The Shield of Heracles (, Aspis Hērakleous) is an archaic Greek epic poem that was attributed to Hesiod during antiquity. The subject of the poem is the expedition of Heracles and Iolaus against Cycnus, the son of Ares, who challenged Heracles to combat as Heracles was passing through Thessaly. It has been suggested that this epic might reflect anti-Thessalian feeling after the First Sacred War (595–585 BCE): in the epic, a Thessalian hero interfering with the Phocian sanctuary is killed by a Boeotian hero (Heracles), whose mortal father Amphitryon had for allies Locrians and Phocians. This was a pastiche made to be sung at a Boeotian festival at midsummer at the hottest time of the dogstar Sirios. To serve as an introduction, fifty-six lines have been taken from the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women. 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. Compare Virgil's "Shield of Aeneas" (Aeneid viii.617–731) and the much briefer description of Crenaeus' shield in Thebaid ix.332–338. Marcus Mettius Epaphroditus wrote a commentary on the Shield of Heracles in the 1st century CE. The shield's description 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: The Iliad gives just enough detail for its hearers to marvel at Hephaestus' workmanship. The Shield of Heracles makes heavier use of description: They were bringing the brides through the streets from their homes, to the loud music of the wedding-hymn and the light of blazing torches. Youths accompanied by flute and lyre were whirling in the dance, and the women had come to the doors of their houses to enjoy the show. (Iliad). The men were making merry with festivities and dances; some were bringing home a bride to her husband on a well-wheeled car, while the bridalsong swelled high, and the glow of blazing torches held by handmaidens rolled in waves afar. And these maidens went before, delighting in the festival; and after them came frolicsome choirs, the youths singing soft-mouthed to the sound of shrill pipes, while the echo was shivered around them, and the girls led on the lovely dance to the sound of lyres. (Shield of Heracles). The round shield's "whole orb shimmered with