Vol. 6 No. 2 (2025)

"[...] In ancient and medieval martial cultures, and even within the bounds of modernity, weapons are far more than lethal instruments intended for military practice, martial contests (jousts, quintains, tournaments), or hunting: beyond their functional use, they embody a lavish display of sumptuous vanity. When crafted from precious materials through elaborate artisanal processes, they become opulent and desirable objects—items of great luxury, personalized and customized, artistic artifacts that serve as ornament and as markers of status, indicating a condition of particular distinction. The beautiful, terrible weapons that emerge from Hephaestus’ forge are the best friends of boys. Like a precious jewel, the polished metal of Ares irresistibly attracts men: Achilles bears witness to this, unable to resist the dazzling and resounding call of iron as he disguises the power of his semi-divine ephebic strength among the daughters of Lycomedes.

Corresponding to the centrality of weapons in military practices and traditions is the crucial role they play in international epic, with significant semantic shifts and reformulations depending on periods and cultural contexts, but also with thematic and motivic invariants so stable over the long term and across geographical diffusion as to recommend a broad comparative inquiry. Such an approach makes it possible to isolate constant elements and topoi, tracing them through their specific manifestations and contextual redefinitions, amid continuities and innovative departures. This issue of "AOQU" is devoted to the study of the modes and forms through which weapons enter into epic representations and into the ideological and aesthetic stakes of epic discourse".

(from the Introduction by Alvaro Barbieri and Franco Tomasi)