Illustrated Companion to the Latin Dictionary/Aegis

Illustrated Companion to the Latin Dictionary, and Greek Lexicon (Rich, 1849)

AEGIS (αἰγίς). In its primary sense a goat's skin, which the primitive inhabitants of Greece used, as well as the skins of other animals, as an article of clothing and defence. This would be naturally put on over the back, and tied by the front legs over the chest, so as to protect both the back and breast of the wearer, as seen in the statue of Juno Lanuvina (Aegis/1.1) in the Vatican Museum (Visconti, Mus. Pio Clem. ii. tav. 21.). It thus formed the original type of the aegis, as worn by Jupiter and Minerva, which was made out of the goat Amalthea, which suckled Jupiter in his infancy. Hygin. Astron. ii. 13.

The illustration exhibits a figure of Minerva on a fictile lamp (but imitated from a very ancient type), wearing the aegis as described above, which covers the breast, and falls down behind the back as low as the knees. The snakes of the Gorgon's head placed upon it form a fringe round the edges in the same manner as Homer (Il. ii. 448.) describes the tassels on the aegis of Jove.

2. As such a mantle formed a cumbrous appendage to a statue in the ideal style of Greek sculpture, it was transformed by the artists of that country into a small and elegantly formed breast-plate, covered with scales, to imitate armour, and decorated with the Gorgon's head in the centre, as in the figure of Minerva (Aegis/2.1) here given, also from a fictile lamp. From this the word Aegis was subsequently used to designate the breast-plate of a divinity, but more especially of Jupiter and Minerva, as contradistinguished from Lorica, the breast-plate of mortals. Ovid. Met. vi. 79. Id. ii. 755. Serv. ad Virg. Aen. viii. 35.

3. At a still later period the same word was used to designate the ordinary cuirass worn by persons of distinction, such as the Macedonian kings and Roman emperors, when decorated with an image of the Gorgon's head in front (Mart. Ep. vii. 1.), which they adopted amongst its other ornaments in token of the divine character and authority they assumed, as in the example (Aegis/3.1), from a statue at Rome.

4. The translation of aegis, a shield, conveys an idea quite remote from the original and true meaning of the word; for almost every figure in the works of ancient art with a goat-skin on the breast, is also furnished with a shield apart; and the passages where a defence in the nature of a shield is supposed to be referred to, are either equivocal, or may be understood with equal truth as descriptive of the large mantle of goat-skin shown in the first wood-cut; which could easily be drawn forward over the left arm, to protect it like a shield in the same manner as the Athenians used their chlamys (see CLIPEATUS CHLAMYDE), and as represented by the figure annexed (Aegis/4.1), which is copied from a very ancient statue of Minerva in the Royal Museum at Naples.

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  Aegis/1.1
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  Aegis/2.1
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  Aegis/3.1
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  Aegis/4.1