The goat Amalthea, which had suckled Jove, being dead, that god is said to have covered his buckler with the skin thereof, whence the appellation Aegis, from αιξ, αιγις, a she-goat. Jupiter afterwards restoring the goat to life, covered it with a new skin, and placed it among the stars. This buckler, which was the work of Vulcan, he gave to Minerva, who having killed the Gorgon Medusa, nailed her head to the middle of the Aegis, which henceforth possessed the faculty of converting to stone all who beheld it, as Medusa herself had while alive.