Term: Aega

She was Helios, the Greek sun god’s daughter and, like her sisters Circe and Pasiphae, a hypnotically beautiful woman, so beautiful and dazzlingly bright that when the earthborn Titans attacked the gods of Olympus, the earth mother Gaea placed Aega in a cave to hide her shimmering beauty. There she became Zeus’ nurse and he eventually put her among the stars. In other myths she was a descendant of Hephaestus, a nymph, or a goat. Her name may mean “a gale of wind,” and her star is in the constellation Capella, the rise of which coincided with the stormy season.