AEGIS, in Homer, the shield or buckler .of Zeus. It was fur nished with tassels and bearing the Gorgon's head in the centre. Originally symbolical of the storm-cloud, it probably signifies rapid, violent motion (Gr. aisso). In the later story Zeus is said to have used the skin of the goat Amaltheia (Gr. aigis= goat-skin) as a buckler when he went forth to do battle against the giants ; in another legend, it is the skin of a monster slain by Athena, who afterwards wore it as a cuirass. Such skin shields were the original form of body protection, afterwards replaced by the solid shield covered with metal. It appears to have been really the goat's skin used as a belt to support the shield. When so used it would generally be fastened on the right shoulder, and. would partially envelop the chest as it passed obliquely round in front and behind to be attached to the shield under the left arm. Hence, by transference, it would be employed to denote at times the shield which it sup ported, and at other times a cuirass. Hence the aegis appears in works of art sometimes as an animal's skin thrown over the shoulders and arms, sometimes as a cuirass, with a border of snakes corresponding to the tassels of Homer, usually with the Gorgon's head in the centre.
See L. Preller, Griechische Mythologie, i. (1887) ; Pauly-Wissowa's Realencyklopddie; Roscher's Lexikon der Mythologie; Daremberg and Saglio's Dictionnaire des Antiquites; and Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (3rd ed., 189o).