Athena, goddess of wisdom and protectress of Athens
As goddess of wisdom and as protectress of Athens, Athena unites considered judgement with armed support for the community of the city. Athena, in the Attic dialect also rendered as Athena, belongs to the central figures of the Greek pantheon and is regarded as the daughter of Zeus, born from his head.
She is the protective goddess of the city of Athens, patroness of skilled craftsmanship, of prudent warfare and of just order. Unlike Ares, she does not embody bloody combat, but strategic leadership and the protection of the polis.
Her epithets «Polias» (protectress of the city), «Promachos» (foremost fighter) and «Parthenos» (virgin) mark the three principal axes of her cult. In Homer she bears the epithet «glaukopis» (of the gleaming eyes), variously rendered as «owl-eyed» or «bright-glancing», pointing to her sharp, penetrating gaze.
The Linear B evidence from the Mycenaean period attests a «Lady Athana», which supports the thesis of a pre-Greek citadel deity who, in the religion of the archaic polis, acquired the function of a panhellenic protective goddess.
Table of contents
Myth and lineage
The birth of Athena from the head of Zeus counts among the best known creation myths of the Greek tradition.
Hesiod relates in the «Theogony» (lines 886 to 900 and 924 to 926) how Zeus swallows the pregnant Metis in order to avert a prophecy according to which a son of this union would overthrow him.
From the split skull of Zeus, opened by Hephaistos or Prometheus with an axe, Athena leaps forth in full armour. The episode grounds her particular status as a pure mental offspring of the father of the gods, without maternal mediation in the usual sense.
Metis remains integrated within Zeus and becomes the embodiment of cunning prudence that the father of the gods henceforth carries within himself; Athena inherits this quality outwardly visible.
Pindar’s seventh Olympian Ode (lines 35 to 38) offers a Rhodian variant according to which at the birth a golden rain came down upon the island and the Heliads, in their haste, forgot to kindle the first sacrifice, for which reason they brought fire to the Rhodians.
On Crete another tradition located the birth at Lake Tritonis in Libya, for which reason Athena bears the epithet «Tritogeneia»; Herodotus (IV, 180) reports a Libyan Athena cult among the Auseans, connected with an annual contest among maidens around the temple.
The etymological interpretation of the epithet remains disputed between a reference to Lake Tritonis and the Old Greek «trito» meaning «third-born» or «true».
From an episode with Hephaistos there emerges, in an Attic local tradition, Erichthonios: Hephaistos attempts to assault Athena; his seed falls on her leg, she wipes it off with wool and throws the cloth to the earth, from which Erichthonios arises (Apollodorus III, 14, 6).
Athena raises the child secretly and entrusts him to the daughters of Kekrops, Aglauros, Herse and Pandrosos, in a sealed chest, with the prohibition against opening it. Aglauros and Herse open the chest, see the child surrounded by a serpent and in madness throw themselves down from the Acropolis.
From this story the Athenian conception of autochthony is derived: their early kings are «earth-born», not immigrant. Erichthonios founds the Panathenaic festival and is regarded as the inventor of the four-horse chariot.
In sibling terms Athena is linked with Apollo, Artemis, Hermes and Ares; her closest relationship within the pantheon is with Zeus himself, whose plans she frequently carries out. She has no children of her own; her virginity is constitutive and distinguishes her structurally from Hera and Demeter.
Late antique allegorical readings saw in Athena the «thought» of the father of the gods, that is, a personified Logos that is operative before any creation; this interpretation was elaborated by Philo of Alexandria and by Neoplatonic authors such as Proclus.
Symbols, iconography and attributes
Athena’s principal attributes are helmet, lance, shield and the Aegis. The Aegis, a goatskin breastplate fringed with serpents and bearing the Gorgoneion in its centre, is regarded as a protective sign taken over from Zeus. In Homer she bears the Aegis into battle on behalf of her father.
The helmet, often crowned with a sphinx or a Pegasus, marks the martial function, while the lance is regularly held upright, not in attack. The specific restraint of the raised weapon shows her as a strategist, not as a fury of battle.
The owl, especially the little owl (Athene noctua, which carries her name down into modern zoology), has been her bird since the archaic period.
On the Attic tetradrachms it appears as the heraldic creature alongside the head of the goddess; the coins were traded throughout the Mediterranean as «glaukes» (owls) and gave rise to the proverb «to carry owls to Athens».
The olive tree goes back to the dispute with Poseidon: Athena planted the first olive tree on the Acropolis and thereby gave the Athenians the plant that yielded nourishment, light and the healing of wounds.
The sacred olive tree in the Pandroseion was held to be indestructible down into late Roman times; Pausanias (I, 27, 2) reports that after the Persian fire of 480 BCE it had put forth new shoots overnight.
The serpent is a further fixed attribute, in two functions: on the one hand as Erichthonios, who is guarded by Athena in the form of a serpent, on the other as a symbol of earth-relatedness and of healing wisdom.
Phidias’ chryselephantine Athena Parthenos, described by Pausanias (I, 24, 5 to 7), shows the goddess in the chiton, with Nike on her outstretched right hand, the spear resting against the shield; in a fold at the ground a large serpent coils, identified with Erichthonios.
The shield bore the battle of the Amazons, its interior the Gigantomachy, the sandals the Centauromachy. The work was twelve metres high, made of 1140 kilograms of gold, the plates of which were detachable, so that in a crisis Pericles had access to a state gold reserve.
Alongside this, the loom and the spindle are counted among her attributes. Athena «Ergane», «the worker», protected all crafts, above all the textile skill of women.
In the myth of the weaving contest with Arachne (Ovid, Metamorphoses VI, 5 to 145) she appears as the severity of the norm that tears apart the superior but god-critical work of the Lydian woman.
Phidias designed for the Parthenon the annually rewoven peplos of Athena as an iconographic programme: into the saffron-dyed cloth there were always woven scenes of the Gigantomachy, in which Athena banished the giant Enkelados beneath the island of Sicily.
Cult and veneration
The central festival of Athena was the Panathenaia, celebrated annually on the 28th of Hekatombaion (July/August), every four years as the «Great Panathenaia» with heightened expenditure. It began with a nocturnal torchlight procession from the Academy grove to the Acropolis.
Its climax was the festal procession, in which citizens, metics and selected maidens took part; they brought the newly woven peplos for the ancient wooden cult image of Athena Polias on a ship-shaped wagon. The frieze of the Parthenon shows this procession over a length of 160 metres with around 380 human and animal figures.
At the Great Panathenaia athletes, rhapsodes and musicians competed; the victors received as prize amphorae of pressed olive oil from the sacred grove.
These Panathenaic prize amphorae, with Athena Promachos on one side and the respective sporting event on the other, are today among the richest sources for Attic vase painting of the sixth and fifth centuries.
The athlothetes, who organised the games, belonged to the highest offices of the Attic democracy. From the time of Peisistratos the works of Homer were also recited rhapsodically at the Panathenaia, which contributed to the canonisation of the Homeric epics.
Alongside the Panathenaia there were further festivals of Athena: the Arrhephoria in Skirophorion, at which four high-born maidens carried a hidden basket into the earth; the Chalkeia in Pyanopsion, the smiths’ festival for Athena Ergane and Hephaistos; the Skira in Skirophorion, a withdrawal of the women and the beginning of the new peplos weaving; the Plynteria, at which the ancient cult image was disrobed and washed in the sea.
On this day the city was held to be cultically impure, the temples were closed with cords and political proceedings rested. These rites show Athena less as a martial than as a culture-founding goddess who protects craft, initiation and the civic community.
Beyond Athens her cult was disseminated throughout the Greek world. In Sparta she was called Athena Chalkioikos, «of the brazen house», after a temple lined with bronze plates; in Tegea the temple of Athena Alea was held to be one of the largest sanctuaries of the Peloponnese, erected by Skopas.
In Pergamon the Athena Polias sanctuary stood on the acropolis, beside the famous library of the Attalids. The Hellenistic Athena Nikephoros of Pergamon became the reference point of a panhellenic cultural programme of the Attalids, which invoked Athens as a spiritual home.
Important sanctuaries and temples
The Parthenon on the Athenian Acropolis, built between 447 and 432 BCE under Pericles, is the most famous sanctuary of the goddess. Iktinos and Kallikrates designed the Doric temple, Phidias created the twelve-metre-high gold-and-ivory statue of Athena Parthenos.
The building did not serve as the principal cult site but as treasury and temple of honour; the actual cult image of Athena Polias stood in the neighbouring Erechtheion.
There were also shown the saltwater sea connected with the dispute between Athena and Poseidon and the sacred olive tree. The Parthenon carried on its pediments the birth of Athena (east pediment) and the dispute with Poseidon (west pediment); the metopes showed Gigantomachy, Amazonomachy, Centauromachy and the fall of Troy.
The Erechtheion with the Porch of the Maidens, erected between 421 and 406, was the actual cultic centre. Within it was preserved the archaic wooden image of Athena, a «xoanon», which according to legend had fallen from heaven.
At the Plynteria this image was disrobed annually and washed in the sea, similar to the Samian Tonaia of Hera. The temple unites under one roof the cult of Athena, of Poseidon-Erechtheus and of King Kekrops, and thus counts as the most complex sacral building of the classical period.
Beyond Athens there stand the Athena temple at Sounion, at the south-eastern end of Attica, the temple of Athena Aphaia on Aegina (properly consecrated to Aphaia, but closely connected with Athena iconography), the sanctuary of Athena Pronaia at Delphi and that of Athena Itonia in Thessaly.
In Asia Minor the Athena temple at Priene, erected by Pytheos in the fourth century BCE, and the temple of Athena Lindia on Rhodes belonged to the great pilgrimage sites of the Hellenistic period.
The Lindian Athena temple housed the Lindian Chronicle, an inscription enumerating the most valuable votive offerings of the sanctuary from the earliest period down to 99 BCE.
Mythic narratives
The dispute with Poseidon over Attica belongs to the Athenian foundation narratives. Apollodorus (III, 14, 1) reports that both gods laid claim to the land and presented their gifts before the assembly of the gods.
Poseidon struck his trident into the soil of the Acropolis and made saltwater spring forth (or a horse appear, according to the variant); Athena planted the olive tree.
The assembly of the gods, or King Kekrops, decided in favour of Athena, whereupon Poseidon punished the land with a flood. Phidias rendered this dispute on the west pediment of the Parthenon.
Pausanias (I, 26, 5) attests within the Erechtheion a rock cleft said to derive from the trident’s blow, and the saltwater well, which in a south wind smelled of the sea.
In the Trojan War Athena stands consistently on the Greek side. She guides Odysseus through the «Odyssey», supports Diomedes in the fight against Ares and Aphrodite (Iliad V), and devises with Epeios the wooden horse with which the Trojans themselves open their city.
Her wrath turns after the victory against the Greeks because Ajax the Locrian had violated Cassandra in the temple of the goddess (Euripides, Trojan Women 48 to 97); storm and the misfortune of the return are the consequence.
The dispute over the Palladion, the wooden image of Athena rescued from Troy, remains within myth a political argument of the cities that claim its custody; Argos, Athens and finally Rome (through Aeneas) lay claim to the image as divine legitimation of their state.
In the myth of Medusa, Athena helps Perseus to strike off the head of the Gorgon by handing him the polished shield as a mirror. The Gorgoneion she receives as the central piece of her Aegis.
In Apollodorus (II, 4, 3) and Ovid (Metamorphoses IV, 798 to 803) two different prehistories of the Gorgon are offered; in Ovid’s version Medusa was originally a beautiful mortal who, after being violated by Poseidon in the Athena temple, was transformed by the goddess herself into the dread being.
The older Greek tradition, by contrast, knows Medusa as a primordial dread being without human prehistory.
The myth of Arachne (Ovid, Metamorphoses VI) shows Athena as the inexorable protectress of divine order: the Lydian weaver Arachne challenges the goddess to a contest and depicts in her weaving the misdeeds of the gods. Athena tears the work apart, strikes Arachne with the spindle and finally transforms her into a spider.
In the later tradition the episode became the paradigmatic admonitory fable against pride. At the same time, feminist mythological scholarship reads the material as a reflection on the limits of legitimate artistic critique in the face of power.
Relations within the pantheon
Athena is regarded as the favourite daughter of Zeus; in the «Iliad» she alone bears his Aegis shield on his behalf. Her loyalty to her father is absolute, and only in one episode (Iliad I, 396 to 406) is she mentioned as part of the Olympian conspiracy against him.
With her siblings Apollo and Artemis she has a calm, equally weighted relationship; all three embody the younger, skill-bearing generation over against the older pantheon. With Hermes she shares the function of the prudent protector, for which reason both stand together by Perseus, Heracles and Odysseus.
The rivalry with Poseidon marks several local myths, alongside Athens also at Troezen and Argos. With Ares there is open enmity: Athena stands for strategic warfare, Ares for the ecstatic fury of battle.
In Homer, Athena wounds Ares by the hand of Diomedes (Iliad V, 855 to 859), and the two meet again in the theomachy of Iliad XX and XXI.
With Aphrodite a reservedly hostile relationship is evident, occasioned by the Judgement of Paris; Athena had promised Paris prudence and victory in war, Aphrodite had promised him Helen.
Hephaistos is her companion in craft; together both were regarded as the protective patrons of the Attic artisans. The Hephaisteion on the Agora, often wrongly called the «Theseion», was jointly consecrated to the two and is the best preserved Doric temple of Greece.
A particular bond joins Athena with the heroes: Odysseus, Perseus, Bellerophon (to whom she gives the golden bridle for Pegasus), Diomedes, Jason and above all Heracles receive her support in a form which, according to the Homeric ethic, represents the highest possible mark of divine favour.
In Hesiod’s Shield of Heracles, Athena appears as the arming patroness who equips the hero with divine prudence.
Reception
The Roman identification with Minerva gives rise to a shifted emphasis: Minerva was originally an Etruscan goddess Menrva, whose functions as patroness of craft and of schools stood in the foreground; the martial dimension of the Greek Athena was covered in Rome by Mars and Bellona.
Within the Capitoline triad with Jupiter and Juno, however, Minerva remained a central state deity, and Domitian erected for her on the Campus Martius a significant sanctuary.
The Quinquatrus, five-day festivals in March, honoured Minerva especially as patroness of teachers and pupils; Ovid devotes to them in the «Fasti» (III, 809 to 848) a detailed description.
In late antiquity the Athena Parthenos developed into a cultural cipher: Procopius reports that the image of Athena Promachos was still standing in Constantinople in the sixth century, before it was destroyed in the uprising of 1203. The Middle Ages knew Pallas above all as an allegorical figure of wisdom; in the «Roman de la Rose» and in Christine de Pizan’s «Cité des Dames» she becomes the protective goddess of educated women.
Boccaccio’s «De claris mulieribus» places her in the line of exemplary female figures of antiquity, and Petrarch treats her in the «Africa».
The Renaissance brought, with Sandro Botticelli’s «Pallas and the Centaur» and Andrea Mantegna’s «Pallas Expelling the Vices», a humanist reappropriation. The eighteenth century saw in Pallas Athena the image of the Enlightenment, which Schiller celebrated in his famous distich «The most beautiful science».
The nineteenth century made her the heraldic image of academies and universities, for instance of the Academy of Sciences in Berlin and of the University of Athens, at whose entrance hall the statue of the goddess stands after the model of Phidias.
The foundational studies of Klaus Vierneisel and Paul Zanker on Athena iconography have systematically worked out the cultural-political significance of the figure in Classicism and in the nineteenth century.
Scholarly classification
The etymology of the name Athena remains disputed. An Indo-European derivation is regarded as improbable; most researchers, including Robert Beekes, assume a pre-Greek, Aegean origin. The Linear B script attests the designation «a-ta-na-po-ti-ni-ja» («Lady Athana») in an inscription from Knossos, which suggests a Bronze Age protective goddess of a citadel or palace city.
Martin P. Nilsson saw in Athena a personification of the Mycenaean palace mistress who, in the transition from palace-era kingship to polis religion, retained her martial and craft-related function.
From an Indo-European comparative perspective Athena shows structural similarities with the Roman Minerva (via Etruscan mediation) and with the Indo-Aryan Sarasvati, who likewise protects wisdom, speech and art.
Yet the specific combination of female warrior, patroness of crafts and protectress of the city is rare in the Indo-European comparative material and supports the assumption of an Aegean substratum deity.
Georges Dumézil could not assign Athena unambiguously within his theory of the three functions: she shows traits of all three functions, which would be unusual in an Indo-European deity but is to be expected in a substratum deity.
Walter Burkert and Jean-Pierre Vernant have worked out the structural opposition between Athena and Ares as a model of the Greek classification of war: Athena stands for controlled, polis-bound and ultimately reconcilable martial violence, Ares for the ecstatic, community-dissolving fury of battle. This polarity is a key to the understanding of Greek military ethics.
Joan Connelly’s thesis (2014), that the Parthenon frieze depicts not the Panathenaic procession but the mythical sacrifice of the daughters of Erechtheus, has occasioned a new debate over the religious programme of the Athenian state cult.
Recent scholarship of the last decades emphasises, on the whole, the political function of Athena as a symbol of the democratic self-affirmation of Athens.
Sources
Homer, «Iliad» (especially V, XV, XX to XXII) and «Odyssey» (especially I, V, XIII). Hesiod, «Theogony» 886 to 900 and 924 to 926. Apollodorus, «Bibliotheke», III, 14 (dispute over Attica, Erichthonios).
Pausanias, «Description of Greece», I, 24 to 28 (Acropolis); Herodotus, «Histories», IV, 180 (Libyan Athena cult). Ovid, «Metamorphoses», VI, 5 to 145 (Arachne) and IV, 798 to 803 (Medusa).
Ovid, «Fasti» III, 809 to 848 (Quinquatrus). Pindar, Olympian Odes VII. Euripides, «Ion» and «Trojan Women».
Walter Burkert, «Greek Religion of the Archaic and Classical Period», Stuttgart 1977. Karl Kerényi, «The Mythology of the Greeks», Zurich 1951. Jean-Pierre Vernant, «Myth and Society in Ancient Greece», Frankfurt am Main 1987. Joan Breton Connelly, «The Parthenon Enigma», New York 2014.
