Aegis
The aegis, the storm-shield of Zeus, is the awesome goatskin or bronze buckler with which the god of the Iliad terrifies armies and shakes the field of battle, and which his daughter Athena also wears in the fight; its name, from the Greek for 'goat', points to its origin as a ritual skin, though Homer treats it as a wrought shield forged by Hephaestus. Its surface bears the severed head of the Gorgon Medusa, whose gaze turns all who meet it to stone, so that the shield is as much a weapon of terror as a defence. Zeus lends the aegis to his champions and shakes it as a sign of wrath, and in At