Cook, Arthur B.: Zeus: a study in ancient religion (Band 3,1): Zeus god of the dark sky (earthquake, clouds, wind, dew, rain, meteorits): Text and notes (Cambridge, 1940)

844 The aigis and Gorgoneion of Athena

in a simpler and presumably Attic1 form. Athena herself, not
Perseus, here slays the Gorgon and wears its skin as her aigis.

The evidence is incomplete, but it looks as though the feathered
skin with its Gorgoneion went back to a Gorgon represented as
a ravening bird of prey—precisely the representation that we have
already seen on a black-figured vase at Berlin (fig. 649)2. It is
noticeable too that the Gorgon of modern Greek folk-tales, who
turns men into stone, is usually conceived as a bird, the Bird of
Truth8, the Speaking Bird4, the Bird Dikjeretto5, or the Tzitzinaina
who knows the language of all birds6. Anyhow, in view of the
Berlin vase, it may well be maintained that the feathery type of
aigis with its Gorgon-face points back to an Owl Athena. Homer
called her glaukdpis"*': Sophokles, gorgopis8.

Fig. 657. Fig. 658.

In claiming that Athena's aigis with its Gorgoneion was thus
developed out of a snake-skin or owl-skin, the exuviae of her ol
animal self, I do not pretend to have tracked the Gorgon to its
original lair. I maintain merely that the horrifying head of tne
snake or owl tended from the earliest Greek times9 to acquire the
characteristics of that essentially pre- Greek10 horror, the Gorgi**0*'

1 Preller—Robert Gr. Myth. i. 192, H. J. Rose A Handbook of Greek Myl^1"^
London 1928 p. 30.

2 Supra p. 836. 3 Supra ii. roiof., 1016.
4 Supra ii. 1009f-, i0'2 o, r, 1016. 5 Supra ii. 1005, 1016.

6 Supra ii. 1004, 1016. 7 Supra p. 781 n. 2. „ei,

8 Soph. At. 450 t) Aios 70/3715x15 dSdfiaros (so P. Elmsley for dSdfmcrTos codd.)
frag. 844. 1 Jebb ap. Plout. de fort. 4 tt\v Ai6s yopy&nrw 'Epydvriv. ( r£ptf

3 //. 5. 741 f. ir 8V re Topydy KecpaXr; davoio TreXtbpov, | Seivi) re aixephvi) re, A'°J ^j£)/
atyidxoio, cp. Od. I r. 634 f. yd] yoi TopyeVqv Ke<pa.\rjv Sewoio ireXibpov \ £!; "AiSos

dyavi] TLepawpbveia. _ te111?^

10 It is notorious that in the western pediment of the second (c. 580—57° B'C'^£r lio"5
of Artemis at Palaiopolis, Corfu, the huge pre-Greek group of the Gorgon and e gjant
completely dwarfs the small Hellenic flanking figures, e.g. Zeus attacking ' e ^reeks
towards the southern angle (G. M. A. Richter The Sculpture and Sculptors of*, Jll£lle>
Yale Univ. Press 1929 p. 28 with figs. 76 Gorgon, 96 Zeus v. Giant, 109 rechn'ng^^
141 head of Chrysaor, 374 whole pediment, H. Schrader Archaische griec/usc gjaflt'
Breslau 1933 p. 80 f. with figs. 49 lion, 80 reconstruction of facade, 81 Zeus