|
07-14-2018, 05:25 PM
|
|
Member
|
|
|
Join Date: Dec 2013
Location: Bethesda, MD
Posts: 84
Likes: 0
Liked 143 Times in 42 Posts
|
|
Quote:
Originally Posted by SATX
The problem is that you nuts think of handguns as pieces of art instead of the tools they are. You have a problem.  |
Arms have always been a bit of both and have been since ancient times. Wikipedia reports:
In the poem, Achilles lends Patroclus his armor in order to lead the Achaean army into battle. Ultimately, Patroclus is killed in battle by Hector, and Achilles' armor is stripped from his body and taken by Hector as spoils. The loss of his best friend (often times, called soul mate), prompts Achilles to return to battle, so his mother Thetis, a nymph, asks the god Hephaestus to provide replacement armor for her son. He obliges, and forges a shield with spectacular decorative imagery.
Homers description of the shield is one of the first known examples of ekphrasis in ancient Greek poetry; ekphrasis is a rhetorical figure in which a detailed (textual) description is given of a (visual) work of art. Besides providing narrative exposition, it can add deeper meaning to an artwork by reflecting on the process of its creation, in turn allowing the audience to envision artwork that they can't see.
The passage in which Homer describes the creation of the shield has actually influenced many later poems, including the Shield of Heracles once attributed to Hesiod. Virgil's description of the shield of Aeneas in Book Eight of the Aeneid is clearly modeled on Homer. The poem The Shield of Achilles (1952) by W. H. Auden reimagines Homer's description in 20th century terms. Of other significance, this passage is recognized as the first example of cosmological mapping in the history of Greece.
Homer gives a detailed description of the imagery which decorates the new shield. Starting from the shield's centre and moving outward, circle layer by circle layer, the shield is laid out as follows:
- The Earth, sky and sea, the sun, the moon and the constellations (48489)
- "Two beautiful cities full of people": in one a wedding and a law case are taking place (490508); the other city is besieged by one feuding army and the shield shows an ambush and a battle (50940)
- A field being ploughed for the third time (54149)
- A king's estate where the harvest is being reaped (55060)
- A vineyard with grape pickers (56172)
- A "herd of straight-horned cattle"; the lead bull has been attacked by a pair of savage lions which the herdsmen and their dogs are trying to beat off (57386)
- A picture of a sheep farm (58789)
- A dancing-floor where young men and women are dancing (590606)
- The great stream of Ocean (607609)
As noted above, Virgil also describes the shield of Aeneas, which predicts rise of the Roman Republic and its eventual status of an empire. Arms have always been more than mere tools, though some people who carry and use them see no real difference between them and hammers and screwdrivers, and no one has ever engraved a hammer unless it was used as a weapon!
|