  Lessing continues his argument by turning to the other half of Mendelssohn’s theory, the claim that poetry is an art that can represent a succession of events over time rather than one moment in time. “Accordingly, bodies with their visible properties are the true subjects of painting,” while, since actions take place over time, “actions are the true subjects of poetry.” Thus, “painting too can imitate actions, but only by suggestion through bodies,” and again “can use only a single moment of an action in its coexisting compositions and must therefore choose the one that is most suggestive.” Conversely, in order to represent a body poetry can only describe an action in which the body is made, used, or otherwise involved (Laocoön, chapter 16, pp. 78–9). This leads Lessing to a memorable analysis of some examples from Homer: “If Homer wants to show us Juno’s chariot, he shows Hebe putting it together piece by piece”; when he “wants to show us how Agamemnon was dressed, he has the king put on his garments, one by one,” and, most famously, when he wants to show us Achilles’s shield, he does not describe it “as finished and complete, but as a shield that is being made” (Laocoön, chapter 16, p. 80; chapter 18, p. 95).