Amalthea- Greek CreatureCreature · Beast"Nurse of Zeus"

The Nursing of Zeus

When Rhea hid the infant Zeus from his father Kronos in a cave on Mount Dicte in Crete, she needed a nurse for the child — and found one in the divine she-goat Amalthea. The goat suckled the infant god while bees brought wild honey from the mountainside, and the Curetes, armed daimones loyal to Rhea, clashed their bronze shields and weapons outside the cave to drown out the baby's cries and hide him from Kronos. In one tradition, the nymphs who tended Zeus alongside Amalthea hung his cradle from a tree so that he was neither in heaven, nor on earth, nor in the sea — invisible to his father's searching gaze.

Amalthea was no ordinary creature — some held that her hide was so strong no weapon could pierce it.

The Horn and the Hide

The young Zeus, playing with Amalthea, accidentally broke off one of her horns. To compensate his nurse, he blessed the broken horn so that it would perpetually overflow with whatever food and drink its possessor desired — the cornucopia, the Horn of Plenty. The blessed horn passed through divine hands: Tyche carried it as a sign of fortune, and Plutus held it to mark wealth.

When Amalthea died, Zeus took her hide — the one no weapon could pierce — and fashioned it into the aegis. The word aigis itself comes from aix, goat. He wore the goatskin in battle and later shared it with Athena, who mounted the Gorgon's head upon it. With Medusa's face fixed to the hide of Zeus's nurse, the aegis could freeze armies where they stood.

Among the Stars

Zeus honored Amalthea by placing her among the stars as Capella, the bright star in the constellation Auriga. The name means "little she-goat." She shines above the charioteer, a permanent place in the sky her nursling came to rule.