At I.18.479–480, we saw a crossover between the artistic worlds of metalworking and weaving. The metalwork of Hephaistos in manufacturing the Shield of Achilles was metaphorized as the pattern-weaving of fabric. There is a comparable crossover here at I.18.590, where the word poikillein ‘pattern-weave’ refers to the metalwork performed by the god Hephaistos in making the Shield of Achilles. Here I epitomize my relevant analysis in HC C§15, where I focus on a comparable crossover in the case of Virgil’s Shield of Aeneas in Aeneid 8. I start by focusing on arma ‘armor, arms’, which is the first word at Aeneid 8.616. To be compared is the beginning of the epic, at Aeneid 1.1: arma virumque cano ‘armor I sing, and the man’. When we read Aeneid 8.616, where the narrative refers to the arma ‘armor’ of Aeneas, the description of this hero’s Shield as a shield has not yet happened. So far, only the armor in general is being described. But there is more to it: the word arma ‘armor’ at Aeneid 8.616, by way of cross-referring to the initial use of arma at Aeneid 1.1, stands metonymically for the whole epic, not only for the ‘armor’ of Aeneas. The arma ‘armor’ at the beginning of Aeneid 1.1 can apply at Aeneid 8.616 if we understand the deployment of arma at Aeneid 1.1 as a masterstroke of metonymy. On metonymy, see the inventory of Words and Ideas. What is being signaled by the arma at Aeneid 8.616 is a description of the Shield that becomes coextensive with the overall narration of the epic that is the Aeneid in its entirety. But when the actual description of the Shield begins at Aeneid 8.625, the wording makes it clear that this description defies any immediate narration: clipei non enarrabile textum ‘the shield, the weaving [textus] of which is beyond all power to narrate’. To describe the cosmic power of the Shield’s meaning will require an overall epic narration, from beginning to end, which cannot be successful until the story is fully told. Such a narration calls for a metaphor to substitute for the narration: instead of a tale that is being told, the narration is reconfigured as a ‘web’ that is being woven, a textus. The story has to be told from beginning to end, just as a web has to be woven from beginning to end.