Athena — Words of the week

‘Aegis’ is a fancy-dancy word that refers to the power to protect, control, or support something or someone. It often pops up in the phrase ‘under the aegis of’ (although not in anything I’ve written, I’m pleased to say). For example:

‘The ultimate owner of the best spot on the sofa will be decided under the aegis of the dog.’

You’ve probably guessed from the spelling that we nicked ‘aegis’ from Latin. But the word it actually comes from is Greek – aíx. Bet you can’t guess what that means.

I’ll give you a sec.

The answer is, not at all obviously, ‘goat’.

So how did we get from hairy, eat-anything Goaty McGoatface to protection and control? Well, in ancient Greek mythology, the god Zeus (and later his daughter Athena) carried a powerful shield or cloak called aegis, which was made from the skin of Amalthea – a mythical goat that suckled Zeus as a baby. Yep. I mean this is the guy who turned himself into a golden shower (shut up), poured through a skylight and impregnated Harry Hamlin’s, sorry, Perseus’ mum, so being suckled by a goat is frankly one of the less weird things about him. (I should probably say that in early accounts, Amalthea was a nymph who owned a goat whose milk Zeus drank – much less weird, but also less interesting.)

Anyway, back to the shield. This was not just any old goatskin shield – the snake-covered head of the Gorgon Medusa (killed by the aforementioned golden-shower-fathered Perseus) was mounted on it. And because you can never have too many reptiles on your shield, it was also fringed with extra snakes who’d snap at anyone getting too close. The OG biological warfare. (Much like the nymph/goat merging above, Homer described the shield’s fringing as golden tassels, but later artworks depicted them as snakes – and that’s clearly much more exciting.)

Over the centuries, the word ‘aegis’ made its way through Latin and into English where 19th-century printers insisted on snobbishly gluing the first two letters together as ‘ægis’ (called a ligature, fact fans). Along the way it shed both the stuck-together letters, the goat hide and the snakes (dammit!), eventually settling down as an unnecessarily formal synonym for sponsorship, backing or protection.

So, next time you hear someone say they’re acting under the ‘aegis’ of an official authority (or a cavapoo called Gus, if you’re me), remember: they’re really just hiding behind a big-old goat skin.

Alongside ‘Terrahawks’ (look it up if you’re too young to remember it), this scene was one of the scariest things I saw as a child in the 80s.

I was watching an American medical drama called ‘New Amsterdam’ the other day (I love me an American medical drama – ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ is my absolute fave). During a courtroom scene with a patient with some mental-health struggles, a judge said ‘I’m not willing to to release you into your own aegis’. My first thought was of course, ‘why not use a word that everyone can understand, silly legal person?’. And my second was, ‘I wonder where “aegis” comes from?’ Well, it turns out it has quite an interesting backstory.

In the context of the silly legal person, ‘aegis’ simply means ‘protection, sponsorship or support of a person, group or organisation’. Its other, much more fun, definition is ‘a shield or breastplate associated with Zeus and Athena’. And that’s where our etymology comes from.

In Greek mythology, aegises also included cloaks, and were often described as powerful and protective. Some of them featured the head of the Gorgon, she of the bad snake-hair day. The word itself comes from a noun, ‘aigis’, which means ‘goatskin’. This is probably just because cloaks were often made of goatskin, but it might (it probably isn’t TBH, but I wanted to tell this story) be something to do with the mythical goat Amalthea. Rhea, Zeus’ Ma, hid him in a cave to protect him from his father Cronus, who was a bit of a nutter known for eating his own children (someone call social services). Amalthea nursed (yep, fed) and cared for the infant Zeus in the cave. Hence, goats = protection.

Aegis made its way into English in the 18th century in the sense of those protective shields or cloaks. It later evolved into the idea of protection, sponsorship or support, and a silly legal term.

To say thanks for looking after him in that cave, Zeus later transformed one of Amalthea’s horns into the Cornucopia, or Horn of Plenty, which could provide an endless supply of food and drink. I’m not sure how this worked logistically – surely it would need to be detached from Amalthea’s head to provide all that chow? That doesn’t seem like much of a thank you.

Zeus was also a bit of a dirty old (and young) man. One of his favourite things to do was to transform himself into something else to have sex with both mortals and immortals. This included transforming into a swan, a bull and a shower of gold. I’m definitely not going to try to work out the logistics of that…