ATHENA (or Athenaia, Ionian Athenaie, epic Athene ; in the Roman world, she corresponds to Menerva/Minerva ) was the Greek goddess of war, the arts, and feminine works. According to the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite (5.8–15) she "has no pleasure in the works of golden Aphrodite, but delights in war and the works of Ares; she first taught human craftsmen how to build chariots and work the bronze, but she too teaches young girls in the house, putting in their mind knowledge of splendid art" (compare Iliad 5.733–737, where, in arming herself for war, the goddess takes off the splendid robe she had made with her own hands). These diverse aspects of her nature manifest themselves in her iconography: according to Apollodorus (Bibl. 3.12.3), the Palladion, the extremely ancient wooden statue of the goddess that had famously fallen from the sky and was venerated in Ilion, portrayed her with a spear in her right hand and a distaff and spindle in the left. These two aspects may be reconciled under the capacity for rational organization. Both in war and in craft the goddess refrains from excess and impulsivity, and she privileges rational, intelligent preparation. As such she is indeed a goddess of the arts of war and of creative intelligence, and a protectress of the city, closely tied to its social organization.
Athena is certainly a very ancient divinity: it is possible to recognize in her a pre-Hellenic protectress of the Mycenaean citadel atop the Acropolis. An atana potinija is attested in the dative, together with Enyalios, Paiaon, Poseidaon, and the Erinyes in a linear B text from Knossos. The interpretation commonly accepted, even though by no means certain, is "mistress of (place-name) Athana." Athena is indeed unique among Greek gods in being connected, via her name, with a specific city, Athens. This connection is underlined by the fact that in early Attic inscriptions her name appears in the adjectival form, Athenaia (the Athenian goddess), as in the Homeric formula, Pallas Athenaie. However, the linguistic relation between place and goddess is difficult to define; if the Athenians, both in myth (the gift of the olive tree, the birth of Erichthonios) and in cult (the Panathenaia festival), stressed their privileged relation with the goddess, in Panhellenic mythology she shows no special interest in Athens or in Athenian heroes. Thus, according to Pindar (Olympian 7.34–53), the Rhodians believed Athena to be particularly associated with their island. In many Greek cities she appears as Polias or Poliouchos, citadel and city-goddess (this is also true of Troy: legend had it that until her Palladion had been stolen from the city, it would not fall); very often her temples are on the central, fortified hill of the city.
Athena's emblems are the owl (glaux, compare her epithet glaukōpis, "bright-eyed"), and the snake, living among the rocks of the Athenian Acropolis (Herodotos VIII 41.2–3). These have been taken by some modern scholars as signs of the close connection between her, the Minoan snake goddess, and the Mycenaean palace goddess. Athena's main weapon in battle is the aegis (as the name implies, a goat-skin): when she raises it, panic overtakes her enemies. On it, she wears the petrifying head of the Gorgon.
Her centrality in the Greek pantheon is expressed by her closeness to Zeus. The story of her birth (an Oriental motif, which finds a parallel in the Hittite myth of Kumarbi) forcefully underlines the strong relationship between the two divinities. Zeus, after having received the power to rule among the gods, married the Okeanid Metis, the "most knowing of the gods and men" (Hesiod, frag. 343.15; Theogony 886–900); then, in order to avoid being overthrown by a more powerful son, he swallowed her. Some time later, Zeus gave birth from his head to a grown-up and fully armed goddess, Athena. Other versions have Zeus call on Hephaistos to help relieve him of labor pains. Hephaistos with his ax split Zeus's head open, and out of it, in full armor and with a war song on her lips, sprang Athena. This is the version usually depicted on Attic vases.
Zeus's courageous, self-confident, clear-eyed daughter became his favorite child, the only one to carry his aegis and thunderbolt. She in turn revered him and boasted of being the child of him alone, of being motherless (thus in Homeric Hymn 28; similarly, in another passage of Hesiod's Theogony 924–929, the birth of Athena from Zeus is paralleled by the story of Hera giving birth alone, out of anger against Zeus, to Hephaistos). Athena and Zeus share exclusively between them the cult epithet Polias/Polieus. At Sparta, the rhētra attributed to Lycurgus mentioned a Zeus Syllanios and an Athena Syllania (the meaning of this term is unknown). The unique relationship between Athena and Zeus finds its best literary expression in Aeschylus (Eumenides 736–738): Athena appears there as the great reconciler between men and gods, and, because of her peculiar birth, between male and female. At a deeper level, however, it can be claimed that by her refusal of marriage the goddess paradoxically destabilizes the patriarchal and civilized order that she apparently champions.
The most frequent among her other epithets are Tritogeneia, which may allude to the circ*mstances of her birth, even if the precise meaning of the term is disputed, and Pallas. One of the ancient explanations for the latter is that Pallas was a childhood friend whom Athena inadvertently killed during a fencing match. Athena erected a wooden image, a palladium, to commemorate her foster sister, an image that came to represent Athena herself in her role as protectress of the polis. Of this Palladium, originally situated in Troy, many cities boasted of possessing an exemplar (Athens, Argos, and Rome, among others). According to another version, Pallas was a giant and an adversary of Athena in the Gigantomachy, out of whose skin the goddess made herself the aegis (a local, Athenian variant of the Gigantomachy myth has Theseus fighting against a rival king Pallas and his fifty sons). Yet others interpreted Pallas as "the one who dances," or "who brandishes weapons" (Euripides, Ion 209–211; Plato, Cratylos 406d–407a), or pallas simply as "maiden" (Strabo, 17.1.46, with the approval of modern etymological dictionaries). Particularly important in fifth-century Athenian ideology is the goddess's connection with victory: as Athena Nikē she had a priestess and a temple at the gate of the Acropolis.
Athena's central concern is the wellbeing of the community. As Aelius Aristides (Or. 37.13) puts it, "Cities are the gifts of Athena." As a patron of civic institutions, she has a role in the socialization of youths of both sexes. Thus, in Athens, in her quality of Phratria, the goddess is, together with Zeus Phratrios, the patroness of the Apaturia festival, in which young men were introduced into the phratry; these were the gods that defined Athenian citizenship. The ephebes took their oath in the sanctuary of Aglauros, one of the three daughters of Kekrops, regarded as the first priestess of Athena; among the principal divinities invoked were Ares and Atena Areia. Every year, they escorted Pallas (so report the epigraphic texts, with a striking personification: the wooden Palladium must have been intended) to Phalerum and to the sea for a ritual cleansing (the occasion of this ritual is disputed: it may have been the Plynteria). Conversely, an Athena Apaturia is attested at Troizen, to whom young girls offered their girdle before their wedding.
More generally, the goddess nurtures the children on whom the city's future depends and encourages its citizens in the arts and crafts so integral to civilized existence. Her foundational role in Athens is clearly expressed by the story of her victory over Poseidon through the gift of the sacred olive tree, and in the connected local Athenian myth of the birth of Erichthonios. According to the legend, Hephaistos tried to rape the goddess; she flew, and in his pursuit, his sem*n fell on her thigh. The goddess in wiping it off threw it to the ground, and the earth gave birth to the boy Erechtheus/Erichthonios, whom Athena raised (already attested in Iliad 2.547–551). She then gave him over to the care of the daughters of snake-tailed Kekrops, the autochthonous king of Athens, warning them not to open the chest in which the boy lay. They however opened the chest, and, overcome with madness at what they saw, threw themselves down the cliff of the Acropolis. Erichthonios later became king of Athens, and instituted the Panathenaia; the story of the Kekropids was remembered in the rite of the Arrhēphoria. Two (or four) young girls of noble family, aged between seven and eleven, were chosen annually by the archon basileus to serve Athena Polias on the Acropolis. At the end of their year, at night, the arrhēphoroi were given covered baskets, which they had to carry down to the temple of Aphrodite "in the garden." There they were given something else that they had to bring back to the Acropolis. The meaning of this ceremony is disputed (transition or fertility ritual), but it has clearly to do with the story of the daughters of Kekrops, since the arrhēphoroi are said to accomplish their duties in regard to Athena Polias and Pandrosos, one of the Kekropids. The myth encapsulates Athena's care for Athens, and more generally for the raising and education of both boys and girls, as well as the Athenians' rootedness in their landscape.
Athenian maidens and women wove a peplos for Athena; the loom for the weaving was set up by the priestess of Athena Polias and the arrhēphoroi at the Chalkeia. The peplos (embroidered with scenes from the Gigantomachy, and thus once again exposing the other side of the deity) was offered to the goddess nine months later at the Panathenaia, her most important festival at Athens. At this same festival male citizens competed in contests reserved for Athenians which, just as the Panathenaic procession, stressed the force and the sense of common identity of the polity. There were also contests open to foreigners; the prizes for the quadrennial contests of the Great Panathenaia were the so-called Panathenaic amphoras, filled with olive oil from the sacred olive trees and bearing on one side the image of the fully armed, striding Athena Promachos.
Athena is particularly identified with the womanly arts of spinning and weaving, and is often called, in this connection, Erganē (the maker). As such, she also protects carpenters, metalworkers and more generally artisans: "Be on your way, all people who work with your hands, you who entreat Zeus' daughter, Erganē of the terrible eyes, with baskets placed before her, and by the anvil with the heavy hammer" (Sophocles, frag. 844 Radt).
Like many spinning goddesses, Athena is a virgin; at Athens, she is addressed as "the" parthenos. Yet her virginity implies no withdrawal from involvement with males, but rather an easy companionship undisturbed by sexual tension. Loyal and resourceful, she is a friendly mentor to many of the heroes of Greek mythology—Perseus, Bellerophon, Herakles, and above all Odysseus, whose skeptical prudence and practical cunning so resemble her own. Although in late classical times the goddess came to be regarded as a personification of wisdom in the abstract, her mētis ("wisdom") is rather common sense and the technical and artistic skillfulness she encouraged in her protégés. She is glaukōpis, bright-eyed, like her emblem the owl. At least until the end of the fifth century, Athena was not seen as a contemplative being, but rather as "spirited immediacy, redeeming spiritual presence, swift action." At least until the end of the fifth century, Athena was not seen as a contemplative being, but rather, as Walter F. Otto memorably put it, a "Göttin der nähe" ("goddess of nearness"), "spirited immediacy, redeeming spiritual presence, swift action."
See Also
Goddess Worship, overview article.
Bibliography
Athena is an important presence in Homer's Iliad and Odyssey ; Aeschylus's Eumenides is the other most important ancient source. The goddess is frequently invoked in drama: for instance in Euripides' Children of Heracles 748–783 and in Aristophanes' Knights 581–594. A somewhat darker aspect of her nature emerges from Sophocles' Ajax. Callimachus in his Hymn 5 illustrates a ritual in honor of the Argive Athena; for the perception of the goddess at the time of the second sophistic, see Aelius Aristides' Hymn to Athena (Or. 37).
Modern scholarly treatments include Lewis R. Farnell, The Cults of the Greek States, Vol. 1 (1896; New Rochelle, N.Y., 1977), pp. 258–320; Walter F. Otto, Die Götter Griechenlands: Das Bild des Göttlichen im Spiegel des griechischen Geistes (Bonn, Germany, 1929), translated by Moses Hadas as The Homeric Gods: The Spiritual Significance of Greek Religion (New York, 1954), pp. 43–60; Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Der Glaube der Hellenen (Berlin, 1931–1932), Vol. 1: pp. 234–237, Vol. 2: pp. 162–168; Károly Kerényi, Die Jungfrau und Mutter der Griechischen Religion: Eine Studie über Pallas Athene (Zurich, 1952), translated by Murray Stein as Athene: Virgin and Mother in Greek Religion (Dallas, Tex., 1978); Martin P. Nilsson, The Minoan-Mycenean Religion and Its Survival in Greek Religion, 2d rev. ed. (Lund, Sweden, 1950), pp. 485–501; Walter Burkert, Griechische Religion der archaischen und klassischen Epoche (Stuttgart and Berlin, 1977), rev. ed., translated by J. Raffan as Greek Religion: Archaic and Classical (Cambridge, Mass., 1985), pp. 139–143; Robert T. C. Parker, "Athena," in The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3d ed., edited by Simon Hornblower and Antony Spawforth (Oxford and New York, 1996), pp. 201–202; and Fritz Graf, "Athena," in Der neue Pauly, Vol. 2 (Stuttgart, Germany, 1997), pp. 160–166.
On her importance in Athens see specifically C. John Herington, Athena Parthenos and Athena Polias: A Study in the Religion of Periclean Athens (Manchester, UK, 1955), and his "Athena in Athenian Literature and Cult," in G. T. W. Hooker, ed., Parthenos and Parthenon, Greece and Rome, Suppl. 10 (Oxford, 1963), pp. 61–73; Nicole Loraux, Les enfants d'Athena (Paris, 1981), translated by Caroline Levine as The Children of Athena: Athenian Ideas about Citizenship and the Division between the Sexes (Princeton, N.J., 1993); Jenifer Neils, ed., Goddess and Polis: The Panathenaic Festival in Ancient Athens (Princeton, N.J., 1992); and Jenifer Neils, ed., Worshipping Athena: Panathenaia and Parthenon (Madison, Wis., 1996). The goddess's connection with Athenian democracy is explored by Irmgard Kasper-Butz, Die Göttin Athena im klassischen Athen: Athena als Repräsentantin des demokratischen Staates (Frankfurt am Main, Germany, 1990). The most complete discussion of Attic rituals for Athena is still Ludwig Deubner, Attische Feste (Berlin, 1932), pp. 9–39.
Specific aspects are explored in Susan Deacy and Alexandra Villing, eds., Athena in the Classical World (Leiden, Netherlands, 2001), which also provides an extensive bibliography. In a series of articles, Noel Robertson proposes a global reinterpretation of rituals for Athena: see in particular "Athena as Weather Goddess: The Aigis in Myth and Ritual," in Deacy and Villing, eds., Athena in the Classical World (Leiden, Netherlands, 2001), pp. 29–55, and "Athena and Early Greek Society: Palladium Shrines and Promontory Shrines," in Matthew Dillon, ed., Religion in the Ancient World: New Themes and Approaches (Amsterdam, 1996), pp. 383–475. In this same volume, Daniel Geagan, "Who Was Athena?" pp. 145–164, charts the development of the cult of Athena in Athens across a wide chronological period. On the cult of Athena at Troy/Ilion, see Alexandra Villing, "Athena as Ergane and Promachos: The Iconography of Athena in Archaic East Greece," in Nick Fisher and Hans van Wees, eds., Archaic Greece: New Approaches and New Evidence (London, 1998), pp. 147–168. Her role as a goddess of mētis and practical cunning is examined in Marcel Detienne and Jean-Pierre Vernant, Les ruses de l'intelligence: La mêtis des Grecs (Paris, 1974), translated by Janet Lloyd as Cunning Intelligence in Greek Culture and Society (Hassocks, U.K., 1978; Chicago, 1991). A wealth of material on the diverse aspects of the cult of Athena in the Greek world is to be found in Gerhard Jöhrens, Der Athenahymnus des Ailios Aristeides (Bonn, Germany, 1981).
A detailed survey of the iconography is offered by Paul Demargne and Hélène Cassimatis, "Athena," in Lexicon iconographicum mythologiae classicae, Vol. 2.1 (Zurich and Munich, 1984), pp. 955–1044.
Christine Downing (1987)
Paola Ceccarelli (2005)
