The Two Shields

The shield of Achilles is glorious— emblazoned with heaven and earth, war and peace, the gods and the Greeks— and more than a mere indestructible armament; it is "a world of gorgeous immortal work," the ideal Greek civilization carried into battle by its greatest hero (Iliad 483). It is not for Achilles to hide behind, but to advance, to go forth and conquer for the nation. The shield is Greece incarnate.

Virgil copies this imagery in Book VIII of The Aeneid. Before the battle of Latium, Vulcan (the same as Hephaestus) forges a shield for the Trojan hero Aeneas, the fate-bearer of his descendents, the Romans.

The workmanship of the shield, no words can tell its power. There is the story of Italy, Rome in all her triumphs. There the fire-god forged them... Caesar Augustus leading Italy into battle, the Senate and People too, the gods of hearth and home and the great gods themselves. (Aeneid 262-64)

Achilles and Aeneas— what do they carry? Not two shields, but two civilizations and their futures. Greece and Rome, democracy and republic, law and order, the West. That is what they carry.

EDIT: Commented on Molly Gray's "Age of Plastic Wrap."
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Homer, Robert Fagles, and Bernard Knox. The Iliad. New York, NY: Penguin, 1998. Print.

 Virgil, and Robert Fagles. The Aeneid. New York: Viking, 2006. Print.