300 LIGHT SCIENCE FOR LEISURE HOURS. 



celestial and terrestrial objects depicted on the shield of 

 Achilles. 



Another circumstance attracts notice in the descrip- 

 tion of Achilles' armour the disproportionate import- 

 ance attached to the shield. Undoubtedly, the shield 

 was that portion of a hero's armour which admitted of 

 the freest application of artistic skill. Yet this con- 

 sideration is not sufficient to account for the fact, that 

 while so many lines are given to the shield, the helmet, 

 corselet, and greaves are disposed of in four. 



But the argument on which I am inclined to lay 

 most stress is the occurrence elsewhere of a description 

 which is undoubtedly only another version of the 

 ' Shield of Achilles.' The Shield of Hercules ' 

 occurs in a poem ascribed to Hesiod. But whatever 

 opinion may be formed respecting the authorship of 

 the description, there can be no doubt that it is not 

 Hesiod's work. It exhibits no trace of his dry, didactic, 

 somewhat heavy style. Elton ascribes the ' Shield 

 of Hercules ' to an imitator of Homer, and in support 

 of this view points out those respects in which the 

 poem resembles, and those in which it is inferior to, the 

 * Shield of Achilles.' The two descriptions are, however, 

 absolutely identical in many places ; and this would 

 certainly not have happened if one had been an honest 

 imitation of the other. And those parts of the ' Shield 

 of Hercules,' which have no counterparts in the * Shield 

 of Achilles,' are too well conceived and expressed to 

 be ascribed to a very inferior poet a poet so inferior 

 as to be reduced to the necessity of simply reproducing 



