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Athena: For The Capital City of Greece, See - Several Terms Redirect Here. For Other Uses, See, ,, and
Athena: For The Capital City of Greece, See - Several Terms Redirect Here. For Other Uses, See, ,, and
Athena
Mattei Athena at Louvre. Roman copy from the 1st century BC/AD
or Euphranor.
chariot, distaff
Tree Olive
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Athena[b] or Athene,[c] often given the epithet Pallas,[d] is an ancient Greek
goddess associated with wisdom, warfare, and handicraft[3] who was
later syncretized with the Roman goddess Minerva.[4] 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.[5] 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 palace goddess, 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 Hekatombaion 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 some versions of the story, Athena has no mother and is born from Zeus'
forehead by parthenogenesis. 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 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", 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. Athena 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 beginning of
the Trojan War.
She plays an active role in the Iliad, in which she assists the Achaeans and, in
the Odyssey, she is the divine counselor 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; Ovid also describes
how Athena transformed her priestess Medusa and the latter's
sisters, Stheno and Euryale, into the Gorgons after witnessing the young woman being
raped by Poseidon in the goddess's temple. Since the Renaissance, Athena has
become an international symbol of wisdom, the arts, and classical learning. Western
artists and allegorists have often used Athena as a symbol of freedom and democracy.
Etymology
Athena is associated with the city of Athens.[5][7] The name of the city in ancient Greek
is Ἀθῆναι (Athȇnai), a plural toponym, designating the place where—according to myth
—she presided over the Athenai, a sisterhood devoted to her worship.[6] In ancient times,
scholars argued whether Athena was named after Athens or Athens after Athena.[5] Now
scholars generally agree that the goddess takes her name from the city;[5][7] the ending -
ene is common in names of locations, but rare for personal names.[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.[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).[6] The name Athenai is likely of Pre-Greek origin
because it contains the presumably Pre-Greek morpheme *-ān-.[8]
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:
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. Most of these in their explanations of
the poet, assert that he meant by Athena "mind" [νοῦς, noũs] and "intelligence"
[διάνοια, diánoia], 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" [θεοῦ νόησις, theoũ
nóēsis], as though he would say: This is she who has the mind of God [ἁ θεονόα, a
theonóa]. Perhaps, however, the name Theonoe may mean "she who knows divine
things" [τὰ θεῖα νοοῦσα, ta theia noousa] better than others. Nor shall we be far wrong
in supposing that the author of it wished to identify this Goddess with moral intelligence
[εν έθει νόεσιν, en éthei nóesin], and therefore gave her the name Etheonoe; which,
however, either he or his successors have altered into what they thought a nicer form,
and called her Athena.
— Plato, Cratylus 407b
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.[9]
Origins
Fragment of a fresco from the Cult Center
at Mycenae dating the late thirteenth century BC depicting a warrior goddess, possibly
Athena, wearing a boar's tusk helmet and clutching a griffin. [10]
Athena was originally the Aegean goddess of the palace, who presided over household
crafts and protected the king.[11][12][13][14] A single Mycenaean Greek inscription 𐀀𐀲𐀙𐀡𐀴𐀛𐀊 a-
ta-na po-ti-ni-ja appears at Knossos in the Linear B tablets from the Late Minoan II-era
"Room of the Chariot Tablets";[15][16][10] these comprise the earliest Linear B archive
anywhere.[15] Although Athana potnia is often translated as "Mistress Athena", it could
also mean "the Potnia of Athana", or the Lady of Athens.[10][17] However, any connection to
the city of Athens in the Knossos inscription is uncertain.[18] A sign series a-ta-no-dju-wa-
ja appears in the still undeciphered corpus of Linear A tablets, written in the
unclassified Minoan language.[19] This could be connected with the Linear B Mycenaean
expressions a-ta-na po-ti-ni-ja and di-u-ja or di-wi-ja (Diwia, "of Zeus" or, possibly,
related to a homonymous goddess),[15] resulting in a translation "Athena of Zeus" or
"divine Athena". Similarly, in the Greek mythology and epic tradition, Athena figures as
a daughter of Zeus (Διός θυγάτηρ; cfr. Dyeus).[20] However, the inscription quoted seems
to be very similar to "a-ta-nū-tī wa-ya", quoted as SY Za 1 by Jan Best.[20] Best translates
the initial a-ta-nū-tī, which is recurrent in line beginnings, as "I have given".[20]
A Mycenean 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.[21][22] 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.[23] The early twentieth-century scholar Martin Persson
Nilsson argued that the Minoan snake goddess figurines are early representations of
Athena.[11][12]
Nilsson and others have claimed that, in early times, Athena was either an owl herself
or a bird goddess in general.[24] In the third book of the Odyssey, she takes the form of
a sea-eagle.[24] 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."[25]
It is generally agreed that the cult of Athena preserves some aspects of the Proto-Indo-
European transfunctional goddess.[27][28] The cult of Athena may have also been
influenced by those of Near Eastern warrior goddesses such as the East
Semitic Ishtar and the Ugaritic Anat,[10] both of whom were often portrayed bearing arms.
[12]
Classical scholar Charles Penglase notes that Athena resembles Inanna in her role
as a "terrifying warrior goddess"[29] and that both goddesses were closely linked with
creation.[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.[30][31]
Plato notes that the citizens of Sais in Egypt worshipped a goddess known as Neith,
[e]
whom he identifies with Athena.[32] 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.[f] 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".[33][34] The "Black Athena" hypothesis stirred up widespread controversy near
the end of the twentieth century,[35][36] but it has now been widely rejected by modern
scholars.[37][38]
Epithets and attributes
See also: Category:Epithets of Athena
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 (c. 425 BC)
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In her aspect of Athena Polias, Athena was venerated as the goddess of the city and
the protectress of the citadel.[12][78][42] In Athens, the Plynteria, or "Feast of the Bath", was
observed every year at the end of the month of Thargelion.[79] The festival lasted for five
days. During this period, the priestesses of Athena, or plyntrídes, performed a cleansing
ritual within the Erechtheion, a sanctuary devoted to Athena and Poseidon.[80] Here
Athena's statue was undressed, her clothes washed, and body purified.[80] Athena was
worshipped at festivals such as Chalceia as Athena Ergane,[81][42] the patroness of various
crafts, especially weaving.[81][42] She was also the patron of metalworkers and was
believed to aid in the forging of armor and weapons.[81] During the late fifth century BC,
the role of goddess of philosophy became a major aspect of Athena's cult.[82]
In her aspect as a warrior maiden, Athena was known as Parthenos (Παρθένος "virgin"),
[83][89][90]
because, like her fellow goddesses Artemis and Hestia, she was believed to
remain perpetually a virgin.[91][92][83][90][93] Athena's most famous temple, the Parthenon on
the Athenian Acropolis, takes its name from this title.[93] 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.[93] Even beyond recognition, the Athenians allotted the
goddess value based on this pureness of virginity, which they upheld as a rudiment of
female behavior.[93] 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.[93] 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.[94]
Athena was also credited with creating the pebble-based form of divination. Those
pebbles were called thriai, 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.[95]
Regional cults
Reverse side of a Pergamene silver tetradrachm minted
by Attalus I, showing Athena seated on a throne (c. 200 BC)
Athena was not only the patron goddess of Athens, but also other cities,
including Pergamon,[39] Argos, Sparta, Gortyn, Lindos, and Larisa.[40] The various cults of
Athena were all branches of her panhellenic cult[40] 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.[40] These cults were portals of a uniform
socialization, even beyond mainland Greece.[40] Athena was frequently equated
with Aphaea, a local goddess of the island of Aegina, originally from Crete and also
associated with Artemis and the nymph Britomartis.[96] In Arcadia, she was assimilated
with the ancient goddess Alea and worshiped as Athena Alea.[97] Sanctuaries dedicated
to Athena Alea were located in the Laconian towns of Mantineia and Tegea. The temple
of Athena Alea in Tegea was an important religious center of ancient Greece.[g] The
geographer Pausanias was informed that the temenos had been founded by Aleus.[98]
Athena had a major temple on the Spartan Acropolis,[99][42] where she was venerated as
Poliouchos and Khalkíoikos ("of the Brazen House", often latinized as Chalcioecus).[99]
[42]
This epithet may refer to the fact that cult statue held there may have been made of
bronze,[99] that the walls of the temple itself may have been made of bronze,[99] or that
Athena was the patron of metal-workers.[99] Bells made of terracotta and bronze were
used in Sparta as part of Athena's cult.[99] An Ionic-style temple to Athena Polias was
built at Priene in the fourth century BC.[100] It was designed by Pytheos of Priene,[101] the
same architect who designed the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus.[101] The temple was
dedicated by Alexander the Great[102] and an inscription from the temple declaring his
dedication is now held in the British Museum.[100]
In Pergamon, Athena was thought to have been a god of the cosmos and the aspects of
it that aided Pergamon and its fate.[39]
Mythology
Birth
Athena is "born" from Zeus's forehead as a result
of him having swallowed her mother Metis, as he grasps the clothing of Eileithyia on the
right; black-figured amphora, 550–525 BC, Louvre.The Varvakeion Athena, the most
faithful copy of the Athena Parthenos, as displayed in the National Archaeological
Museum, Athens.
She was the daughter of Zeus, produced without a mother, and emerged full-grown
from his forehead. 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. Being the favorite child of Zeus, she had great
power. In the classical Olympian pantheon, Athena was regarded as the favorite child of
Zeus, born fully armed from his forehead.[103][104][105][h] The story of her birth comes in several
versions.[106][107][108] The earliest mention is in Book V of the Iliad, when Ares accuses Zeus
of being biased in favor of Athena because "autos egeinao" (literally "you fathered her",
but probably intended as "you gave birth to her").[109][110] She was essentially urban and
civilized, the antithesis in many respects of Artemis, goddess of the outdoors. Athena
was probably a pre-Hellenic goddess and was later taken over by the Greeks. 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.[111][112][110][113] 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 children wiser than their father.[111][112]
[110][113]
In order to prevent this, Zeus tricked Metis into letting him swallow her, but it was
too late because Metis had already conceived.[111][114][110][113] 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.[115][116] According to this version of the
story, Metis transformed into many different shapes in effort to escape Zeus,[115][116] but
Zeus successfully raped her and swallowed her.[115][116]
After swallowing Metis, Zeus took six more wives in succession until he married his
seventh and present wife, Hera.[113] Then Zeus experienced an enormous headache.[117][110]
[113]
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.[56][110][118][116] Athena leaped from Zeus's head, fully grown and armed.[56]
[110][105][119]
The "First Homeric Hymn to Athena" states in lines 9–16 that the gods were
awestruck by Athena's appearance[120] and even Helios, the god of the sun, stopped his
chariot in the sky.[120] 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."[121][120]
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 herself,[113] 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 Kore, 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."[122] According to a
version of the story in a scholium on the Iliad (found nowhere else), when Zeus
swallowed Metis, she was pregnant with Athena by the Cyclops Brontes.
[123]
The Etymologicum Magnum[124] instead deems Athena the daughter of
the Daktyl Itonos.[125] 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.[126][127]
Lady of Athens
The Dispute
of Minerva and Neptune by René-Antoine Houasse (c. 1689 or 1706)
In Homer's Iliad, Athena, as a war goddess, inspired and fought alongside the Greek
heroes; her aid was synonymous with military prowess. Also in the Iliad, Zeus, the chief
god, specifically assigned the sphere of war to Ares, the god of war, and Athena.
Athena's moral and military superiority to Ares derived in part from the fact that she
represented the intellectual and civilized side of war and the virtues of justice and skill,
whereas Ares represented mere blood lust. Her superiority also derived in part from the
vastly greater variety and importance of her functions and the patriotism of Homer's
predecessors, Ares being of foreign origin. In the Iliad, Athena was the divine form of
the heroic, martial ideal: she personified excellence in close combat, victory, and glory.
The qualities that led to victory were found on the aegis, or breastplate, that Athena
wore when she went to war: fear, strife, defense, and assault. 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). As the guardian
of the welfare of kings, Athena became the goddess of good counsel, prudent restraint
and practical insight, and war. In a founding myth reported by Pseudo-Apollodorus,
[124]
Athena competed with Poseidon for the patronage of Athens.[128] They agreed that
each would give the Athenians one gift[128] and that Cecrops, the king of Athens, would
determine which gift was better.[128] Poseidon struck the ground with his trident and a salt
water spring sprang up;[128] this gave the Athenians access to trade and water.[129] Athens
at its height was a significant sea power, defeating the Persian fleet at the Battle of
Salamis[129]—but the water was salty and undrinkable.[129] In an alternative version of the
myth from Vergil's Georgics,[124] Poseidon instead gave the Athenians the first horse.
[128]
Athena offered the first domesticated olive tree.[128][90] Cecrops accepted this gift[128] and
declared Athena the patron goddess of Athens.[128] The olive tree brought wood, oil, and
food,[129] and became a symbol of Athenian economic prosperity.[90][130] Robert Graves was
of the opinion that "Poseidon's attempts to take possession of certain cities are political
myths",[129] which reflect the conflict between matriarchal and patriarchal religions.[129]
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.[132][133]
Pseudo-Apollodorus[124] 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.[134][88][135] Athena wiped the semen off using a tuft of wool, which she tossed into the
dust,[134][88][135] impregnating Gaia and causing her to give birth to Erichthonius.[134][88]
[135]
Athena adopted Erichthonius as her son and raised him.[134][135] The Roman
mythographer Hyginus[124] 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.[134] Zeus agreed to this and Hephaestus and Athena were
married,[134] 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.[134]
The geographer Pausanias[124] records that Athena placed the infant Erichthonius into a
small chest[136] (cista), which she entrusted to the care of the three daughters
of Cecrops: Herse, Pandrosos, and Aglauros of Athens.[136] She warned the three sisters
not to open the chest,[136] but did not explain to them why or what was in it.[136] Aglauros,
and possibly one of the other sisters,[136] opened the chest.[136] 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.[137] 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,[138] but an Attic vase painting
shows them being chased by the serpent off the edge of the cliff instead.[138]
Erichthonius was one of the most important founding heroes of Athens[88] and the legend
of the daughters of Cecrops was a cult myth linked to the rituals of
the Arrhephoria festival.[88][139] 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,[140] which they would carry on their
heads down a natural underground passage.[140] They would leave the objects they had
been given at the bottom of the passage and take another set of hidden objects,
[140]
which they would carry on their heads back up to the temple.[140] The ritual was
performed in the dead of night[140] and no one, not even the priestess, knew what the
objects were.[140] 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.
[131]
Many of the surviving sculptures of Athena show this serpent.[131]
Herodotus records that a serpent lived in a crevice on the north side of the summit of
the Athenian Acropolis[131] and that the Athenians left a honey cake for it each month as
an offering.[131] On the eve of the Second Persian invasion of Greece in 480 BC, the
serpent did not eat the honey cake[131] and the Athenians interpreted it as a sign that
Athena herself had abandoned them.[131] Another version of the myth of the Athenian
maidens is told in Metamorphoses by the Roman poet Ovid (43 BC – 17 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 Envy 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.[141]
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 myrtle,
a plant thereafter as favoured by her as the olive was.[142] An almost exact story was said
about another girl, Elaea, who transformed into an olive, Athena's sacred tree.[143]
Patron of heroes
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
Punishment myths
Attic black-figure exaleiptron of the birth of Athena from the head of Zeus (c. 570–560 BC) by the C
Painter[208]
Attic red-figure kylix of Athena Promachos holding a spear and standing beside a Doric column (c. 500-
490 BC)
Restoration of the polychrome decoration of the Athena statue from the Aphaea temple at Aegina, c.
490 BC (from the exposition "Bunte Götter" by the Munich Glyptothek)
Attic red-figure kylix showing Athena slaying the Giant Enceladus (c. 550–500 BC)
Relief of Athena and Nike slaying the Giant Alkyoneus (?) from the Gigantomachy Frieze on
the Pergamon Altar (early second century BC)
Classical mosaic from a villa at Tusculum, 3rd century AD, now at Museo Pio-Clementino, Vatican
Mythological scene with Athena (left) and Herakles (right), on a stone palette of the Greco-Buddhist
art of Gandhara, India
Atena farnese, Roman copy of a Greek original from Phidias' circle, c. 430 AD, Museo Archeologico,
Naples
Athena (2nd century BC) in the art of Gandhara, displayed at the Lahore Museum, Pakistan
Post-classical culture
Art and symbolism
Early Christian writers, such as Clement of Alexandria and Firmicus, denigrated Athena
as representative of all the things that were detestable about paganism;[215] they
condemned her as "immodest and immoral".[216] During the Middle Ages, however, many
attributes of Athena were given to the Virgin Mary,[216] who, in fourth-century portrayals,
was often depicted wearing the Gorgoneion.[216] Some even viewed the Virgin Mary as a
warrior maiden, much like Athena Parthenos;[216] one anecdote tells that the Virgin Mary
once appeared upon the walls of Constantinople when it was under siege by the Avars,
clutching a spear and urging the people to fight.[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.[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.[219] 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.[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.[222][221][223] Athena is also used as the personification of
wisdom in Bartholomeus Spranger's 1591 painting The Triumph of Wisdom or Minerva
Victorious over Ignorance.[213]
During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Athena was used as a symbol for
female rulers.[224] 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".[225] A series of paintings by Peter Paul Rubens depict
Athena as Marie de' Medici's patron and mentor;[226] 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.[226] 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.[213] During the French Revolution, statues of pagan gods were torn
down all throughout France, but statues of Athena were not.[226] Instead, Athena was
transformed into the personification of freedom and the republic[226] and a statue of the
goddess stood in the center of the Place de la Revolution in Paris.[226] In the years
following the Revolution, artistic representations of Athena proliferated.[227]
A statue of Athena stands directly in front of the Austrian Parliament Building in Vienna,
[228]
and depictions of Athena have influenced other symbols of Western freedom,
including the Statue of Liberty and Britannia.[228] For over a century, a full-scale replica of
the Parthenon has stood in Nashville, Tennessee.[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.[229] The Great Seal of California bears the image of Athena
kneeling next to a brown grizzly bear.[230] Athena has occasionally appeared on modern
coins, as she did on the ancient Athenian drachma. Her head appears on the $50 1915-
S Panama-Pacific commemorative coin.[231]
Minerva Expelling the Vices from the Garden of Virtue (1502) by Andrea Mantegna[222][221][223]
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
The Combat of Mars and Minerva (1771) by Joseph-Benoît Suvée
Pompeii's Roman fresco shows Ajax dragging Cassandra away from palladium in the fall of Troy, event
that provoked Athena's wrath to Greek armies[232]
Modern interpretations