enamel and white ivory and electrum, and it glowed with shining gold; and there were zones of cyanus drawn upon it." Cyanus denotes a blue low-fired glass-paste or smalt. At the center was a mask of Fear (Phobos) with the staring eyes and teeth of a gorgon. Though Achilles' shield has nothing about it that might mar its function, the shield of Heracles is a tour de force of high relief: the vineyard has "shivering leaves and stakes of silver" and the snake heads "would clash their teeth when Amphitryon's son was fighting" and in the ocean vignette the "fishes of bronze were trembling." 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." The extravagant description seems to have encouraged rhapsodes to contribute their interpolations, which have been identified and teased apart by modern scholarship. 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..." Reception 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. A calyx-krater by Euphronios depicting the minor episode of Heracles' combat with the Thessalian brigand Kyknos occasioned Shapiro's examination of the myth's creative reworking among Attic vase-painters, who based their imagery of Heracle's shield on the literary model. The likelihood of both oral and literary transmission during the same time is noted by Janko (1986:40). Textual history 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. In modern times several papyri have offered sections of the text, notably a 1st-century papyrus in Berlin (Berlin Papyri, 9774), a 2nd-century papyrus from Oxyrhynchus (Oxyrhynchus Papyri 689), and the 4th-century Rainer Papyrus (L.P. 21–29) at Vienna. There are numerous texts from the 12th to the 15th century. References Sources The Shield of Heracles: e-text (English translation by Hugh G. Evelyn-White, 1914) Lattimore, Richmond, Hesiod: The Works and Days, Theogony, and the Shield of Heracles