The aegis, as stated in the Iliad, is carried by Athena and Zeus, but its nature is uncertain. It had been interpreted as a shield, sometimes bearing the head of a Gorgon. There may be a connection with a deity named Aex or Aix, a daughter of Helios and a nurse of Zeus or alternatively a mistress of Zeus; the aegis of Athena is referred to in several places in the Iliad. "It produced a sound as from a myriad roaring dragons and was borne by Athena in battle... and among them went bright-eyed Athene, holding the precious aegis, ageless and immortal: a hundred tassels of pure gold hang fluttering from it, tight-woven each of them, each the worth of a hundred oxen."The modern concept of doing something "under someone's aegis" means doing something under the protection of a powerful, knowledgeable, or benevolent source. The word aegis is identified with protection by a strong force with its roots in Greek mythology and adopted by the Romans. Virgil imagines the Cyclopes in Hephaestus' forge, who "busily burnished the aegis Athena wears in her angry moods—a fearsome thing with a surface of gold like scaly snake-skin, the linked serpents and the Gorgon herself upon the goddess's breast—a severed head rolling its eyes", furnished with golden tassels and bearing the Gorgoneion in the central boss.

Some of the Attic vase-painters retained an archaic tradition that the tassels had been serpents in their representations of the aegis. When the Olympian deities overtook the older deities of Greece and she was born of Metis and "re-born" through the head of Zeus clothed, Athena wore her typical garments; when the Olympian shakes the aegis, Mount Ida is wrapped in clouds, the thunder rolls and men are struck down with fear. "Aegis-bearing Zeus", as he is in the Iliad, sometimes lends the fearsome aegis to Athena. In the Iliad when Zeus sends Apollo to revive the wounded Hector, holding the aegis, charges the Achaeans, pushing them back to their ships drawn up on the shore. According to Edith Hamilton's Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes, the Aegis is the breastplate of Zeus, was "awful to behold". However, Zeus is portrayed in classical sculpture holding a thunderbolt or lightning, bearing neither a shield nor a breastplate. Classical Greece interpreted the Homeric aegis as a cover of some kind borne by Athena.

It was supposed by Euripides that the aegis borne by Athena was the skin of the slain Gorgon, yet the usual understanding is that the Gorgoneion was added to the aegis, a votive offering from a grateful Perseus. In a similar interpretation, Aex, a daughter of Helios, represented as a great fire-breathing chthonic serpent similar to the Chimera, was slain and flayed by Athena, who afterwards wore its skin, the aegis, as a cuirass, or as a chlamys; the Douris cup shows that the aegis was represented as the skin of the great serpent, with its scales delineated. John Tzetzes says that aegis was the skin of the monstrous giant Pallas whom Athena overcame and whose name she attached to her own. In a late rendering by Gaius Julius Hyginus, Zeus is said to have used the skin of a pet goat owned by his nurse Amalthea which suckled him in Crete, as a shield when he went forth to do battle against the Titans; the aegis appears in works of art sometimes as an animal's skin thrown over Athena's shoulders and arms with a border of snakes also bearing the Gorgon head, the gorgoneion.

In some pottery it appears as a tasselled cover over Athena's dress. It is sometimes represented on the statues of Roman emperors and warriors, 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. Herodotus thought he had identified the source of the ægis in ancient Libya, always a distant territory of ancient magic for the Greeks. "Athene's garments and ægis were borrowed by the Greeks from the Libyan women, who are dressed in the same way, except that their leather garments are fringed with thongs, not serpents."Robert Graves in The Greek Myths asserts that the ægis in its Libyan sense had been a shamanic pouch containing various ritual objects, bearing the device of a monstrous serpent-haired visage with tusk-like teeth and a protruding tongue, meant to frighten away the uninitiated. In this context, Graves identifies the aegis as belonging first to Athena.

One current interpretation is that the Hittite sacral hieratic hunting bag, a rough and shaggy goatskin, established in literary texts and iconography by H. G. Güterbock, was a source of the aegis; the Greek αἰγίς aigis, has many meanings including: "violent windstorm", from the verb ἀίσσω aïssō = "I rush or move violently". Akin to καταιγίς kataigis, "thunderstorm"; the shield of a deity as described above. "goatskin coat", from treating the word as meaning "something grammatically feminine pertaining to goat": Greek αἴξ aix = "goat", + suffix -ίς -is. The original meaning may have been the first, Ζεὺς Αἰγίοχος Zeus Aigiokhos = "Zeus who holds the aegis" may have meant "Sky/Heaven, who holds the thunderstorm"; the transition to the meaning "shield" or "goatskin" may have come by folk etymology among a people familiar with draping an animal skin over the left arm a

Poppy Cybele King is an Australian entrepreneur. She is best known for her company Poppy Industries and the range of cosmetics available at Poppy Stores in Australia, during the 1990s. King was born to a Jewish family and was educated at Lauriston Girls' School in Melbourne, Wesley College, Melbourne, her father died of cancer. King started her own cosmetics company in 1991 at age eighteen. Poppy Industries produced a wide colour range of opaque lipsticks; the head office was located in Melbourne. Within three years, the company had grown to be one of the biggest cosmetic companies in Australia. In 1995 she received the Young Australian of the Year award and that year the company made a profit of $6.5 million. In 1998, after expansion into the U. S. market, the company collapsed and went into receivership liquidation. With further outside investment the company continued until 2002, when it was dissolved. In 1999, the Australian Securities and Investment Commission investigated allegations that Poppy Industries traded while it was insolvent, however the Commission released a statement clearing the company of any wrongdoing.

In 2006, King launched a new brand called "Lipstick Queen". Lipstick Queen is stocked globally in department stores including Sephora and Mecca. In 2018, Elle Australia listed her Frog Prince lipstick, which changes from green to pink on application, as one of the 10 most iconic lipstick shades of all time. King lives in New York, she wrote Lessons of a Lipstick Queen, published by Atria Books in August 2008. She has campaigned for the Australian Republican Movement. Beth Dolan, Poppy King, Heinemann Library Young Achievers series, Port Melbourne, 1998. ISBN 1-86391-906-6 Poppy King, Lessons of a Lipstick Queen – Finding and Developing the Great Idea That Can Change Your Life, Atria Books, 2008. ISBN 978-0-7432-9957-2

"Tragedy In A Temporary Town" is a dramatic teleplay written by Reginald Rose. It was produced for The Alcoa Hour in the US directed by Sidney Lumet and sparked media attention for its portrayal of race and for Lloyd Bridges ad libbed profanity during its live broadcast. Bridges was nominated for the Emmy Award for Best Single Performance by an Actor for 1957 but did not win. In 1959 the same script was produced as the third episode of the Australian anthology drama show Shell Presents starring Michael Pate. In a small town, a group of migrant workers are employed at an aircraft factory and live in a trailer park; when 15 year-old Dotty Fisher claims she has been attacked, a group of men, led by Frank Doran, attempt to find out, possible. They seize a boy, Raphael Infante, threaten to lynch him. Only a tolerant man called. For the 1956 Alcoa Hour Production: Edward Binns as Anderson Lloyd Bridges as Alec Beggs Rafael Campos as Raphael Infante Robert Dryden as Sankey Robert Emhardt as Matt Fisher Pete Gumeny as Reynolds Donald Harron as Mickey Doran Betty Lou Keim as Dotty Fisher Will Kuluva as Julio Infante Vivian Nathan as Grace Beggs Milton Selzer as Pike Clifford Tatum Jr. as Buddy Beggs Jack Warden as Frank Doran Jane White as Dolores Infante The US production garnered press in February 1956 for actor Lloyd Bridges' emotional performance during which Bridges inadvertently slipped some profanity in while ad-libbing.

Although the slip of the lip and the racial content generated some complaints, most of the public feedback was positive. The episode won a Robert E. Sherwood Television Award, with Bridges' slip being defended by some members of the clergy; the episode, during which an innocent Puerto Rican man is targeted by a mob for a sexual crime, was cited by the Anti-Defamation League as "the best dramatic program of the year dealing with interethnic group relations."