Shield of Achilles

The loss of his companion prompts Achilles to return to battle, so his mother Thetis, a nymph, asks the god Hephaestus to provide replacement armor for her son.Wolfgang Schadewaldt, a German writer, argues that these intersecting antitheses show the basic forms of a civilized, essentially orderly life.[9] This suggests symbolic imagery of Achilles' own life and of overcoming both inner and outer enemies, therefore endowing the hero with a special and different power and protection in his second attempt at fulfilling his fate as a warrior – this time with a shield that reveals a diverse, balanced, and more mature imagery than the typical battle shield for example used by Agamemnon, who was bearing a simpler image of a bloody head of the Gorgon Medusa with twisted snakes in place of hair, which projected a less refined but more common form of intimidating brute force in war.[3] Fate in ancient Greek mythology is unchangeable even by the gods, because it is the three Moirai that spin the destiny of each human life like a thread from the laws of the universe.[12] The images on the shield are narrated as cryptic parables linking powerful symbolism (creation and cosmos, origins and destiny, war and peace, life and death, the seasons, urban and agricultural civilization, identity and eternity) with specific predictions regarding events in corresponding verses in the Iliad and Odyssey, therefore not only raising anticipation and suspense in the audience, but also giving the hero Achilles a ‘screenplay’ of his own destiny concealed from himself on the very shield that he carries to his fate.