The uproar caused by Charles Perrault’s mockery of this passage is often cited as the start of the “Quarrel of the Ancients and Moderns.” This passage describes two talents of gold lying between two lawyers debating whether a blood-price should be accepted for a murder victim. A description of a circle of young dancers in this passage leads into a simile about a potter testing the motion of a wheel. Crates (“KRAY-tees”) of Mallos saw a cosmic allegory in this passage’s description of the earth, stars, sky, and “all-encircling Ocean.” In this passage, scenes of a vineyard, a plowed field, a city at peace, and a city at war are created in a workshop filled with robotic assistants, where a god toils to repay Thetis for nursing him to health on Lemnos. For 10 points, name this ekphrastic passage from the Iliad depicting Hephaestus’s creation of a defensive implement. ■END■
ANSWER: the shield of Achilles [or Aspis Achilleos; or descriptions of the ekphrasis on Achilles’s shield or buckler or aspís; prompt on shield or aspis scene; prompt on descriptions of Hephaestus forging the armor of Achilles; prompt on descriptions of Thetis’s visit to Hephaestus or Thetis’s visit to Hephaestus; prompt on the Iliad or Iliad Book 18]
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= Average correct buzz position