Deserted even by Goats

The Greek adjective αἰγιλιψ (aygilips)―from αἰξ ‘goat’ and  λιπειν ‘to forsake’―means ‘deserted even by goats’, i.e. ‘barren’, ‘desperately forbidding’ or ‘too steep’, as applied to landscapes or features of the landscape. There are two known uses of this word in Greek literature. The first comes at the beginning (line 15) of Book IX of The Iliad:

                                          ἂν δ' Ἀγαμέμνων

ἵστατο δάκρυ χέων ὥς τε κρήνη μελάνυδρος

ἥ τε κατ' αἰγίλιπος πέτρης δνοφερὸν χέει ὕδωρ

 Here Agamemnon’s tearful face is likened to an impassable rock, down which runs a spring of dark water.

The second occurs at line 794 of The Suppliants by Aeschylus. Here the Chorus of Danaids are imagining a remote refuge where they will be safe from the band of Egyptians who have come to the Argive coast to take them home and enforce an unwanted marriage to their dark-skinned cousins. They imagine a bare-distant rock which is described as:

αἰγιλιψ, απροσδεικτος, οἰοφρων, ἐρημας, γυπιας…

(destitute even of goats, too distant to point out, heart-lonely, desolate, vulture-haunted…)

Hellas was and is a steep, rocky, goat-frequented land, so αἰγιλιψ provides a graphic image of places forbiddingly barren.