Shield of Heracles

The late 3rd- and early 2nd-century BCE critic Aristophanes of Byzantium, who considered the Catalogue to be the work of Hesiod, noted the borrowing, which led him to suspect that the Shield was spurious.

The poem takes its cue from the extended description of the shield of Achilles in Iliad xviii, from which it borrows directly, with a single word altered:

As for "the horseman Perseus: his feet did not touch the shield and yet were not far from it—very marvellous to remark, since he was not supported anywhere; for so did the famous Lame One fashion him of gold with his hands."

[4] Some similes may strike the careful listener as infelicitous, such as the contrast of glowering with fierce action in "fiercely he stared, like a lion who has come upon a body and full eagerly rips the hide with his strong claws..." The popularity of the Shield of Heracles in 6th-century BCE Athens may be assessed from instances where H. A. Shapiro detected its presence in Attic vase-painting between ca 565 and ca 480 BCE.

The Shield of Heracles was first printed, included with the complete works of Hesiod, by Aldus Manutius, in Venice, 1495; the text was from Byzantine manuscripts.