A simbologia dos metais no escudo de Aquiles

Abstract

Our work has the proposal to do a literary analysis of the representation of the metals in the construction of the images forged in Achilles‟s shield that is found in chapter XVIII of Iliad. For the making of this, we propose a comparison between the description of Achilles‟s shield and the myth of the races found in Works and days of Hesiod. Our analysis will begin for the representation of the universe in which the hero is in, in sequence it will lay down on the introduction of the races and their value according to the metals that represent them. So, we will do a counterpoint between the symbology of the metals in Achilles‟s shield and the metals that represent the races, in order to establish a similarity between both. Our examination will have as its base Jean Pierre Vernant, considering his work Myth and thought Among the Greeks, and Jean Chevalier Alain Gheerbrant which touches on in his dictionary of symbols that the metals represent. Taking into account these two theorists, the hero shows himself inserted like a symbolic buttress, bearing the shield, that he symbolically carries in himself all of the races described by Hesiod.