ABSTRACT
These passages have a literary genealogy stretching back to Homer’s description of the shield of Achilles (Iliad 18.478-616). In imitation of Homer, literary epic came to include such passages as a matter of course. Virgil depicts the wars of Troy on the walls of Juno’s temple at Carthage and describes the shield of Aeneas (Aeneid 1.453-97, 8.608-731). Classical examples are not limited to epic. Hesiod has a description which takes up nearly half of his Shield of Heracles (139-317); Catullus 64 tells the story of Ariadne abandoned by Theseus as it was embroidered on the bridal coverlets for the marriage of Peleus and Thetis; Theocritus describes a cup offered as prize in a shepherds’ singing match, and has two spectators admire vividly realistic tapestries (Idylls 1, 15). Ovid provides later poets with a host of models. Most notable in connection with Spenser is the description of the tapestries woven by the contending Pallas and Arachne in Metamorphoses 6.70-145 (cf Muiopotmos 257-352 and various details in Busirane’s tapestries). Lucian and Philostratus both composed prose works entitled Eikones, epigrammatic descriptions of real or imagined works of graphic art, exploiting the topos in another genre.
