[56] Kernyi'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. [130] On the eve of the Second Persian invasion of Greece in 480 BC, the serpent did not eat the honey cake[130] and the Athenians interpreted it as a sign that Athena herself had abandoned them. Out of envy, the other athletes murdered her, but Athena took pity in her and transformed her dead body into a myrtle, a plant thereafter as favoured by her as the olive was. [238] Her owl is also a symbol of the fraternity.[238]. In this context, Graves identifies the aegis as clearly belonging first to Athena. Athena, or Athene, In ancient Greek religion, the goddess of war, handicraft, and wisdom and the patroness of Athens.Her Roman counterpart was Minerva. Two Athenians, the sculptor Phidias and the playwright Aeschylus, contributed significantly to the cultural dissemination of Athenas image. 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; Ovid also describes how she transformed Medusa into a Gorgon after witnessing her being raped by Poseidon in her temple. [199][134], In Books VVI of the Iliad, Athena aids the hero Diomedes, who, in the absence of Achilles, proves himself to be the most effective Greek warrior. with 5 letters was last seen on the January 22, 2023. [118] On this topic, Walter Burkert says "she is the Pallas of Athens, Pallas Athenaie, just as Hera of Argos is Here Argeie. [56] According to Karl Kernyi, 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. The transition to the meaning "shield" or "goatskin" may have come by folk etymology among a people familiar with draping an animal skin over the left arm as a shield. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. [103][104] According to this version of the story, Metis transformed into many different shapes in effort to escape Zeus,[103][104] but Zeus successfully raped her and swallowed her. A virgin deity, she was also - somewhat paradoxically - associated with peace and handicrafts, especially spinning and weaving. [5] The Parthenon on the Acropolis of Athens is dedicated to her. "goatskin coat", from treating the word as meaning "something grammatically feminine pertaining to, This page was last edited on 12 February 2023, at 07:42. 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. Athena was the patron goddess of heroic endeavor; she was believed to have aided the heroes Perseus, Heracles, Bellerophon, and Jason. However, Athena did have a relationship with the hero and hunter, Hercules, which resulted in the birth of their son, named Perses. [133] Zeus agreed to this and Hephaestus and Athena were married,[133] 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. [90], She was the daughter of Zeus, produced without a mother, and emerged full-grown from his forehead. I believe you, I hear you, and I care . The most renowned sculpture of Athena, the gold and ivory Athena Parthenos that once stood in the Parthenon, included two gorgoneia: one on her aegis and one on her shield. [125] When the Greeks captured Troy, Cassandra, the daughter of Priam, clung to the palladium for protection,[125] but Ajax the Lesser violently tore her away from it and dragged her over to the other captives. Full of contradictions, Athena was a female deity overseeing traditionally male domains. [103][104], After swallowing Metis, Zeus took six more wives in succession until he married his seventh and present wife, Hera. 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. Athena was the goddess of battle strategy, and wisdom. Athena is One of the Twelve Olympians. Her head appears on the $50 1915-S Panama-Pacific commemorative coin. Athena was probably a pre-Hellenic goddess and was later taken over by the Greeks. John Tzetzes says[10] that aegis was the skin of the monstrous giant Pallas whom Athena overcame and whose name she attached to her own. Athena placed on her aegis a symbolic representation of the severed head of the Gorgon Medusa. From her origin as an Aegean palace goddess, Athena was closely associated with the city. [217] During the Middle Ages, Athena became widely used as a Christian symbol and allegory, and she appeared on the family crests of certain noble houses. [76] The word is a combination of glauks (, meaning "gleaming, silvery", and later, "bluish-green" or "gray")[77] and ps (, "eye, face"). There was an alternate story that Zeus swallowed Metis, the goddess of counsel, while she was pregnant with Athena and when she was fully grown she emerged from Zeus' forehead. [211] The Roman goddess Minerva adopted most of Athena's Greek iconographical associations,[213] but was also integrated into the Capitoline Triad. [57], Athena was also credited with creating the pebble-based form of divination. Athena, also known as Pallas Athena or the Virgin Athena, is the goddess of wisdom, courage, inspiration, civilization, law and justice, strategic warfare, mathematics, strength, strategy, the arts, crafts, and skill in ancient Greek mythology. [211] The most famous classical depiction of Athena was the Athena Parthenos, a now-lost 11.5m (38ft)[212] gold and ivory statue of her in the Parthenon created by the Athenian sculptor Phidias. [126], In Homer's Iliad, Athena, as a war goddess, inspired and fought alongside the Greek heroes; her aid was synonymous with military prowess. For other uses, see, Goddess of wisdom, warfare, and handicraft, Cult statue of Athena with the face of the Carpegna type (late 1st century BC to early 1st century AD), from the Piazza dell'Emporio, Rome, Bust of the Velletri Pallas type, copy after a votive statue of Kresilas in Athens (, In other traditions, Athena's father is sometimes listed as Zeus by himself or, "The citizens have a deity for their foundress; she is called in the Egyptian tongue Neith and is asserted by them to be the same whom the Hellenes call Athena; they are great lovers of the Athenians, and say that they are in some way related to them." . [68][69] The word athyia () 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. [139] The ritual was performed in the dead of night[139] and no one, not even the priestess, knew what the objects were. After Zeus swallowed his wife, who was heavily pregnant with Athena at the time, Athena was born by springing out of Zeus' head, fully grown . She was widely worshipped, but in modern times she is associated primarily with Athens, to which she gave her name. [183][182][134], Myrmex was a clever and chaste Attic girl who became quickly a favourite of Athena. Many of these scenes are symbolic, representing Athenian triumph over Persia. Western artists and allegorists have often used Athena as a symbol of freedom and democracy. Athena. [45][46] 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". Medusa and Perseus In the principle myth, Medusa is killed by the Greek hero Perseus, the son of Danae and Zeus. [220][221] 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. Similarly, in the Greek mythology and epic tradition, Athena figures as a daughter of Zeus ( ; cfr. [191][190][192] Finally, losing her temper, Athena destroyed Arachne's tapestry and loom, striking it with her shuttle. [134][181][182] Athena replied that she could not restore Tiresias's eyesight,[134][181][182] so, instead, she gave him the ability to understand the language of the birds and thus foretell the future. The best known image of Athena's owl, the Little Owl, is seen on ancient Athenian coins dating from the fifth century BCE. Athena[b] or Athene,[c] often given the epithet Pallas,[d] is an ancient Greek goddess associated with wisdom, warfare, and handicraft[1] who was later syncretized with the Roman goddess Minerva. [134][180][181] Chariclo intervened on her son's behalf and begged Athena to have mercy. [125] Athena was said to have carved the statue herself in the likeness of her dead friend Pallas. [134][179] Chariclo's son Tiresias happened to be hunting on the same mountain and came to the spring searching for water. [106][12][121][122] In an alternative variation of the same myth, Pallas was instead Athena's father,[106][12] who attempted to assault his own daughter,[123] causing Athena to kill him and take his skin as a trophy. READ NEXT: The aegis (/ids/ EE-jis;[1] Ancient Greek: aigs), as stated in the Iliad, is a device carried by Athena and Zeus, variously interpreted as an animal skin or a shield and sometimes featuring the head of a Gorgon. [139] 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. Yet the Greek economy, unlike that of the Minoans, was largely military, so that Athena, while retaining her earlier domestic functions, became a goddess of war. Essentially urban and civilized, Athena was probably a pre-Hellenic goddess later taken over by the Greeks. [237] Pallas Athena is the tutelary goddess of the international social fraternity Phi Delta Theta. [199] Paris selected Aphrodite and awarded her the apple. [56] Even beyond recognition, the Athenians allotted the goddess value based on this pureness of virginity, which they upheld as a rudiment of female behavior. Watch on. The aegis appears in works of art sometimes as an animal's skin thrown over Athena's shoulders and arms, occasionally with a border of snakes, usually also bearing the Gorgon head, the gorgoneion. [29] Athena's birth from the head of Zeus may be derived from the earlier Sumerian myth of Inanna's descent into and return from the Underworld. [156] 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. Virgil imagines the Cyclopes in Hephaestus' forge, who "busily burnished the aegis Athena wears in her angry moodsa fearsome thing with a surface of gold like scaly snake-skin, and the linked serpents and the Gorgon herself upon the goddess's breasta severed head rolling its eyes",[5] furnished with golden tassels and bearing the Gorgoneion (Medusa's head) in the central boss. In 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 every city and village in ancient Greece Athena, the goddess of war and wisdom, was one of the most venerated beings in the entire pantheon. Athena's Introduction Athena is the Greek goddess of wisdom and war. [67] Other epithets include Ageleia, Itonia and Aethyia, under which she was worshiped in Megara. In his dialogue Cratylus, the ancient Greek philosopher Plato (428347 BC) gives some rather imaginative etymologies of Athena's name, based on the theories of the ancient Athenians and his etymological speculations: That is a graver matter, and there, my friend, the modern interpreters of Homer may, I think, assist in explaining the view of the ancients. Athena was the ancient Greek goddess of wisdom and good counsel, war, the defence of towns, heroic endeavour, weaving, pottery and various other crafts. Athena appears in Homers Odyssey as the tutelary deity of Odysseus, and myths from later sources portray her similarly as helper of Perseus and Heracles (Hercules). Athena, goddess of wisdom Though Hercules had an enemy, Hera, on Mount Olympus, he also had a friend. "[233] In contemporary Wicca, Athena is venerated as an aspect of the Goddess[234] and some Wiccans believe that she may bestow the "Owl Gift" ("the ability to write and communicate clearly") upon her worshippers. The word aegis is identified with protection by a strong force with its roots in Greek mythology and adopted by the Romans; there are parallels in Norse mythology and in Egyptian mythology as well,[citation needed] where the Greek word aegis is applied by extension. She was the patron goddess of Athens, defended many beloved heroes, and even fought alongside the Greeks in the Trojan War. [114] Fragments attributed by the Christian Eusebius of Caesarea to the semi-legendary Phoenician 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. [112] The Etymologicum Magnum[113] instead deems Athena the daughter of the Daktyl Itonos. Also in the Iliad, Zeus, the chief god, specifically assigned the sphere of war to Ares, the god of war, and Athena. She was known as Athena Parthenos "Athena the Virgin," but in one archaic Attic myth, the god Hephaestus tried and failed to rape her, resulting in Gaia giving birth to Erichthonius, an important Athenian founding hero. [208][7][209] Scenes in which Athena was represented include her birth from the head of Zeus, her battle with the Gigantes, the birth of Erichthonius, and the Judgement of Paris. Pallas Athena was the virgin goddess of war, wisdom, crafts, and the patron deity of the great city of Athens. [208] Athena Polias is also represented in a Neo-Attic relief now held in the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts,[211] which depicts her holding an owl in her hand[i] and wearing her characteristic Corinthian helmet while resting her shield against a nearby herma. Herse, Aglaulus, and Pandrosus go to the temple to offer sacrifices to Athena. Athena is a goddess in Greek mythology and one of the Twelve Olympians. [144][145] Pseudo-Apollodorus also records that Athena guided the hero Perseus in his quest to behead Medusa. It's been a long time since I wrote a Greek mythology article. In some pottery it appears as a tasselled cover over Athena's dress. Zeus, sympathizing with Apollo's grievances, discredited the pebble divination by rendering the pebbles useless. [130] 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. Her main festival in Athens was the Panathenaia, which was celebrated during the month of Hekatombaion in midsummer and was the most important festival on the Athenian calendar. She is most famous for being the patron god of the city of Athens. [200][145] Several artistic representations from the early sixth century BC may show Athena and Diomedes,[200] 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. Below are all possible answers to this clue ordered by its rank. [41] The festival lasted for five days. [178] According to Pindar, Athena gave the aulos to mortals as a gift. [46] The epithet Ergane ( "the Industrious") pointed her out as the patron of craftsmen and artisans. [75], In Homer's epic works, Athena's most common epithet is Glaukopis (), which usually is translated as, "bright-eyed" or "with gleaming eyes". [citation needed] Aphrodite, who was a lover of Ares, came down from Olympus to carry Ares away but was struck by Athena's golden spear and fell. Athena and Heracles on an Attic red-figure kylix, 480470 BC, Athena, detail from a silver kantharos with Theseus in Crete (c. 440-435 BC), part of the Vassil Bojkov collection, Sofia, Bulgaria, Silver coin showing Athena with Scylla decorated helmet and Heracles fighting the Nemean lion (Heraclea Lucania, 390-340 BC), Paestan red-figure bell-krater (c. 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, The Gorgoneion appears to have originated as an apotropaic symbol intended to ward off evil. [210] She is most often represented dressed in armor like a male soldier[209][210][7] and wearing a Corinthian helmet raised high atop her forehead. Athena was often depicted with an owl, which was considered a symbol of wisdom in both cultures. [81] Through its association with Athena, the owl evolved into the national mascot of the Athenians and eventually became a symbol of wisdom.[4]. [82] It could mean various things, including "Triton-born", perhaps indicating that the homonymous sea-deity was her parent according to some early myths. "to quickly move, to shoot, dart, to put in motion": Part I, section I (Warner Books' United States Paperback Edition), https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Aegis&oldid=1138900742, Articles containing Ancient Greek (to 1453)-language text, Wikipedia articles incorporating a citation from the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica with Wikisource reference, Wikipedia articles incorporating text from the 1911 Encyclopdia Britannica, Articles with unsourced statements from December 2016, Wikipedia articles with style issues from January 2022, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0. [207], Athena appears frequently in classical Greek art, including on coins and in paintings on ceramics. Gterbock,[12] was a source of the aegis.[13]. She inspired three of Phidiass sculptural masterpieces, including the massive chryselephantine (gold and ivory) statue of Athena Parthenos once housed in the Parthenon; and in Aeschyluss dramatic tragedy Eumenides she founded the Areopagus (Athenss aristocratic council), and, by breaking a deadlock of the judges in favour of Orestes, the defendant, she set the precedent that a tied vote signified acquittal. Classical Greece interpreted the Homeric aegis usually as a cover of some kind borne by Athena. Hurt by the girl's betrayal, Athena transformed her into the small insect bearing her name, the ant. [46] 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. [133], The geographer Pausanias[113] records that Athena placed the infant Erichthonius into a small chest[135] (cista), which she entrusted to the care of the three daughters of Cecrops: Herse, Pandrosos, and Aglauros of Athens. [199][134] The other two goddesses were enraged and, as a direct result, sided with the Greeks in the Trojan War. [71] Pausanias wrote that at Buporthmus there was a sanctuary of Athena Promachorma (), meaning protector of the anchorage. There was an alternative story that Zeus swallowed Metis, the goddess of counsel, while she was pregnant with Athena, so that Athena finally emerged from Zeus. As a war goddess Athena could not be dominated by other goddesses, such as Aphrodite, and as a palace goddess she could not be violated. No, Athena did not have any known romantic partners or consorts. [234] Due to her status as one of the twelve Olympians, Athena is a major deity in Hellenismos,[235] a Neopagan religion which seeks to authentically revive and recreate the religion of ancient Greece in the modern world. [23] The early twentieth-century scholar Martin Persson Nilsson argued that the Minoan snake goddess figurines are early representations of Athena. Photograph by Maria Daniels, courtesy of the Dewing Greek Numismatic Foundation She was widely worshipped, but in modern times she is associated primarily with Athens, to which she gave her name and protection. [230] Athena has occasionally appeared on modern coins, as she did on the ancient Athenian drachma. Her materialistic symbols include her spear, the distaff and a goatskin shield called the aegis. [5][7] The name of the city in ancient Greek is (Athnai), a plural toponym, designating the place whereaccording to mythshe presided over the Athenai, a sisterhood devoted to her worship. riley mannion robert irwin,

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