General Notes

Earth.

AEGA, or Aegia, is one of those persons of ancient myth whose identity is obscured by variant versions of a story. According to one tradition, she was a daughter of Olenus, son of Hephaestus, and sister of Helice. The sisters are said to have nursed Zeus in Crete, and Aega was later changed by him into the constellation Capella. Another tradition made her the daughter of Melisseus, king of Crete, and she was chosen to suckle the infant Zeus. She could not manage this, so the goat Amaltheia was brought into service. Still others say that Aega was a daughter of Helios and, as the daughter of the sun, dazzling in appearance. She therefore frightened the Titans who were assailing Olympus, and they begged Gaea, their mother, the earth, to remove her from their sight. Gaea accordingly confined her in a cave in Crete, and there she became the nurse of Zeus. Later on, while fighting Titans, Zeus was commanded by an oracle to cover himself with Aega's skin (aegis); he did so and raised her among the stars. So, even with three separate fathers assigned by different writers, we can see that in all the stories Aega was regarded as a nurse of Zeus. No attempt seems to be made to combine her office in this matter with the services of Adrasteia and Ida, who are usually called the nurses of Zeus (they too were daughters of Melisseus).
The entity of Aega, like that of Amaltheia, seems to be confused between human being and goat. One would hope that it was the goat identity from which Zeus obtained his aegis. By some kind of mythological teleportation Aega became the wife of Arcadian Pan. Never missing an opportunity, Zeus became the father of Aegipan by her, although some claim that Zeus coupled with a goat to produce him. Again there is this strong identification with goats, and it is probably safe to say that the name Aega was translated as "goat," even though some have contended that "gale of wind" might be better, since the rise of the constellation Capella brings storms and tempests. [Hyginus, Poetic Astronomy 2.13; Aratus, Phenomena 150.]

AETNA was a Sicilian nymph, a daughter of Gaea by Uranus or Oceanus, or of Briareus, the giant. When Hephaestus and Demeter disputed the possession of Sicily, she acted as arbitrator. Her decisions must have been favorable to Hephaestus, since she became by him the mother of the Palici. These Sicilian demons, however, were most often called twin sons of Zeus by Thaleia, the daughter of Hephaestus. Mount Aetna in Sicily was believed to have derived its name from her. Zeus buried a few giants under Mount Aetna, and it was here that Hephaestus and the Cyclopes forged thunderbolts for him. Bother these circumstances helped the inhabitants explain the rumblings and eruptions. [Servius on Virgil's Aeneid 9.584; Euripides, Cyclops 296; Propertius 3.15.21; Cicero, On Divination 2.19.]