The Aegis

The aegis belongs to Zeus, and Homer is vague about what it physically is: a shield, a goatskin, a cloak, something fringed with tassels of gold. Shaking it produces thunder and terror. What is consistent is the function — it is a portable piece of the storm, and no army stands against it.

Athena carries it far more often than her father does, and she modifies it. After Perseus gave her the head of Medusa, she fixed it at the centre, so the thing that turned men to stone became the boss of the shield. The gorgoneion, that severed face, was then painted and carved on real Greek shields and over real Greek doorways for centuries.

The name probably comes from aix, goat, and one tradition says it is the hide of Amalthea, the goat that suckled the infant Zeus on Crete — which would make the most fearsome object on Olympus a memento of his childhood.

It was lent out. Apollo uses it in the Iliad to panic the Greeks and level a wall as easily as a child scattering sand. Its power in Homer is psychological rather than physical: it does not block weapons so much as remove the will to fight from whoever sees it.

In English it survives in a phrase that has softened almost beyond recognition. To be 'under the aegis' of an institution now means being sponsored by it. It used to mean standing behind the storm-shield of Zeus while everyone facing you lost their nerve.