Locating The Aegis
Greeks of the Classical age always detected that there was something alien and uncanny about the Aegis. It was supposed by Euripides (Ion, 995) that the Gorgon was the original possessor of this goatskin, yet the usual understanding is that the Gorgoneion was added to the Aegis, a votive gift from a grateful Perseus.
There also is the origin myth that represents the ægis as a fire-breathing chthonic monster similar to the Chimera, which was slain and flayed by Athena, who afterward wore its skin as a cuirass (Diodorus Siculus iii. 70), or as a chlamys. The Douris cup shows that the Aegis was represented exactly as the skin of the guardian serpent, with its scales clearly delineated. Often the Aegis is described as the bag in which Athene carried her shield and the serpent who was her son.
John Tzetzes says that it was the skin of the monstrous giant Pallas whom Athena overcame and whose name she attached to her own (name).
In a late rendering by Hyginus, (Poetical Astronomy ii. 13) Zeus is said to have used the skin of the goat deity Amalthea (aigis "goat-skin") which suckled him in Crete, as a shield when he went forth to do battle against the Titans. She is thought to bear the name of the deity who was derived from Libya, where known as Neith, the same source sometimes identified as the parallel for Athene.
In accordance with this double meaning, the Aegis appears in works of art sometimes as an animal's skin thrown over the shoulders and arms, and sometimes as a cuirass, with a border of snakes corresponding to the tassels of Homer, usually with the Gorgon head, the gorgoneion, in the centre.
It often is represented on the statues of Roman emperors, heroes, and warriors as well as on cameos and vases. 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.
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