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n I bought a couple of statuettes in a charity shop innClitheroe the other day and they got me thinking about their subject – thenGreek goddess, Athene (or Athena).
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| Athena |
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nThere are a number of versions regarding the origins ofnAthene, as you might expect with such an important deity, as the assortednancient stories were told and retold by people who tried to assimilate themninto a coherent, definitive whole. Plato, in his Timaeus [22a], writingnabout the Egyptian city of Sais, says,
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n“The founder of their city is angoddess, whose name in the Egyptian tongue is Neith, and in Greek, as theynaver, Athena: the people are great lovers of the Athenians and claim a certainnkinship with our countrymen.”n
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| The Head and Lance of Athene |
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nWithout getting into the controversy that thenAthenians, and the Greeks, came out of Africa, there are parallels betweennNeith and Athena, although the etymological links claimed by some scholars arenstrained and somewhat fanciful to say the least. However, it is just onenpossibility. One says she was the daughter of the winged giant Pallas, whom shenkilled when he tried to rape her. Another places her on Minoan Crete, prior tonthe birth of Zeus, but the most accepted story is that she was the daughter ofnZeus (Homer calls her such in the Iliad, Book v, 880).
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| Detail of the Head |
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nZeus’s firstnwife, Metis, became pregnant, but on the advice of Gaea and Uranus that henwould be overthrown by one of Metis’s progeny, Zeus swallowed her whole but shenremained alive, and pregnant, inside him (see Hesiod Theogony 889-892).nHe began to suffer from headaches and so Hephaestus took his double-headed,nbronze axe and struck him on the forehead, from which sprang Athena, with anterrifying shout, fully grown and armoured.
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n“By the art of Hephaestus andnhis brazen-forged axe, at the summit of her father’s head, Athene, springingnupwards, shouted with an exceeding great cry: and Heaven and mother Earthnshuddered at her.”n
nPindar, Olympian Ode VII.n
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| Athene born from the head of Zeus |
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nFrom this account,nAthena was the daughter of the most powerful of the gods and the Titaness ofnwisdom, and she was a harmonious combination of these qualities of her parents.nShe was not a representation of any physical power manifested in nature, butnrather she was an ethical protectress of the state and social institutions, andnthe patroness of all that preserved them, from the walls and fortresses to thenharbours. She fostered agriculture and invented both the plough and the rake,ntaught men how to yoke oxen and looked over the breeding of horses, givingnmankind the bridle, another of her inventions. She also created the olive tree,nto benefit humankind.
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| Rear of the Head of Athene |
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nOther, later, writers attribute almost all of the usefulnand beneficial inventions to her, from numbers, art, navigation, and thenchariot to trumpets, flutes and weaving. In this last, she was involved in ancontest with Arachne, a mortal weaver who claimed to be more skilled than thengoddess. In one version, Arachne lost the contest and hanged herself innembarrassment; Athena turned the rope into spidersweb and Arachne herself intona spider, who continues to spin to this day (hence, spiders are called arachnids).nThe gifts of Athena lead the Athenians to adopt her as their patron and theynnamed their city in her honour, although she was worshipped equally throughoutnGreece.
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| View of a variation of Athene |
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nAs the goddess of War, Athena differed from the bellicose war gods suchnas Ares; she advocated prudent war, it is said that she did not own weapons butnborrowed them from Zeus. Rather than glorying in battle for its own sake, shenavoids conflict but will fight for a just cause and will champion the righteousnhero in his strife.
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| Representation of Athene from a Greek Vase |
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nIn her martial aspect, Athena wears a crested helmet,ncarries a lance and carries the Ægis, the terrible shield that not even Zeusncan resist. In some versions, the shield bears the head of Medusa, the gorgon,nslain by Perseus and which turns anything that looks upon it into stone (the Gorgoneion).
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| The Gorgoneion on Athena’s breastplate |
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nIn another version, the gorgon’s head is worn on Athena’s breastplate and onnthe shield is a serpent, Erichthonius, which was born when Hephaestus attemptednto rape Athena and spilled his semen on the earth. Athena raised the childnherself but hid him secretly in a box, which was given into the care of thendaughters of Cecrops, the king of Athens, warning them not to open it. Twondaughters, Aglaurus and Herse, disobeyed and opened the box, saw either the child,na serpent or a hybrid of the two, the sight of which drove them insane; theynthrew themselves to their deaths from the highest point on the Acropolis.nErichthonius went on to become king of Athens and instituted the Panathenaicnfestival, the great celebration of Athena in the city that took place on thenAcropolis; the serpent borne by Athena was his emblem.
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| The Shield with the Serpent |
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nAnother symbol of Athenanwas the owl, a bird long noted for its supposed wisdom, in her case named Glaucus,nfrom the Greek Γλαΰκοςn– ‘glaring (eyes)’. Unfortunately, the wisdom of owls is not manifest innreality – an owl has cylindrical eyes almost the size of human eyes but itsnskull is about the size of a golf ball and in consequence its brain is tiny innrelation to the rest of its head, to allow for the accommodation of the largeneyes.
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| Glaucus – the Owl of Athene |
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nThe Greek for ‘owl’ is Οτρίγζ ‘strix’ – ‘screecher’ which is also the root of our wordn‘strident’, coming from the cry of the owl; in Latin it is ‘ulula’ –nfrom which we also get ululation – ‘a cry of lamentation, wailing’, innOld English it is ule – ‘owl’,nwith connections to Sanskrit ululih – howling, Lithuanian uluti –na howl, and Gaelic uileliugh – a lamenting cry.
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nTomorrow, the other statuette.
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