ÆGIS

ÆGIS, in Ancient Mythology, a name given to the shield or buckler of Jupiter and Pallas. The goat Amalthea, which had suckled Jove, being dead, that god is said to have covered his buckler with the skin; whence the appellation ægis, from arē, aryē, she-goat. Jupiter afterwards restored the animal to life, covered it with a new skin, and placed it among the stars. He made a present of his buckler to Minerva; whence that goddess's buckler is also called ægis. Minerva having killed the Gorgon Medusa, nailed her head in the middle of the ægis, which henceforth had the faculty of converting into stone all those who looked upon it; as Medusa herself had during her life. Others suppose the ægis not to have been a buckler, but a cuirass or breastplate; and it is certain that the ægis of Pallas, described by Virgil, Æn. lib. viii. ver. 435, must have been a cuirass, since that poet says expressly that Medusa's head was on the breast of the goddess. But the ægis of Jupiter, mentioned a little higher, ver. 354, seems to have been a buckler. The words—

..... Cum sæpe nigrantem
Ægis concuteret dextra,

are descriptive of a buckler, but not at all of a cuirass or

Ægisthus breastplate. Servius makes the same distinction on the two passages of Virgil; for on verse 354 he takes the ægis for the buckler of Jupiter, made, as above mentioned, of the skin of the goat Amalthea; and on verse 435 he describes the ægis as the armour which covers the breast, and which, in speaking of men is called cuirass, and egis in speaking of the gods. Many authors have overlooked these distinctions for want of going to the sources.