The Shield of Achilles - remembering Homer, literally
by A. P. David
In memory of Michael Steinbacher, a geologist of the era of Venus and Mars;
and Bill Mullen, who now dances with the Muses.
I am going to discuss a celebrated passage in the Iliad, the Shield of Achilles, and what it appears to remember about the visible cosmos. The dialectics of shield and mirror are no more at play than in this polished metal-work, which is at once literally a protection against a hostile and yet familiar reality, and literally a reflection of the cosmos, and the human idyll that is lost to one bronze warrior fighting another to the death under catastrophic skies.
A. P. David is a classical Hellenist who did his doctorate in the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. His book,The Dance of the Muses: Choral Theory and Ancient Greek Poetics was published by Oxford University Press (2006); it includes a new theory of the Greek and Latin tonal accent, as well as a revolutionary approach to Homeric poetics, which connects the hexameter to an origin in dance rhythm. A website with supporting audio and video recordings is to be found at danceofthemuses. A. P. David has also published a monograph on the role of mathematics in the philosophy of the late Plato: Plato's New Measure: the Indeterminate Dyad. His original fiction so far includes The Tale of the Pig Man, or Waking Up. His published poetry includes: Past Your Ear, Over The Moon, and Bullroarer. David is a student of plasma cosmology and the Electric Universe.
