[5] Testimonies from different cities in ancient Greece attest that similar city goddesses were worshipped in other cities[6] and, like Athena, took their names from the cities where they were worshipped. 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. "[157] Artistic depictions of Heracles's apotheosis show Athena driving him to Mount Olympus in her chariot and presenting him to Zeus for his deification. Athena, also spelled Athene, in Greek religion, the city protectress, goddess of war, handicraft, and practical reason, identified by the Romans with Minerva. 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. [57], Athena was also credited with creating the pebble-based form of divination. [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. [11][12], Nilsson and others have claimed that, in early times, Athena was either an owl herself or a bird goddess in general. She is also associated with the olive tree and owl because of her wisdom. A virgin, she had no children of her own but occasionally befriended or adopted others. [237] It is traditional at exam time for students to leave offerings to the goddess with a note asking for good luck,[237] or to repent for accidentally breaking any of the college's numerous other traditions. She instructs Laertes to throw his spear and to kill Eupeithes, the father of Antinous. Athena appears in Homer's Odyssey as the tutelary deity of Odysseus, and myths from later sources portray her similarly as the helper of Perseus and Heracles (Hercules). [101] Then Zeus experienced an enormous headache. [117], Athena also gets into a duel with Ares, the god of the brutal wars, and her male counterpart [203] Ares blames her for encouraging Diomedes to tear his beautiful flesh. [134][180][181] Chariclo intervened on her son's behalf and begged Athena to have mercy. [218], During the Renaissance, Athena donned the mantle of patron of the arts and human endeavor;[219] allegorical paintings involving Athena were a favorite of the Italian Renaissance painters. [6] A vestige of that appears in a portrait of Alexander the Great in a fresco from Pompeii dated to the first century BC, which shows the image of the head of a woman on his armor that resembles the Gorgon. [6] For example, in Mycenae there was a goddess called Mykene, whose sisterhood was known as Mykenai,[6] whereas at Thebes an analogous deity was called Thebe, and the city was known under the plural form Thebai (or Thebes, in English, where the 's' is the plural formation). [196] She was annoyed at this, so she arrived with a golden apple inscribed with the word (kallisti, "for the fairest"), which she threw among the goddesses. 13).[2]. [46] The various cults of Athena were all branches of her panhellenic cult[46] and often proctored various initiation rites of Grecian youth, such as the passage into citizenship by young men or the passage of young women into marriage. [5] The Parthenon on the Acropolis of Athens is dedicated to her. [6][tone] "Aegis-bearing Zeus", as he is in the Iliad, sometimes lends the fearsome aegis to Athena. The handicrafts she is most known. [178] The aulos was picked up by the satyr Marsyas, who was later killed by Apollo for his hubris. [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. [148][151] When Perseus swung his blade to behead Medusa, Athena guided it, allowing his scythe to cut it clean off. with 5 letters was last seen on the January 22, 2023. Medusa is a great representation of a tragic character and she's the most tragic Greek Mythology character of them all. [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. She was also worshipped in many other cities, notably in Sparta. [131][132], Pseudo-Apollodorus[113] 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. [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. 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 patron goddess of heroic endeavor; she was believed to have aided the heroes Perseus, Heracles, Bellerophon, and Jason. From her origin as an Aegean palace goddess, Athena was closely associated with the city. [53][129] Robert Graves was of the opinion that "Poseidon's attempts to take possession of certain cities are political myths",[128] which reflect the conflict between matriarchal and patriarchal religions. [176] Poseidon lusted after Medusa, and raped her in the temple of Athena,[176] refusing to allow her vow of chastity to stand in his way. [citation needed] Athena deflects his blow with her aegis, a powerful shield that even Zeus's thunderbolt and lightning cannot blast through. [127] Athena offered the first domesticated olive tree. [47][48] Athena was especially worshipped in this role during the festivals of the Panathenaea and Pamboeotia,[49] both of which prominently featured displays of athletic and military prowess. [148][150] Hermes gave him an adamantine scythe to cut off Medusa's head. [210][208] 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. [citation needed] Athena picked up a massive boulder and threw it at Ares, who immediately crumpled to the ground. 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. [211][7][209] Her shield bears at its centre the aegis with the head of the gorgon (gorgoneion) in the center and snakes around the edge. [229] 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. Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree. She may not have been described as a virgin originally, but virginity was attributed to her very early and was the basis for the interpretation of her epithets Pallas and Parthenos. [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. Those pebbles were called thriai, which was also the collective name of a group of nymphs with prophetic powers. As the patron of craft and weaving, Athena was known as Ergane. In the Iliad she fought alongside the Greek heroes, and she represented the virtues of justice and skill in warfare as opposed to the blood lust of Ares. [207], Athena appears frequently in classical Greek art, including on coins and in paintings on ceramics. [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. [189][190] Athena gave Arachne a chance to redeem herself by assuming the form of an old woman and warning Arachne not to offend the deities. "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. [186][187] The story does not appear to have been well known prior to Ovid's rendition of it[186] 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. In some pottery it appears as a tasselled cover over Athena's dress. Also known as Pallas Athena, she wore a breastplate made out of goatskin called the Aegis, which was given to her by her father, Zeus. Rank. Athena is associated with courage and braveness. 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. In the version recounted by Hesiod in his Theogony, Zeus married the goddess Metis, who is described as the "wisest among gods and mortal men", and engaged in sexual intercourse with her. The Twelve Olympians in Greek mythology are the most respected major deities of the Greek pantheon. Athena, the patron goddess of the city of Athens, is associated with over a dozen sacred symbols from which she derived her powers. In some versions of the story, Athena has no mother and is born from Zeus' forehead by parthenogenesis. Most of these in their explanations of the poet, assert that he meant by Athena "mind" [, nos] and "intelligence" [, dinoia], and the maker of names appears to have had a singular notion about her; and indeed calls her by a still higher title, "divine intelligence" [ , theo nsis], as though he would say: This is she who has the mind of God [ , a theona]. [59] In Arcadia, she was assimilated with the ancient goddess Alea and worshiped as Athena Alea. Athenas association with the acropolises of various Greek cities probably stemmed from the location of the kings palaces there. 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. 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. Athena was associated with the owl from very early on;[81] in archaic images, she is frequently depicted with an owl perched on her hand. [231], Pallas and the Centaur (c. 1482) by Sandro Botticelli, Minerva Expelling the Vices from the Garden of Virtue (1502) by Andrea Mantegna[222][221][223], Athena Scorning the Advances of Hephaestus (c. 15551560) by Paris Bordone, Minerva Victorious over Ignorance (c. 1591) by Bartholomeus Spranger, Maria de Medici (1622) by Peter Paul Rubens, showing her as the incarnation of Athena[226], Minerva Protecting Peace from Mars (1629) by Peter Paul Rubens, Minerva Revealing Ithaca to Ulysses (fifteenth century) by Giuseppe Bottani, Minerva and the Triumph of Jupiter (1706) by Ren-Antoine Houasse, The Combat of Mars and Minerva (1771) by Joseph-Benot Suve, Minerva Fighting Mars (1771) by Jacques-Louis David, Minerva of Peace mosaic in the Library of Congress, One of Sigmund Freud's most treasured possessions was a small, bronze sculpture of Athena, which sat on his desk. However, Zeus is normally portrayed in classical sculpture holding a thunderbolt or lightning, bearing neither a shield nor a breastplate. [161][146][162] 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. Her birth and her contest with Poseidon, the sea god, for the suzerainty of the city were depicted on the pediments of the Parthenon, and the great festival of the Panathenaea, in July, was a celebration of her birthday. Owls were widely associated with Athena's blessing, and Greek soldiers viewed the sight of owls before a battle as a symbol that . In Greek mythology, Athena was the goddess of wisdom, courage, inspiration, civilization, law and justice, strategic warfare, mathematics, strength, strategy, the arts, crafts, and skill. [81] Through its association with Athena, the owl evolved into the national mascot of the Athenians and eventually became a symbol of wisdom.[4]. Goddess of wisdom and war in ancient Greek religion and mythology, Several terms redirect here. [197][134], The goddesses chose to place the matter before Zeus, who, not wanting to favor one of the goddesses, put the choice into the hands of Paris, a Trojan prince. [205] 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. Watch on. [195] Only Eris, goddess of discord, was not invited. [208] In classical depictions, Athena is usually portrayed standing upright, wearing a full-length chiton. Symbology. [191][190][192], 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. [158] When half the jury votes to acquit and the other half votes to convict, Athena casts the deciding vote to acquit Orestes[158] and declares that, from then on, whenever a jury is tied, the defendant shall always be acquitted.[159]. [6] The name Athenai is likely of Pre-Greek origin because it contains the presumably Pre-Greek morpheme *-n-.[8].

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