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Tapestries
Achilles Hides in Drag
The first third of Book Thirteen is taken up with a battle of words: Ajax and Ulysses arguing over dead Achilles’s battle armour. Good courtroom drama but not much action for artists. This work portrays an event that Ulysses described as he made his case, beginning at L200.
The Discovery of Achilles by Ulysses
Brussels, circa 1550-1565
385 cm × 344 cm
Hardwick Hall, The Devonshire Collection
©National Trust/Robert Thrift
The cunning Ulysses revealed Achilles
on the island where he was hidden with
the king’s daughters, disguised as a maiden
There are differing versions of how Achilles got to Troy, to which Ovid gave only the few lines spoken by Ulysses. Some sources omit this drag episode entirely, replacing the Achilles who hides on Scyros with one who conquers the island instead. In others he marries one of the king’s daughters, or the whole business takes place when he’s nine years old.
In Ovid’s version in the tapestry, in case the viewer couldn’t identify the disguised Achilles his name was woven into his blue dress, below the arm taking arrows out of the box. It’s difficult to see, even after I increased the contrast. Light and time have done their work, fading the colours. You know what they say, Hardwick Hall, more glass than wall
.
Ulysses Plays the Bedlam
Achilles wasn’t the only shirker. Ulysses didn’t want to go to Troy either, though at L366 he blamed his wife.
Ulysses fakes insanity
Brussels, early 17th century
249.5 cm × 198.5 cm
Ptuj Ormož Regional Museum, Slovenia
Ajax made much of the episode but Ulysses downplayed it, admitting only that he was a late arrival though still before Achilles. Back in Ithaca Ulysses had tried to appear mentally unfit for service by ploughing his field with an ox yoked to an ass (here shown as a horse). A crazy idea as any farmer knows, because of their different strides. Palamedes, sent by Agamemnon, took Ulysses’s baby son and set him in the path of the animals. Dad wasn’t crazy enough to plough through his child. Busted.
Hecuba’s Payback
L674: Poor Queen Hecuba. Palace invaded, put to the torch. Husband dead. Many children dead– Hector, Paris, Polyxena, Polydorus. Her name appropriated by Phil Silvers in an episode of Gilligan’s Island. It’s enough to drive anyone barking mad.
The Vengeance of Hecuba
[on Polymestor, for the killing of Polydorus]
Macao, 17th century
369 cm × 489 cm (approx 12 × 16 ft)
Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyon
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