How To Be Listened To Once Again: Intertextual Mechanisms in the Pseudo-Hesiodic <i>Scutum</i>

Abstract

Besides the fact that it is a poor imitation of the Shield of Achilles, the Pseudo- Hesiodic Scutum has not received a great deal of attention among classical philologists. However, these considerations do not explain why the Scutum had reached a high level of popularity by the time it was supposedly composed. This shows us that the poem was not considered by the artistic elites as a mere imitation of the Homeric hypotext. In this paper we propose to read the poem from a perspective that takes into account the reference to the hypotext as a conscious strategy of literary self-legitimation.