of fighting and is sent to the margins in disgrace, resented most of all by his military and political superiors [3], the ancient hero, if slain is honored by some immediate construction, not by some belated guilt-inspired monument a generation or more later. If victorious, after a purification rite, to make certain he has not been infected by the terrible essence of war to his core, he is accepted back into the community. Thus, the god-given shield in myth is an affirmation of the hero. [4]

“Or like her… from her head and her dark eyes was a blowing grace,” begins the story of Herakles, with the plight of his mother, Alcmene, Electrion’s light-stepping daughter.”

“Meanwhile, the father of gods and mortals was weaving another design for both gods and men, who eat bread… That very night he [Zeus] lie with Electrion’s fair-stepping daughter.”

Zeus impregnated the wife of Amphitrion, shepherd of the men of Thebes of Seven-Gates with Herakles, who fathered a lesser brother. Iolaos, Herakles nephew, is the son of Herakles’ half-brother.

Herakles comes upon Kidnus in the precinct of Apollo, the god of arts and far shooting dooms, who brought Herakles upon the “high-hearted son of Ares” who was using Apollo’s sanctuary to ambush wayfarers. Ares s a mad god, a maniac rushing and roaring.

Below I shall note some of the aspects of the shield of Herakles:

“A wonder to look at for all about the circle of it with enamel and with pale ivory and with electrumn it shone, and with gold glowing it was bright, and there were bowls of cobalt driven upon it.

“In the middle was a face of Panic [6] not to be spoken of, glaring on he beholder with eyes of fire glinting, and the mouth of it was full of teeth, terrible, repulsive, glittering white.

“While over the lowering forehead hovered a figure of dread, marshaling the slaughter of fighting men, cruel spirit, who took the senses and the perception and the will to fight out of warriors who faced Zeus’ son, the War God. [7]

“And the souls of these went under the ground to the house of Hades, and lie there, while the bones with the rotting flesh festering upon them remained above on the black earth, under the sun star’s withering…”

This begins a brutal, graphic picture of war worthy of Hieronymus and other artists of the Reformation who depicted men as nihilistic ciphers afflicted by witches, devils and demons. Snake-haired furies collect the bodies of the dead, death herself leading off a dead man and one living to. Tin worked in the face of the shield provides various scenes. The most telling scene is of a pack of boars and a pride of lions battling, one lion having already slain some boars but pig kind not giving back, but fighting on. This recalls the boar tusk helmets of the Homeric heroes and also of Beowulf, a symbol of stubborn defiance against greater force. Likewise, the lion’s mane is the model for the medieval crown, based on the ancient snake-inspired diadem of rulers, which gave way in the heroic age of Feudal Christendom to the leonine crown.

“The figures of Onrush and Backrush, on it the figures of, on it Battlenoise and Panic and manslaughter were blazing, and Hate was there, with Discord among them, and Death, the destroyer…”

Yet, beyond this, was a seven-gated city, outside o which old men prayed to Heaven to spare their community. Within the walls men and women went about workaday tasks, and also enjoyed boxing and chariot racing contests. This presentation is less extensive than that of the Shield of Achilles, with Hesiod’s emphasis on the superhuman powers which afflicted those men who were out afield protecting this city.

Athena attends the battle, advising War against the combat with Herakles, “wearing the gloomy aegis.” Hesiod’s various descriptions of the aegis assures us that it originated with a concept of storm and the shielding of man from storm, related both to the shield and the origin of the shield, the animal hide, draped over the left arm.

“Well-versed in the toil and sorrow of battle,” Herakles kills Kidnus and wounds War, who is born off by his demonic attendants, Fear and Rout. Herakles and Iolaos stripped Kidnus of his amr and drove to the Citadel of Trachys, which had been their destination. Kyex, “who was a friend to the blessed immortals,” was buried by the various inhabitants of the local cities in solemn ceremony.

The poet, Hesiod, concludes, with compassionate tones:

“But the river Anatus, swollen with winter rain, obliterated the barrow and the grave, for this was the will of Leto’s son, Apollo, because Kyex had waylaid and robed the offerings as men brought them to Pytho.”

Pytho was the sanctuary of Apollo, the Shining One, whose oracle would one day demand that Hesiod’s grave, near where he was murdered in the sanctuary of Nemean Zeus, be moved to a better place.

Hesiod proved to be a prophet of numerous events after his life, and in this, his neatest effort, closely based on Theogony and Works and Days, takers of other men’s work by force, and Robbers and Murderers, in the person of Kyex, even with the sanction and aid of War, are punished by the acts of a hero under the sanction of the better angels of Heaven.

Notes

-0. “Arion of the Black Mane”

-1. Ares is also wounded by Diomedes in the Iliad, and stands alone as the god most often wounded by mankind. This reader takes the plight of Ares, monster child of heaven as a sign of a higher indulgence for our kind.

-2. Quintus Smyrneus, The Fall of Troy, Book 8, Alexander was descended from Neoptolomas, son of Achilles, who sacked Troy and killed and grandson of Herakles. He therefore sacrificed and atoned to the deities offended by his ancestor after battle and at Troy.

-3. Rome was very modern in this, with victorious generals almost assured of being murdered by those they served, in the same way that Patton was done away with by USG and the general fear of combat veterans by USG subjects. Note how every western hero in movies must ride into the sunset and may not stay in the community he served. Latinus, son of Odysseus and Circe, twice bedding goddesses, was called by Hesiod powerful and thoughtless, a characteristic that that nation would carry down through Late Antiquity.

-4. While Samson is the best Biblical counterpart of Herakles, it is David, poetic hero king, who in his psalms recognizes he has been provided a shield from heaven. As well, the minor angels are said to bear swords at gateway places.

-5. Gold alloyed with a small part silver

-6. Or Rout, One of War’s attendants, along with Discord and Fear.

-7. Herakles is about to fight War, with War’s own mirror upon his arm.