it.’
Costas cleared his throat. ‘You mean this? Auden’s talking about the images Hephaestus is creating on the shield, watched by Thetis. Instead of beautiful cities and flourishing fields, he creates “an artificial wilderness, and a sky like lead”.’
Jack stared at him, stunned. ‘You never cease to amaze me.’
‘My English teacher at school in New York. Dead Poets Society, and all that. It must have sunk in while I was doodling submarines. I liked the “ships on untamed seas” bit.’
‘You were a member of the poetry society at school? You? ’
Costas fidgeted. ‘Never underestimate an engineer.’
‘Does your inseparable buddy Jeremy know this?’ Jack flipped open his phone. ‘He’s over there at Troy now. This is breaking news.’
Costas clamped a hand over Jack’s. ‘Does the world know that the famous marine archaeologist Jack Howard gets seasick?’
Jack stared at the phone, sighed and snapped it shut. ‘Touché. Just no more secrets.’
‘It wasn’t a secret. It was a hidden depth.’
Jack grinned, looked at his watch, and carried on. ‘You’d be surprised by Jeremy’s reaction. But back to Auden. He’d gone as an observer to the Sino-Japanese war in 1938, and worked for the US Strategic Bombing Survey in Germany in 1945. He’d seen the reality of war. For him, it was an all-encompassing horror that obliterated everything around it, that neutered images of life, of light and colour. A painting of Auden’s poem would be monotone, grey, with none of the gold and silver in Homer’s description. Imagine those black and white photographs of bombed-out cities of Germany, or images of the death camps, all colour sucked out of them.’
‘So what do you think the shield might have looked like?’ Costas asked.
Jack tapped the laptop keyboard. Lanowski’s bathymetric map on the screen transformed into the image of a magnificent circular shield, gold and silver, its surface divided into concentric circles densely populated with figural scenes. Costas whistled. ‘Now that’s more like it. That’s what I call treasure.’
‘Here it is according to the Italian artist Angelo Monticelli,’ Jack said. ‘He followed Homer’s description by showing a figure of divinity in the centre, then five concentric circles - zoomorphic representations of the constellations, then those two registers showing vignettes of people in city and pastoral scenes, some playing music. The figures look classical, too late for the Bronze Age. But Monticelli finished this about 1820, before anyone knew what Mycenaean art looked like. Many people still thought Homer’s world was entirely mythical. It was more than half a century before Schliemann was to discover Troy and Mycenae.’
‘Do you think Schliemann knew of this image?’
‘As a boy in Germany he’d been fascinated by a picture in Georg Ludwig Jerrer’s Universal History for Children , showing Aeneus rescuing his father Anchises from burning Troy. Schliemann knew the lure of treasure. He’d made his fortune in America on the back of the California gold rush, in the early 1850s. But it wasn’t greed that propelled him to Troy and Mycenae, it was a fascination with the power and meaning of artefacts, the people behind them. That’s why the image of the shield would have fascinated him. It’s why I’ve always felt I understood Schliemann. God knows, he had his faults. He mythologized his own past. He dug Troy like a bulldozer. And who knows what happened to his greatest discoveries, what he and his wife Sophia really found when they disappeared at night to dig alone. But look at his achievements. He opened the world to the glories of the Aegean Bronze Age. He changed our perception of myth and history. You can’t knock that. I don’t know any archaeologists today who would have the courage or imagination to make the leaps he did.’
‘I can think of one,’ Costas murmured.
Jack tapped the keyboard again. Two images came up, one a
Costas cleared his throat. ‘You mean this? Auden’s talking about the images Hephaestus is creating on the shield, watched by Thetis. Instead of beautiful cities and flourishing fields, he creates “an artificial wilderness, and a sky like lead”.’
Jack stared at him, stunned. ‘You never cease to amaze me.’
‘My English teacher at school in New York. Dead Poets Society, and all that. It must have sunk in while I was doodling submarines. I liked the “ships on untamed seas” bit.’
‘You were a member of the poetry society at school? You? ’
Costas fidgeted. ‘Never underestimate an engineer.’
‘Does your inseparable buddy Jeremy know this?’ Jack flipped open his phone. ‘He’s over there at Troy now. This is breaking news.’
Costas clamped a hand over Jack’s. ‘Does the world know that the famous marine archaeologist Jack Howard gets seasick?’
Jack stared at the phone, sighed and snapped it shut. ‘Touché. Just no more secrets.’
‘It wasn’t a secret. It was a hidden depth.’
Jack grinned, looked at his watch, and carried on. ‘You’d be surprised by Jeremy’s reaction. But back to Auden. He’d gone as an observer to the Sino-Japanese war in 1938, and worked for the US Strategic Bombing Survey in Germany in 1945. He’d seen the reality of war. For him, it was an all-encompassing horror that obliterated everything around it, that neutered images of life, of light and colour. A painting of Auden’s poem would be monotone, grey, with none of the gold and silver in Homer’s description. Imagine those black and white photographs of bombed-out cities of Germany, or images of the death camps, all colour sucked out of them.’
‘So what do you think the shield might have looked like?’ Costas asked.
Jack tapped the laptop keyboard. Lanowski’s bathymetric map on the screen transformed into the image of a magnificent circular shield, gold and silver, its surface divided into concentric circles densely populated with figural scenes. Costas whistled. ‘Now that’s more like it. That’s what I call treasure.’
‘Here it is according to the Italian artist Angelo Monticelli,’ Jack said. ‘He followed Homer’s description by showing a figure of divinity in the centre, then five concentric circles - zoomorphic representations of the constellations, then those two registers showing vignettes of people in city and pastoral scenes, some playing music. The figures look classical, too late for the Bronze Age. But Monticelli finished this about 1820, before anyone knew what Mycenaean art looked like. Many people still thought Homer’s world was entirely mythical. It was more than half a century before Schliemann was to discover Troy and Mycenae.’
‘Do you think Schliemann knew of this image?’
‘As a boy in Germany he’d been fascinated by a picture in Georg Ludwig Jerrer’s Universal History for Children , showing Aeneus rescuing his father Anchises from burning Troy. Schliemann knew the lure of treasure. He’d made his fortune in America on the back of the California gold rush, in the early 1850s. But it wasn’t greed that propelled him to Troy and Mycenae, it was a fascination with the power and meaning of artefacts, the people behind them. That’s why the image of the shield would have fascinated him. It’s why I’ve always felt I understood Schliemann. God knows, he had his faults. He mythologized his own past. He dug Troy like a bulldozer. And who knows what happened to his greatest discoveries, what he and his wife Sophia really found when they disappeared at night to dig alone. But look at his achievements. He opened the world to the glories of the Aegean Bronze Age. He changed our perception of myth and history. You can’t knock that. I don’t know any archaeologists today who would have the courage or imagination to make the leaps he did.’
‘I can think of one,’ Costas murmured.
Jack tapped the keyboard again. Two images came up, one a
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