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[32] θοῦριν is to our ideas a curious epithet for so passive a piece of armour as the shield. But it was here that, to a Greek, the ‘point of honour’ lay; so that the shield might be taken to personify the martial fury of its bearer; cf. Lucan's pugnaces cetras vii. 233. It is clear that the author of these lines is thinking, not of the Mykenaean shield, but of the later round buckler; so that the epithet ἀμφιβρότη is purely conventional. The κύκλοι are probably concentric rings of bronze; the leather backing of the Homeric shield is not mentioned, as with the shield of Achilles. Compare 20.280, 12.297.

The Iliad, edited, with apparatus criticus, prolegomena, notes, and appendices. Walter Leaf. London. Macmillan. 1900.

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