Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities (1898)

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Athēné

(Athênê) or Pallas Athēné. A Greek goddess, identified with the Roman Minerva. According to the story most generally current, she was the daughter of Zeus, who had swallowed his first wife, Metis (Counsel), the daughter of Oceanus, in the fear that she would bring forth a son stronger than himself. Hephaestus (or, according to another version, Prometheus) clave open the head of Zeus with an axe, on which Athené sprang forth in full armour, the goddess of eternal virginity. But her ancient epithet Tritogeneia (born of Triton, or the roaring flood) points to water--that is, to Oceanus --as the source of her being. Oceanus was, according to Homer, the origin of all things and of all deities. The worship of Athené and the story of her birth were accordingly connected with many brooks and lakes in various regions--especially in Boeotia, Thessalia, and Libya--to which the name Triton was attached.

From the first, Athené took a very prominent place in the Greek popular religion. The Homeric hymns represent her as the favourite of her father, who refuses her nothing. When solemn oaths were to be taken, they joined her name with those of Zeus and Apollo, in a way which shows that the three deities represent the embodiment of all divine authority. With the exception of the two gods just mentioned, there is no other deity whose original character as a power of nature underwent so remarkable an ethical development. Both conceptions of Athené, the natural and the ethical, were intimately connected in the religion of Attica, whose capital, Athens, was named after Athené and was the most important seat of her worship. Athené was originally the maiden daughter of the god of heaven; the clear transparent æther, whose purity is always breaking forth in unveiled brilliancy through the clouds that surround it. As a deity of the sky, she, with Zeus, is the mistress of thunder and lightning. Like Zeus, she carries the aegis (q.v.) with the Gorgon 's head, the symbol [p. 157] of the tempest and its terrors. In many statues, accordingly, she is represented as hurling the thunder-bolt. But she also sends down from sky to earth light and warmth and fruitful dew, and with them prosperity to fields and plants. A whole series of fables and usages, belonging especially to the Athenian religion, represent her as the helper and protector of agriculture. The two deities Erechtheus and Erichthonius, honoured in Attica as powers of the fruitful soil, are her fosterchildren. She was worshipped with Erechtheus in the temple named after him the Erechtheum, the oldest sanctuary on the Athenian Acropolis. The names of her earliest priestesses, the daughters of Cecrops--Aglaurus, Pandrosus, and Hersé--signify the bright air, the dew, and the rain, and are mere personifications of their qualities, of such value to the Athenian territory.

The sowing season was opened in Attica by three sacred services of ploughing. Of these, two were in honour of Athené as inventress of the plough, while the third took place in honour of Demeter. It was Athené, also, who had taught men how to attach oxen to the yoke; above all, she had given them the olive-tree, the treasure of Attica. This tree she had made to grow out of the rock of the citadel, when disputing the possession of the land with Poseidon. Several festivals, having reference to these functions of the goddess, were celebrated in Attica--the Callynteria and Plynteria, the Scirophoria, the Arrhephoria or Hersephoria, and the Oschophoria, which were common to Athené with Dionysus. (See Dionysia.) Even her chief feast, the Panathenaea, was originally a harvest festival. It is significant that the presentation of the peplos or mantle, the chief offering at the celebration, took place in the sowing season. But afterwards more was made of the intellectual gifts bestowed by the goddess.

Athené was very generally regarded as the goddess of war--an idea which in ancient times was the prevailing one. It was connected with the fact that, like her father, Zeus, she was supposed to be able to send storms and bad weather. In this capacity she appears in story as the true friend of all bold warriors, such as Perseus, Bellerophon, Iason, Heracles, Diomedes, and Odysseus. But her courage is a wise courage, not a blind rashness like that of Ares; and she is always represented, accordingly, as getting the better of him. In this connection she was honoured in Athenian worship mainly as a protector and defender; thus (to take a striking example), she was worshipped on the citadel of Athens under the name of Promachos, “champion,” “protector.” But she was also a goddess of victory. As the personification of victory (Athené Niké) she had a second and especial temple on the Athenian Acropolis. (See Acropolis.) And the great statues in the temples represented her, like Zeus, with Niké in her outstretched hand. The occupations of peace, however, formed the main sphere of her activity. Like all the other deities who were supposed to dispense the blessings of nature, she is the protectress of growing children; and, as the goddess of the clear sky and of pure air, she bestows health and keeps off sickness. Further, she is (with Zeus) the patroness of the Athenian phratriai or unions of kinsfolk. At Athens and Sparta she protects the popular and deliberative assemblies; in many places, and especially at Athens, the whole State is under her care (Athené Polias, Poliuchus). Elsewhere she presides over the larger unions of kindred peoples. The festival of Athené Itonia at Coronea was a confederate festival of all Boeotia. Under the title of Panachaïs she was worshipped as the goddess of the Achaean League.

Speaking broadly, Athené represents human wit and cleverness, and presides over the whole moral and intellectual side of human life. From her are derived all the productions of wisdom and understanding, every art and science, whether of war or of peace. A number of discoveries, of the most

Athené. (Vatican Museum.)

various kinds, is ascribed to her. It has been already mentioned that she was credited with the invention of the plough and the yoke. She was often associated with Poseidon as the inventress of horse-taming and ship-building. In the Athenian story she teaches Erichthonius to fasten his horses to the chariot. In the Corinthian story she teaches Bellerophon to subdue Pegasus. At Lindus in Rhodes she was worshipped as the goddess who helped Danaüs to build the first fifty-oared ship. In the fable of the Argonauts it is she who instructs the builders of the first ship, the Argo. Even in Homer all the productions of women's [p. 158] art, as of spinning and weaving, are characterized as “works of Athené.” Many a Palladion, or statue of Pallas, bore a spindle and distaff in its left hand. As the mistress and protectress of arts and handiwork, she was worshipped at the Chalkeia, or Feast of Smiths, under the title of Erganê. Under this name, too, she is mentioned in several inscriptions found on the Acropolis. Her genius covers the field of music and dancing. She is inventor of the flute and the trumpet, as well as of the Pyrrhic war-dance, in which she was said to have been the earliest performer, at the celebration of the victory of the Gods over the Giants.

It was Phidias (q.v.) who finally fixed the typical representation of Athené in works of art. Among his numerous statues of her, three --the most celebrated --were set up on the Acropolis of Athens. These were:

This text is based on the following book(s):
Harry Thurston Peck. Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities. New York. Harper and Brothers. 1898.