For Whom the Bell Tolls

As any comic-strip artist knows, violence is a hard thing to picture convincingly. To make mayhem clear, the comics fall back on such arbitrary and unrealistic conventions as lines trailing from fists, stars suspended at the point of contact, and words like CRASH and POW floating overhead. The Persians were more subtle.

Harvard's Fogg Art Museum owns a fine example which probably dates from the 15th Century--a drawing of a Persian cavalier happily bashing his enemy with a mace. The drawing is done with almost feminine delicacy, and without any tricks. In the Fogg's current Bulletin, Scholar Eric Schroeder points out some of the subtleties that make it convincing:

"The pursuer has thrown away his shield for the sake of speed; and his mount, still fresh, bites at the rump of the other. But it is his weapons of offense that the fleeing man has dropped to lighten the load on his horse; the useless shield still hangs by his thigh. And his foundering horse, whose drooped crest, breaking pace and running nostrils show it in extremity, bears out with unmistakable pathos the difference between the fortunes of the riders."

Or the reader could just look at the picture and say, "BONG!"

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.