armor

Aegis

By Elizabeth Stein for Mythos Atlas. About the author. Editorial notes are grounded in the site's cited sources and can be challenged through the contact page.

Description

Goatskin, storm, Gorgon

In the Iliad the aegis belongs to Zeus and is worn in battle by Athena: tasselled, flashing, fitted with the Gorgon's head that turns the enemy's knees. Homer gives no workshop scene. Apollodorus and the Perseus cycle have Athena fix Medusa's head on the shield after the hero's gift. Vase-painters and the Shield of Heracles often show a goatskin or a breast-aegis, not a round hoplon. The word may mean storm-cloud as much as goat. It is an attribute of the storm-king and his daughter, not a relic stored in a known treasury.

Primary Sources

“About her shoulders she flung the tasselled aegis, fraught with terror, all about which Rout is set as a crown, and therein is the head of the grim monster Gorgon.”
Homer, Iliad 5(c. 8th century BCE)

“Perseus gave the Gorgon's head to Athena, and she placed it in the middle of her shield.”
Apollodorus, Library 2.4(c. 1st–2nd century CE)

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