page_title: Aegis
section_title: In classical poetry and art
hierarchical_section_title: Aegis / In classical poetry and art
caption_attribution_description: - image of Classical Greek pottery decoration showing Athene with the Python regurgitating Jason; the golden fleece hangs in a tree; Athene is shown wearing her aegis bearing the Gorgon and a helmet bearing a winged lioness and is holding an owl and her spear - Red-figured cup by Douris, c. 480-470 BC - Cerveteri (Etruria) - Vatican Museum
context_page_description: The aegis, as stated in the Iliad, is carried by Athena and Zeus, but its nature is uncertain. It had been interpreted as an animal skin or a shield, sometimes bearing the head of a Gorgon. There may be a connection with a deity named Aex or Aix, a daughter of Helios and a nurse of Zeus or alternatively a mistress of Zeus. The aegis of Athena is referred to in several places in The Iliad. "It produced a sound as from a myriad roaring dragons and was borne by Athena in battle ... and among them went bright-eyed Athene, holding the precious aegis which is ageless and immortal: a hundred tassels of pure gold hang fluttering from it, tight-woven each of them, and each the worth of a hundred oxen."
  The modern concept of doing something "under someone's aegis" means doing something under the protection of a powerful, knowledgeable, or benevolent source. The word aegis is identified with protection by a strong force with its roots in Greek mythology and adopted by the Romans; there are parallels in Norse mythology and in Egyptian mythology as well, where the Greek word aegis is applied by extension.
context_section_description: Classical Greece interpreted the Homeric aegis usually as a cover of some kind borne by Athena. It was supposed by Euripides (Ion, 995) that the aegis borne by Athena was the skin of the slain Gorgon, yet the usual understanding  is that the Gorgoneion was added to the aegis, a votive offering from a grateful Perseus.
  In a similar interpretation, Aex, a daughter of Helios, represented as a great fire-breathing chthonic serpent similar to the Chimera, was slain and flayed by Athena, who afterwards wore its skin, the aegis, as a cuirass (Diodorus Siculus iii. 70), or as a chlamys. The Douris cup shows that the aegis was represented exactly as the skin of the great serpent, with its scales clearly delineated.
  John Tzetzes says that aegis was the skin of the monstrous giant Pallas whom Athena overcame and whose name she attached to her own.
  In a late rendering by Gaius Julius Hyginus (Poetical Astronomy ii. 13), Zeus is said to have used the skin of a pet goat owned by his nurse Amalthea (aigis "goat-skin") which suckled him in Crete, as a shield when he went forth to do battle against the Titans.
  The aegis appears in works of art sometimes as an animal's skin thrown over Athena's shoulders and arms, occasionally with a border of snakes, usually also bearing the Gorgon head, the gorgoneion. In some pottery it appears as a tasselled cover over Athena's dress. It is sometimes represented on the statues of Roman emperors, heroes, and warriors, and on cameos and vases. A vestige of that appears in a portrait of Alexander the Great in a fresco from Pompeii dated to the first century BC, which shows the image of the head of a woman on his armor that resembles the Gorgon.
caption: Athena's aegis, bearing the Gorgon, here resembles closely the skin of the great serpent who guards the golden fleece (regurgitating Jason); cup by Douris, Classical Greece, early fifth century BC—Vatican Museums
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