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Athena or Athene, often given the epithet Pallas, is an ancient Greek goddess associated with wisdom, warfare, and handicraft (1995). 9780877790426, Merriam-Webster. ISBN 9780877790426 who was later syncretism with the Roman goddess Minerva. Athena was regarded as the patron and protectress of various cities across Greece, particularly the city of Athens, from which she most likely received her name. The Parthenon on the Acropolis of Athens is dedicated to her. Her major symbols include owls, olive trees, snakes, and the Gorgoneion. In art, she is generally depicted wearing a helmet and holding a spear.
From her origin as an Aegean tutelary deity, Athena was closely associated with the city. She was known as Polias and Poliouchos (both derived from polis, meaning "city-state"), and her temples were usually located atop the fortified acropolis in the central part of the city. The Parthenon on the Athenian Acropolis is dedicated to her, along with numerous other temples and monuments. As the patron of craft and weaving, Athena was known as Ergane. She was also a warrior goddess, and was believed to lead soldiers into battle as Athena Promachos. Her main festival in Athens was the Panathenaia, which was celebrated during the month of Attic calendar in midsummer and was the most important festival on the Athenian calendar.
In Greek mythology, Athena was believed to have been born from the forehead of her father Zeus. In almost all versions of the story, Athena has no mother and is born from Zeus' forehead by parthenogenesis. In a few others, such as Hesiod's Theogony, Zeus swallows his consort Metis, who was pregnant with Athena; in this version, Athena is first born within Zeus and then escapes from his body through his forehead. In the founding myth of Athens, Athena bested Poseidon in a competition over patronage of the city by creating the first olive tree. She was known as Athena Parthenos "Athena the Virgin". In one archaic Attica myth, Hephaestus tried and failed to rape her, resulting in Gaia giving birth to Erichthonius, an important Athenian founding hero Athena raised. She was the patron goddess of heroic endeavor; she was believed to have aided the heroes Perseus, Heracles, Bellerophon, and Jason. Along with Aphrodite and Hera, Athena was one of the three goddesses whose feud resulted in the Trojan War. She plays an active role in the Iliad, in which she assists the Achaeans and, in the Odyssey, she is the tutelary deity to Odysseus.
In the later writings of the Roman poet Ovid, Athena was said to have competed against the mortal Arachne in a weaving competition, afterward transforming Arachne into the first spider, and to have transformed Medusa into the Gorgon after witnessing the young woman being raped by Poseidon in the goddess's temple. Ovid also says that Athena saved the mortal maiden Corone from the same god by transforming her into a crow. Since the Renaissance, Athena has become an international symbol of wisdom, the arts, and Classics. Western artists and allegorists have often used Athena as a symbol of freedom and democracy.
In his dialogue Cratylus, the ancient Greek philosopher Plato (428–347 BC) gives some rather imaginative etymologies of Athena's name, based on the theories of the ancient Athenians and his etymological speculations:
Thus, Plato believed that Athena's name was derived from Greek Ἀθεονόα, Atheonóa—which the later Greeks rationalised as from the deity's (θεός, theós) mind (νοῦς, noũs). The second-century AD orator Aelius Aristides attempted to derive natural symbols from the etymological roots of Athena's names to be aether, air, earth, and moon.
A fresco depicts two women extending their hands towards a central figure, who is covered by an enormous figure-eight shield; this may depict the warrior-goddess with her palladium, or her palladium in an aniconic representation. In the "Procession Fresco" at Knossos, which was reconstructed by the Mycenaeans, two rows of figures carrying vessels seem to meet in front of a central figure, which is probably the Minoan precursor to Athena. The early twentieth-century scholar Martin Persson Nilsson argued that the Minoan snake goddess figurines are early representations of Athena.
Nilsson and others have claimed that, in early times, Athena was either an owl herself or a bird goddess in general. In the third book of the Odyssey, she takes the form of a sea-eagle. Proponents of this view argue that she dropped her prophylactic owl mask before she lost her wings. "Athena, by the time she appears in art," Jane Ellen Harrison remarks, "has completely shed her animal form, has reduced the shapes she once wore of snake and bird to attributes, but occasionally in black-figure vase-paintings she still appears with wings."Harrison 1922:306. Cfr. ibid., p. 307, fig. 84: .
It is generally agreed that the cult of Athena preserves some aspects of the Proto-Indo-European transfunctional goddess. The cult of Athena may have also been influenced by those of Near Eastern warrior goddesses such as the East Semitic Ishtar and the Anat, both of whom were often portrayed bearing arms. Classical scholar Charles Penglase notes that Athena resembles Inanna in her role as a "terrifying warrior goddess" and that both goddesses were closely linked with creation. Athena's birth from the head of Zeus may be derived from the earlier myth of Inanna's descent into and return from the Underworld.
Plato notes that the citizens of Sais in Egypt worshipped a goddess known as Neith, whom he identifies with Athena.Cf. also Herodotus, Histories 2:170–175. Neith was the ancient Egyptian goddess of war and hunting, who was also associated with weaving; her worship began during the Egyptian Pre-Dynastic period. In Greek mythology, Athena was reported to have visited mythological sites in North Africa, including Libya's Triton River and the Phlegraean plain. Based on these similarities, the Sinologist Martin Bernal created the "Black Athena" hypothesis, which claimed that Neith was brought to Greece from Egypt, along with "an enormous number of features of civilization and culture in the third and second millennia". The "Black Athena" hypothesis stirred up widespread controversy near the end of the twentieth century, but it has now been widely rejected by modern scholars.
In a similar manner to her patronage of various activities and Greek cities, Athena was thought to be a "protector of heroes" and a "patron of art" and various local traditions related to the arts and handicrafts. (2025). 9780131826229, Pearson Education. ISBN 9780131826229
Athena was known as Atrytone (Άτρυτώνη "the Unwearying"), Parthenos (Παρθένος "Virgin"), and Promachos (Πρόμαχος "she who fights in front"). The epithet Polias (Πολιάς "of the city"), refers to Athena's role as protectress of the city. The epithet Ergane (Εργάνη "the Industrious") pointed her out as the patron of craftsmen and artisans. Burkert notes that the Athenians sometimes simply called Athena "the Goddess", hē theós (ἡ θεός), certainly an ancient title. After serving as the judge at the trial of Orestes in which he was acquitted of having murdered his mother Clytemnestra since he was following Apollo's orders, Athena won the epithet Athena Areia (Αρεία). Some have described Athena, along with the goddesses Hestia and Artemis as being asexual, this is mainly supported by the fact that in the Homeric Hymns, 5, To Aphrodite, where Aphrodite is described as having "no power" over the three goddesses. (2025). 9780140437829, Penguin Books. ISBN 9780140437829
Athena was sometimes given the epithet Hippia (Ἵππια "of the horses", "equestrian"), referring to her invention of the bit, bridle, chariot, and wagon. The Greek geographer Pausanias mentions in his Guide to Greece that the temple of Athena Chalinitis ("the bridler") in Corinth was located near the tomb of Medea's children. Other epithets include Ageleia, Itonia and Aethyia, under which she was worshiped in Megara.Pausanias, i. 5. § 3; 41. § 6. She was worshipped as Assesia in Assesos. The word aíthyia (αἴθυια) signifies a "diver", also some diving bird species (possibly the shearwater) and figuratively, a "ship", so the name must reference Athena teaching the art of shipbuilding or navigation.John Tzetzes, ad Lycophr., l.c.. In a temple at Phrixa in Ancient Elis, reportedly built by Clymenus, she was known as Cydonia (Κυδωνία). Pausanias wrote that at Buporthmus there was a sanctuary of Athena Promachorma (Προμαχόρμα), meaning protector of the anchorage.
The Greek biographer Plutarch describes Pericles's dedication of a statue to her as Athena Hygieia (Ὑγίεια, "Health") after she inspired, in a dream, his successful treatment of a man injured during the construction of the gateway to the Acropolis. Mechanitis (Μηχανῖτις), meaning skilled in inventing, was one of the epithets of her. A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology, Mechaneus
At Athens there is the temple of Athena Phratria, as patron of a phratry, in the Ancient Agora of Athens.
In one version of the myth, Pallas was the daughter of the sea-god Triton, who was childhood friends with Athena. Zeus one day watched Athena and Pallas have a friendly sparring match. Not wanting his daughter to lose, Zeus flapped his aegis to distract Pallas, whom Athena accidentally impaled. Distraught over what she had done, Athena took the name Pallas for herself as a sign of her grief and tribute to her friend and Zeus gave her the aegis as an apology. In another version of the story, Pallas was a Giant; Athena slew him during the Gigantomachy and Flaying his skin to make her cloak, which she wore as a victory trophy. In an alternative variation of the same myth, Pallas was instead Athena's father, who attempted to assault his own daughter, causing Athena to kill him and take his skin as a trophy.
The palladium was a statue of Athena that was said to have stood in her temple on the Trojan Acropolis. Athena was said to have carved the statue herself in the likeness of her dead friend Pallas. The statue had special talisman-like properties and it was thought that, as long as it was in the city, Troy could never fall. When the Greeks captured Troy, Cassandra, the daughter of Priam and Hecuba, clung to the palladium for protection, but Ajax the Lesser violently tore her away from it, dragged her over to the other captives and raped her. Athena was infuriated by this violation of her protection. Although Agamemnon attempted to placate her anger with sacrifices, Athena sent a storm at Cape Kaphereos to destroy almost the entire Greek fleet and scatter all of the surviving ships across the Aegean.
The word glaúx (γλαύξ, "little owl"). is from the same root, presumably according to some, because of the bird's own distinctive eyes. Athena was associated with the owl from very early on; in archaic images, she is frequently depicted with an owl perched on her hand. Through its association with Athena, the owl evolved into the national mascot of the Athenians and eventually became a symbol of wisdom.
Another possible meaning may be "triple-born" or "third-born", which may refer to a triad or to her status as the third daughter of Zeus or the fact she was born from Metis, Zeus, and herself; various legends list her as being the first child after Artemis and Apollo, though other legends identify her as Zeus' first child.Hesiod, Theogony II, 886–900. Several scholars have suggested a connection to the Rigveda god Trita, who was sometimes grouped in a body of three mythological poets. Michael Janda has connected the myth of Trita to the scene in the Iliad in which the "three brothers" Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades divide the world between them, receiving the "broad sky", the sea, and the underworld respectively.Homer, Iliad XV, 187–195. Janda further connects the myth of Athena being born of the head (i. e. the uppermost part) of Zeus, understanding Trito- (which perhaps originally meant "the third") as another word for "the sky". In Janda's analysis of Indo-European mythology, this heavenly sphere is also associated with the mythological body of water surrounding the inhabited world ( cfr. Triton's mother, Amphitrite, queen of Poseidon).
Yet another possible meaning is mentioned in Diogenes Laertius' biography of Democritus, that Athena was called "Tritogeneia" because three things, on which all mortal life depends, come from her.
As Athena Promachos, she was believed to lead soldiers into battle. Athena represented the disciplined, strategic side of war, in contrast to her brother Ares, the patron of violence, bloodlust, and slaughter—"the raw force of war". Athena was believed to only support those fighting for a just cause and was thought to view war primarily as a means to resolve conflict. The Greeks regarded Athena with much higher esteem than Ares. Athena was especially worshipped in this role during the festivals of the Panathenaea and Pamboeotia, both of which prominently featured displays of athletic and military prowess. As the patroness of heroes and warriors, Athena was believed to favor those who used cunning and intelligence rather than brute strength.
In her aspect as a warrior maiden, Athena was known as Athena Parthenos (Παρθένος]] "virgin"), because, like her fellow goddesses Artemis and Hestia, she was believed to remain perpetually a virgin. Athena's most famous temple, the Parthenon on the Athenian Acropolis, takes its name from this title. According to Karl Kerényi, a scholar of Greek mythology, the name Parthenos is not merely an observation of Athena's virginity, but also a recognition of her role as enforcer of rules of sexual modesty and ritual mystery. Even beyond recognition, the Athenians allotted the goddess value based on this pureness of virginity, which they upheld as a rudiment of female behavior. Kerényi's study and theory of Athena explains her virginal epithet as a result of her relationship to her father Zeus and a vital, cohesive piece of her character throughout the ages. This role is expressed in several stories about Athena. Marinus of Neapolis reports that when Christians removed the statue of the goddess from the Parthenon, a beautiful woman appeared in a dream to Proclus, a devotee of Athena, and announced that the "Athenian Lady" wished to dwell with him.
Athena was also credited with creating the pebble-based form of divination. Those pebbles were called Thriae, which was also the collective name of a group of nymphs with prophetic powers. Her half-brother Apollo, however, angered and spiteful at the practitioners of an art rival to his own, complained to their father Zeus about it, with the pretext that many people took to casting pebbles, but few actually were true prophets. Zeus, sympathizing with Apollo's grievances, discredited the pebble divination by rendering the pebbles useless. Apollo's words became the basis of an ancient Greek idiom.
Athena had a major temple on the Spartan Acropolis, where she was venerated as Poliouchos and Khalkíoikos ("of the Brazen House", often as Chalcioecus). This epithet may refer to the fact that cult statue held there may have been made of bronze, that the walls of the temple itself may have been made of bronze, or that Athena was the patron of metal-workers. Bells made of terracotta and bronze were used in Sparta as part of Athena's cult. An Ionic order temple to Athena Polias was built at Priene in the fourth century BC. It was designed by Pytheos of Priene, the same architect who designed the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus. The temple was dedicated by Alexander the Great and an inscription from the temple declaring his dedication is now held in the British Museum. She was worshipped as Athena Asia in Colchis – supposedly on an account of a nearby mountain with that name – from which her worship was believed to have been brought by Castor and Pollux to Laconia, where a temple was built to her at Las.Pausanias, Description of Greece 3.24.5
In Pergamon, Athena was thought to have been a god of the cosmos and the aspects of it that aided Pergamon and its fate.
In the version recounted by Hesiod in his Theogony, Zeus married Metis, who is described as the "wisest among gods and mortal men", and engaged in sexual intercourse with her.Hesiod, Theogony 885–900 , 929e-929t After learning that Metis was pregnant, however, he became afraid that the unborn offspring would try to overthrow him, because Gaia and Ouranos had prophesied that Metis would bear a son wiser and more powerful than his father who would overthrow him. In order to prevent this, Zeus tricked Metis into letting him swallow her, but it was too late because she had already conceived and soon gave birth to their daughter Athena, whom Metis raised inside of his mind, where she continues to give him advice as a ruler. When Athena grew up, Metis forged robes, armor, a shield and a spear for her daughter. A later account of the story from the Bibliotheca of Pseudo-Apollodorus, written in the second century AD, makes Metis Zeus's unwilling sexual partner, rather than his wife.Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 1.3.6 According to this version of the story, Metis transformed into many different shapes in effort to escape Zeus, but Zeus successfully raped her and swallowed her.
After swallowing Metis, according to Hesiod, Zeus took six more wives in succession until he married his seventh and present wife, Hera. Then Zeus experienced an enormous headache. He was in such pain that he ordered someone (either Prometheus, Hephaestus, Hermes, Ares, or Palaemon, depending on the sources examined) to cleave his head open with the labrys, the double-headed Minoan axe. Athena leaped from Zeus's head, often fully grown and armed. The "First Homeric Hymn to Athena" states in lines 9–16 that the gods were awestruck by Athena's appearance and even Helios, the god of the sun, stopped his chariot in the sky. Pindar, in his "Seventh Olympian Ode", states that she "cried aloud with a mighty shout" and that "the Sky and mother Earth shuddered before her".Pindar, " Seventh Olympian Ode " lines 37–38
Hesiod states that Hera was so annoyed at Zeus for having given birth to a child on his own that she conceived and bore Hephaestus by parthenogenesis, but in Imagines 2. 27 (trans. Fairbanks), the third-century AD Greek rhetorician Philostratus the Elder writes that Hera "rejoices" at Athena's birth "as though Athena were her daughter also". The second-century AD Christian apologist Justin Martyr takes issue with those pagans who erect at springs images of Persephone, whom he interprets as Athena: "They said that Athena was the daughter of Zeus not from intercourse, but when the god had in mind the making of a world through a word ( logos) his first thought was Athena."Justin, Apology 64.5, quoted in Robert McQueen Grant, Gods and the One God, vol. 1:155, who observes that it is Porphyry "who similarly identifies Athena with 'forethought'. According to a rare account of the story in a scholium on the Iliad, when Zeus swallowed Metis, she was pregnant with Athena by the Cyclopes Brontes.Gantz, p. 51; Yasumura, p. 89 ; scholia bT to Iliad 8.39. The Etymologicum Magnum instead deems Athena the daughter of the Daktyl Itonus. Fragments attributed by the Christian Eusebius of Caesarea to the semi-legendary historian Sanchuniathon, which Eusebius thought had been written before the Trojan War, make Athena instead the daughter of Cronus, a king of Byblos who visited "the inhabitable world" and bequeathed Attica to Athena.
Athena, born a daughter instead of the son of the prophecy Hesiod described, never successfully overthrew her father Zeus as the ruler of the cosmos; but Homer' Illiad tells of an attempted overthrow, in which she, Hera and Poseidon conspired to overpower Zeus and tie him in bonds. It is only because of the Nereid Thetis, who summoned Briareus, one of the Hecatoncheires, to Mount Olympus, that the other gods abandon their plans (out of fear for Briareus).Gantz, p. 59; Hard 2004, p. 82; Homer, Iliad 1.395–410.
Afterwards, Poseidon was so angry over his defeat that he sent one of his sons, Halirrhothius, to cut down the tree. But as he swung his axe, he missed his aim and it fell in himself, killing him. This was supposedly the origin of calling Athena's sacred olive tree moria, for Halirrhotius's attempt at revenge proved fatal ( moros in Greek). Poseidon in fury accused Ares of murder, and the matter was eventually settled on the Areopagus ("hill of Ares") in favour of Ares, which was thereafter named after the event.Servius On Virgil's Georgics 1.18; scholia on Aristophanes's The Clouds 1005
Pseudo-Apollodorus records an archaic legend, which claims that Hephaestus once attempted to rape Athena, but she pushed him away, causing him to ejaculate on her thigh. Athena wiped the semen off using a tuft of wool, which she tossed into the dust, impregnating Gaia and causing her to give birth to Erichthonius. Athena adopted Erichthonius as her son and raised him. The Fabulae, a work of Roman mythography attributed to Gaius Julius Hyginus, records a similar story in which Hephaestus demanded Zeus to let him marry Athena since he was the one who had smashed open Zeus's skull, allowing Athena to be born. Zeus agreed to this and Hephaestus and Athena were married, but, when Hephaestus was about to consummate the union, Athena vanished from the bridal bed, causing him to ejaculate on the floor, thus impregnating Gaia with Erichthonius.
The geographer Pausanias records that Athena went to place the infant Erichthonius into a small chest ( cista), which she entrusted to the care of the three daughters of Cecrops I: Herse, Pandrosos, and Aglauros of Athens. She warned the three sisters not to open the chest, but did not explain to them why or what was in it. Aglauros, and possibly one of the other sisters, opened the chest. Differing reports say that they either found that the child itself was a serpent, that it was guarded by a serpent, that it was guarded by two serpents, or that it had the legs of a serpent. In Pausanias's story, the two sisters were driven mad by the sight of the chest's contents and hurled themselves off the Acropolis, dying instantly, but an Attic vase painting shows them being chased by the serpent off the edge of the cliff instead. An alternative version of the story is that Athena left the box with the daughters of Cecrops while she went to fetch a limestone mountain from the Pallene peninsula to use in the Acropolis. While she was away, Aglaurus and Herse opened the box. A crow saw them open the box, and flew away to tell Athena, who fell into a rage and dropped the mountain she was carrying which became Mount Lycabettus.
Another version of the myth of the Athenian maidens is told in Metamorphoses by the Roman poet Ovid (43 BC17 AD); in this late variant Hermes falls in love with Herse. Herse, Aglaulus, and Pandrosus go to the temple to offer sacrifices to Athena. Hermes demands help from Aglaulus to seduce Herse. Aglaulus demands money in exchange. Hermes gives her the money the sisters have already offered to Athena. As punishment for Aglaulus's greed, Athena asks the goddess Invidia to make Aglaulus jealous of Herse. When Hermes arrives to seduce Herse, Aglaulus stands in his way instead of helping him as she had agreed. He turns her to stone.Ovid, Metamorphoses, X. Aglaura, Book II, 708–751; XI. The Envy, Book II, 752–832.
Erichthonius was one of the most important founding heroes of Athens and the legend of the daughters of Cecrops was a cult myth linked to the rituals of the Arrhephoria festival. Pausanias records that, during the Arrhephoria, two young girls known as the Arrhephoroi, who lived near the temple of Athena Polias, would be given hidden objects by the priestess of Athena, which they would carry on their heads down a natural underground passage. They would leave the objects they had been given at the bottom of the passage and take another set of hidden objects, which they would carry on their heads back up to the temple. The ritual was performed in the dead of night and no one, not even the priestess, knew what the objects were. The serpent in the story may be the same one depicted coiled at Athena's feet in Pheidias's famous statue of the Athena Parthenos in the Parthenon. Many of the surviving sculptures of Athena show this serpent. Herodotus records that a serpent lived in a crevice on the north side of the summit of the Athenian Acropolis and that the Athenians left a honey cake for it each month as an offering. On the eve of the Second Persian invasion of Greece in 480 BC, the serpent did not eat the honey cake and the Athenians interpreted it as a sign that Athena herself had abandoned them.
Athena gave her favour to an Attic girl named Myrsine, a chaste girl who outdid all her fellow athletes in both the palaestra and the race. Out of envy, the other athletes murdered her, but Athena took pity in her and transformed her dead body into a myrtus, a plant thereafter as favoured by her as the olive was. An almost exact story was said about another girl, Elaea, who transformed into an olive, Athena's sacred tree.
According to Ovid, one day as the mortal maiden Corone was walking by the seashore, Poseidon saw her and attempted to seduce her. When his efforts failed, he attempted to rape her instead. However, Corone fled from his rapacious advances, crying out to men and gods. While no man heard her, "the virgin goddess feels pity for a virgin"; Athena saved her by transforming her into a crow.
After the deaths of their parents, the orphaned Cleothera and Merope were raised by Aphrodite.Homer, Odyssey 20.66-78 The other Olympian goddesses also blessed the girls with gifts and blessings; Hera gave them beauty, Artemis high stature, and Athena taught them women's crafts.Pausanias 10.30.1
According to Pseudo-Apollodorus's Bibliotheca, Athena advised Argos, the builder of the Argo, the ship on which the hero Jason and his band of Argonauts sailed, and aided in the ship's construction.Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 1.9.16 According to Pindar's Thirteenth Olympian Ode, Athena helped the hero Bellerophon tame the winged horse Pegasus by giving him a bit.Pindar, Olympian Ode 13.75–78 In Aeschylus's tragedy Orestes, Athena intervenes to save Orestes from the wrath of the Erinyes and presides over his trial for the murder of his mother Clytemnestra. When half the jury votes to acquit and the other half votes to convict, Athena casts the deciding vote to acquit Orestes and declares that, from then on, whenever a jury is tied, the defendant shall always be acquitted.
Pseudo-Apollodorus also records that Athena guided the hero Perseus in his quest to behead Medusa. She and Hermes, the god of travelers, appeared to Perseus after he set off on his quest and gifted him with tools he would need to kill the Gorgon.Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 2.37, 38, 39 Athena lent Perseus her polished bronze shield to view Medusa's reflection without becoming petrified himself.Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 2.41 Hermes lent Perseus his harpe to behead Medusa with.Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 2.39 When Perseus swung the blade to behead Medusa, Athena guided it, allowing the blade to cut the Gorgon's head clean off.
In ancient Greek art, Athena is frequently shown aiding the hero Heracles. She appears in four of the twelve on the Temple of Zeus at Olympia depicting Heracles's Twelve Labors, including the first, in which she simply watches him slay the Nemean lion after having told him how to use the lion's own claws to skin the pelt, and in the tenth, in which she is shown actively helping him hold up the sky itself. According to Apollodorus, on Athena's advice, Heracles dragged Alcyoneus, one of the two strongest Giants alongside Porphyrion, beyond the borders of his native land, where he was immortal, and then fatally shot him (compare with Antaeus).Antaeus, another offspring of Gaia who was an opponent of Heracles, was immortal as long as he was in contact with the earth. Heracles killed Antaeus by crushing him while holding him off the ground. For Pindar, Hearacles' battle with Alcyoneus (whom he calls a herdsman) and the Gigantomachy were separate events, see: Isthmian 6.30–35, Nemean 4.24–30. She is presented as Heracles' "stern ally", but also the "gentle ... acknowledger of his achievements". Artistic depictions of Heracles's apotheosis show Athena driving him to Mount Olympus in her chariot and presenting him to Zeus for his deification.
In The Odyssey, Odysseus' cunning and shrewd nature quickly wins Athena's favour. For the first part of the poem, however, she largely is confined to aiding him only from afar, mainly by implanting thoughts in his head during his journey home from Troy. Her guiding actions reinforce her role as the "protectress of heroes", or, as mythologian Walter Friedrich Otto dubbed her, the "goddess of nearness", due to her mentoring and motherly probing.W. F. Otto, Die Gotter Griechenlands (55–77). Bonn: F. Cohen, 1929. It is not until he washes up on the shore of the island of the Phaeacians, where Nausicaa is washing her clothes that Athena arrives personally to provide more tangible assistance. She appears in Nausicaa's dreams to ensure that the princess rescues Odysseus and plays a role in his eventual escort to Ithaca. Athena appears to Odysseus upon his arrival, disguised as a herdsman; she initially lies and tells him that Penelope, his wife, has remarried and that he is believed to be dead, but Odysseus lies back to her, employing skillful prevarications to protect himself. Impressed by his resolve and shrewdness, she reveals herself and tells him what he needs to know to win back his kingdom. She disguises him as an elderly beggar so that he will not be recognized by the suitors or Penelope, and helps him to defeat the suitors. Athena also appears to Odysseus's son Telemachus. Her actions lead him to travel around to Odysseus's comrades and ask about his father. He hears stories about some of Odysseus's journey. Athena's push for Telemachus's journey helps him grow into the man role, that his father once held. She also plays a role in ending the resultant feud against the suitors' relatives. She instructs Laertes to throw his spear and to kill Eupeithes, the father of Antinous.
File:Athena Herakles Staatliche Antikensammlungen 2648.jpg|Athena and Heracles on an Attica red-figure kylix, 480–470 BC
File:Kantharos 58.9.jpg|Athena, detail from a silver kantharos with Theseus in Crete ( 440-435 BC), part of the Vassil Bojkov collection, Sofia, Bulgaria
File:Herakleia AR SNGANS 064.jpg|Silver coin showing Athena with Scylla decorated helmet and Heracles fighting the Nemean lion (Heraclea Lucania, 390-340 BC)
File:Orestes Delphi BM GR1917.12-10.1.jpg|Paestan red-figure bell-krater ( 330 BC), showing Orestes at Delphi flanked by Athena and Pylades among the Erinyes and priestesses of Apollo, with the Pythia sitting behind them on her tripod
Myrmex was a clever and chaste Attic girl who became quickly a favourite of Athena. However, when Athena invented the plough, Myrmex went to the Atticans and told them that it was in fact her own invention. Hurt by the girl's betrayal, Athena transformed her into the small insect bearing her name, the ant.Servius, Commentary on Virgil's Aeneid 4.402 ; Smith 1873, s.v. Myrmex from the fourth century BC]]
The Gorgoneion appears to have originated as an Apotropaic magic symbol intended to ward off evil. In a late Roman myth invented to explain the origins of the Gorgon, Medusa is described as having been raped by Poseidon in the temple of Athena. Upon discovering the desecration of her temple, Athena transformed Medusa into a hideous monster with serpents for hair whose gaze would turn any mortal to stone.
In his Twelfth Pythian Ode, Pindar recounts the story of how Athena invented the aulos, a kind of flute, in imitation of the lamentations of Medusa's sisters, the Gorgons, after she was beheaded by the hero Perseus. According to Pindar, Athena gave the aulos to mortals as a gift. Later, the comic playwright Melanippides ( 480–430 BC) embellished the story in his comedy Marsyas, claiming that Athena looked in the mirror while she was playing the aulos and saw how blowing into it puffed up her cheeks and made her look silly, so she threw the aulos away and cursed it so that whoever picked it up would meet an awful death. The aulos was picked up by the satyr Marsyas, who was later killed by Apollo for his hubris. Later, this version of the story became accepted as canonical and the Athenian sculptor Myron created a group of bronze sculptures based on it, which was installed before the western front of the Parthenon in around 440 BC.
The fable of Arachne appears in the Roman poet Ovid's Metamorphoses (8 AD) (vi.5–54 and 129–145), which is nearly the only extant source for the legend. The story does not appear to have been well known prior to Ovid's rendition of it and the only earlier reference to it is a brief allusion in Virgil's Georgics, (29 BC) (iv, 246) that does not mention Arachne by name. According to Ovid, Arachne (whose name means spider in ancient Greek, .) was the daughter of a famous dyer in Tyrian purple in Hypaipa of Lydia, and a weaving student of Athena. She became so conceited of her skill as a weaver that she began claiming that her skill was greater than that of Athena herself and that she didn't feel grateful to the goddess for anything, despite Athena invented weaving. Athena gave Arachne a chance to redeem herself by assuming the form of an old woman and warning Arachne not to offend the deities. Arachne scoffed and wished for a weaving contest, so she could prove her skill. Athena revelead her true form, accepted and wove the scene of her victory over Poseidon in the contest for the patronage of Athens. Her tapestry also depicted the 12 Olympian gods and defeat of mythological figures who challenged their authority. Arachne's tapestry featured twenty-one episodes of the deities' sexual affairs, including Zeus being unfaithful with Leda, with Europa, and with Danaë. It represented the unjust and discrediting behavior of the gods towards mortals. Athena admitted that Arachne's work was flawless, but was outraged at Arachne's choice of subject. Finally, losing her temper, Athena destroyed Arachne's tapestry and loom, striking it with her shuttle. Athena then struck Arachne across the face with her staff four times. Arachne hanged herself in despair, but Athena took pity on her and brought her back from the dead in the form of a spider.
In a rarer version, surviving in the scholia of an unnamed scholiast on Nicander, whose works heavily influenced Ovid, Arachne is placed in Attica instead and has a brother named Phalanx. Athena taught Arachne the art of weaving and Phalanx the art of war, but when brother and sister laid together in bed, Athena was so disgusted with them that she turned them both into spiders, animals forever doomed to be eaten by their own young.Patricia B. Salzman-Mitchell (2025). 9780814209998, Ohio State University Press. . ISBN 9780814209998
According to Book VIII (236–59) of Ovid's Metamorphoses, Daedalus was so proud of his achievements as an inventor that he could not bear the idea of a rival. His sister had placed her son Perdix under his charge to be taught the mechanical arts. While walking on the seashore, he picked up the spine of a fish or a serpent's jaw. Imitating it, he took a piece of iron and notched it on the edge, thus inventing the saw. Daedalus was so envious of his nephew's accomplishments that he took an opportunity, when they were together one day on the top of a high tower, to push him off, but Athena, who favors ingenuity, saw him falling and saved his life by changing him into a bird called after his name, the perdix (partridge). This bird does not build its nest in the trees, nor take lofty flights, but nestles in the , and mindful of his fall, avoids high places. For this crime, Daedalus was tried and banished. In some accounts, she leaves Daedalus with a scar in the shape of a partridge, to always remind him of his crime.
In Books V–VI of the Iliad, Athena aids the hero Diomedes, who, in the absence of Achilles, proves himself to be the most effective Greek warrior. Several artistic representations from the early sixth century BC may show Athena and Diomedes, including an early sixth-century BC shield band depicting Athena and an unidentified warrior riding on a chariot, a vase painting of a warrior with his charioteer facing Athena, and an inscribed clay plaque showing Diomedes and Athena riding in a chariot. Numerous passages in the Iliad also mention Athena having previously served as the patron of Diomedes's father Tydeus. Iliad 4.390 , 5.115–120 , 10.284-94 When the Trojans go to her temple on the Acropolis to plead her for protection from Diomedes, Athena ignores them. Later, when Zeus allows the gods to fight, Ares, who sided with the Trojans, attacks Athena, but she overpowers him by striking him with a boulder. Iliad 15.110–128, 20.20–29, 21.391–408.
In Book XXII of the Iliad, while Achilles is chasing Hector around the walls of Troy, Athena appears to Hector disguised as his brother Deiphobus and persuades him to hold his ground so that they can fight Achilles together. Then, Hector throws his spear at Achilles and misses, expecting Deiphobus to hand him another, but Athena disappears instead, leaving Hector to face Achilles alone without his spear. In Sophocles's tragedy Ajax, she punishes Odysseus's rival Ajax the Great, driving him insane and causing him to massacre the Achaeans' cattle, thinking that he is slaughtering the Achaeans themselves. Even after Odysseus himself expresses pity for Ajax, Athena declares, "To laugh at your enemies – what sweeter laughter can there be than that?" (lines 78–9). Ajax later commits suicide as a result of his humiliation.
The Mourning Athena or Athena Meditating is a famous relief sculpture dating to around 470–460 BC that has been interpreted to represent Athena Polias. The most famous classical depiction of Athena was the Athena Parthenos, a now-lost Chryselephantine statue of her in the Parthenon created by the Athenian sculptor Phidias. Copies reveal that this statue depicted Athena holding her shield in her left hand with Nike, the winged goddess of victory, standing in her right. Athena Polias is also represented in a Neo-Attic relief now held in the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, which depicts her holding an owl in her hand and wearing her characteristic Corinthian helmet while resting her shield against a nearby herma. The Roman goddess Minerva adopted most of Athena's Greek iconographical associations, but was also integrated into the Capitoline Triad.
During the Renaissance, Athena donned the mantle of patron of the arts and human endeavor; allegorical paintings involving Athena were a favorite of the Italian Renaissance painters. In Sandro Botticelli's painting Pallas and the Centaur, probably painted sometime in the 1480s, Athena is the personification of chastity, who is shown grasping the forelock of a centaur, who represents lust. Andrea Mantegna's 1502 painting Minerva Expelling the Vices from the Garden of Virtue uses Athena as the personification of Graeco-Roman learning chasing the vices of medievalism from the garden of modern scholarship. Athena is also used as the personification of wisdom in Bartholomeus Spranger's 1591 painting The Triumph of Wisdom or Minerva Victorious over Ignorance.
During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Athena was used as a symbol for female rulers. In his book A Revelation of the True Minerva (1582), Thomas Blennerhassett portrays Queen Elizabeth I of England as a "new Minerva" and "the greatest goddesse nowe on earth". A series of paintings by Peter Paul Rubens depict Athena as Marie de' Medici's patron and mentor; the final painting in the series goes even further and shows Marie de' Medici with Athena's iconography, as the mortal incarnation of the goddess herself. The Flemish sculptor Jean-Pierre-Antoine Tassaert (Jan Peter Anton Tassaert) later portrayed Catherine II of Russia as Athena in a marble bust in 1774. During the French Revolution, statues of pagan gods were torn down all throughout France, but statues of Athena were not. Instead, Athena was transformed into the personification of freedom and the republic and a statue of the goddess stood in the center of the Place de la Revolution in Paris. In the years following the Revolution, artistic representations of Athena proliferated.
A statue of Athena stands directly in front of the Austrian Parliament Building in Vienna, and depictions of Athena have influenced other symbols of Western freedom, including the Statue of Liberty and Britannia. For over a century, a full-scale replica of the Parthenon has stood in Nashville, Tennessee. In 1990, the curators added a gilded forty-two-foot (12.5 m) tall replica of Phidias's Athena Parthenos, built from concrete and fiberglass. The Great Seal of California bears the image of Athena kneeling next to a brown grizzly bear. Athena has occasionally appeared on modern coins, as she did on the ancient Athenian Ancient drachma. Her head appears on the $50 1915-S Panama-Pacific commemorative coin.
Athena is a natural patron of universities: At Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania, a statue of Athena (a replica of the original bronze one in the arts and archaeology library) resides in the Great Hall. It is traditional at exam time for students to leave offerings to the goddess with a note asking for good luck, or to repent for accidentally breaking any of the college's numerous other traditions. Pallas Athena is the tutelary goddess of the international social fraternity Phi Delta Theta. Her owl is also a symbol of the fraternity.
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