‘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.’
Medusa, coming at ya
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 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.