Aegis

This article is about the shield used by Zeus in Greek mythology. For other uses, see Aegis (disambiguation).

The aegis or egis (/ˈiːdʒɪs/ EE-jis; Ancient Greek: αἰγίς aigís), as stated in the Iliad, is a device carried by Zeus, Apollo and Athena. It is interpreted in different ways, as an animal skin or a shield, and it sometimes features the head of a Gorgon. There may be a connection with a deity named Aex, who was a daughter of Helios and a nurse of Zeus, or alternatively a mistress of Zeus (Hyginus, Astronomica 2. 13).

The modern idea of doing something "under someone's aegis" means doing it under the protection of a powerful, knowledgeable, or kind source. The word aegis is linked with protection by a strong force. Its roots are in Greek mythology, and the Romans adopted it.

There are parallels in Norse mythology and in Egyptian mythology as well, where the Greek word aegis is applied by extension.

Etymology

The Greek word aigis has several meanings. It can mean a "violent windstorm," which comes from a verb meaning "I rush or move violently" and the word stem aig-. It is related to a word meaning "thunderstorm." It can also mean the shield of a god, or a "goatskin coat," which comes from the Greek word for goat.

The first meaning may have been the original one. The name Zeus Aigiokhos, meaning "Zeus who holds the aegis," may have first meant "Sky/Heaven, who holds the thunderstorm." The change to "shield" or "goatskin" may have happened through folk etymology, among people who were familiar with draping an animal skin over the left arm as a shield.

In Greek mythology

The aegis of Athena is mentioned in several places in the Iliad. In one passage, Athena holds the precious aegis, which is ageless and immortal, with a hundred gold tassels, each worth a hundred oxen. The poet Virgil imagines the Cyclopes working in the forge of Hephaestus, polishing the aegis that Athena wears in her angry moods. It has a gold surface like scaly snake-skin, linked serpents, and the Gorgon's severed head on the goddess's chest. The head is the Gorgoneion, which is Medusa's head. Some Attic vase-painters kept an old tradition that the tassels had once been serpents. When the Olympian gods took over from the older gods of Greece, Athena was born from Metis, who was inside Zeus after he had swallowed her. She was "re-born" from Zeus's head, already fully dressed. When the Olympian shakes the aegis, Mount Ida is wrapped in clouds, thunder rolls, and men are struck with fear. In the Iliad, "Aegis-bearing Zeus" sometimes lends the aegis to Athena. He also sends Apollo to revive the wounded Hector, and Apollo, holding the aegis, drives the Achaeans back to their ships on the shore. According to Edith Hamilton's Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes, the aegis is the breastplate of Zeus and was "awful to behold". However, Zeus is usually shown in classical sculpture holding a thunderbolt or lightning, with neither a shield nor a breastplate.

Classical Greece usually understood the aegis as a kind of cover carried by Athena. Euripides suggested that it was the skin of a slain Gorgon, but most people thought the Gorgon head was added to it later as a votive offering from a thankful Perseus. In another story, Aex, a daughter of Helios, was a great fire-breathing chthonic serpent similar to the Chimera. Athena slew it, skinned it, and wore its skin as a cuirass or a chlamys. The Douris cup shows the aegis as the skin of this great serpent, with its scales clearly drawn. Other writers said the aegis was the skin of the giant Pallas, or that Zeus used the skin of a pet goat belonging to his nurse Amalthea, which had fed him on Crete, as a shield when he fought the Titans.

In works of art, the aegis is often shown as an animal skin thrown over Athena's shoulders and arms, sometimes with a border of snakes and usually with the Gorgon head. It also appears on statues of Roman emperors, heroes, and warriors, and on coins, cameos, and vases. A fresco from Pompeii, dated to the first century BC, shows a portrait of Alexander the Great with the head of a woman on his armor that looks like the Gorgon.

Interpretations

Herodotus thought he had found the source of the aegis in ancient Libya, a faraway land that the Greeks often linked with magic. He wrote that the Greeks borrowed Athene's clothing and aegis from Libyan women, who dressed in exactly the same way, except that their leather garments were fringed with thongs instead of serpents.

Robert Graves in The Greek Myths (1955) says that the Libyan aegis was a pouch carried by a shaman, holding various ritual objects. It showed a frightening face with snakes for hair, tusk-like teeth, and a sticking-out tongue, meant to scare away people who had not been initiated. Graves says the aegis clearly belonged first to Athena. One current interpretation is that the sacred Hittite hunting bag (kursas), a rough, shaggy goatskin, was a source of the aegis.