Aegis
The aegis (
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,[citation needed] where the Greek word aegis is applied by extension.
Etymology
The Greek αἰγίς aigis has many meanings, including:[3]
- "violent windstorm", from the verb ἀίσσω aïssō[4] (word stem ἀιγ- aïg-) = "I rush or move violently". Akin to καταιγίς kataigis, "thunderstorm".
- The shield of a deity as described above.
- "goatskin coat", from treating the word as meaning "something grammatically feminine pertaining to stemαἰγ- aig-) = "goat" + suffix -ίς -is (stem -ίδ- -id-).
The original meaning may have been the first, and Ζεὺς Αἰγίοχος Zeus Aigiokhos = "Zeus who holds the aegis" may have originally meant "Sky/Heaven, who holds the thunderstorm". The transition to the meaning "shield" or "goatskin" may have come by folk etymology among a people familiar with draping an animal skin over the left arm as a shield.[5]
In Greek mythology
The aegis of Athena is referred to in several places in the Iliad. "It produced a sound as from myriad roaring dragons (Iliad, 4.17) 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."[2]
Virgil imagines the
When the Olympian shakes the aegis, Mount Ida is wrapped in clouds, the thunder rolls and men are struck down with fear.[7][tone] "Aegis-bearing Zeus", as he is in the Iliad, sometimes lends the fearsome aegis to Athena. In the Iliad when Zeus sends Apollo to revive the wounded Hector, Apollo, holding the aegis, charges the Achaeans, pushing them back to their ships drawn up on the shore. According to Edith Hamilton's Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes,[8] the Aegis is the breastplate of Zeus, and was "awful to behold". However, Zeus is normally portrayed in classical sculpture holding a thunderbolt or lightning, bearing neither a shield nor a breastplate.
In some versions, Zeus watched Athena and Triton's daughter, Pallas, compete in a friendly mock battle involving spears. Not wanting his daughter to lose, Zeus flapped his aegis to distract Pallas, whom Athena accidentally impaled. Zeus apologized to Athena by giving her the aegis; Athena then named herself Pallas Athena in tribute to her late friend.
In classical poetry and art
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),[7] 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[11] 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
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 coins, cameos and vases.[7] 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.
Interpretations
Herodotus thought he had identified the source of the aegis in ancient Libya, which was always a distant territory of ancient magic for the Greeks. "Athene's garments and aegis were borrowed by the Greeks from the Libyan women, who are dressed in exactly the same way, except that their leather garments are fringed with thongs, not serpents."[12]
Robert Graves in The Greek Myths (1955) asserts that the aegis in its Libyan sense had been a shamanic pouch containing various ritual objects, bearing the device of a monstrous serpent-haired visage with tusk-like teeth and a protruding tongue which was meant to frighten away the uninitiated. In this context, Graves identifies the aegis as clearly belonging first to Athena.
One current interpretation is that the Hittite sacral hieratic hunting bag (kursas), a rough and shaggy goatskin that has been firmly established in literary texts and iconography by H.G. Güterbock,[13] was a source of the aegis.[14]
References
- ^ "aegis". Oxford Dictionary. Lexico. Archived from the original on March 23, 2020. Retrieved 23 June 2014.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-14044-444-5.
- Perseus Project.
- Perseus Project.
- ^ "A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (1890), AEGIS". www.perseus.tufts.edu. Retrieved 2024-03-02.
- ^ Aeneid 8.435–8, (Day-Lewie's translation).
- ^ a b c d One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Aegis". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 1 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 254.
- ^ Part I, section I (Warner Books' United States Paperback Edition)
- ^ Noted by Graves 1960, 9.a; Károly Kerényi, The Gods of the Greeks 1951, p 50.
- ^ As in Kerenyi 1951:50
- ^ John Tzetzes, On Lycophron, 355.
- ^ (Histories iv.189)
- ^ Güterbock, Perspectives on Hittite Civilization: Selected Writings (Chicago 1997).
- JSTOR 3185205.
- ISBN 9780714122540
External links
- Theoi Project: "Aigis"
- Die Aigis: Zu Typologie und Ikonographie eines Mythischen Gegenstandes: a Doctoral dissertation on the Ægis (Westfälischen Wilhelms-Universität, Münster 1991) by Sigrid Vierck.