Athena- Greek GodDeity"Grey-Eyed Athena"

The Extraordinary Birth

Zeus had received a prophecy from Gaia and Uranus: the Titaness Metis would first bear a daughter equal to him in strength and wisdom, then a son who would overthrow him. The same pattern had destroyed Uranus and Kronos before him. Terrified, Zeus swallowed Metis whole while she was already pregnant.

Metis did not perish within Zeus. She began crafting a helmet and breastplate for her unborn daughter. The hammering caused Zeus unbearable headaches that worsened daily until he could bear no more. He called upon Hephaestus to split his skull with an axe. From the wound sprang Athena, fully grown, fully armed, and letting out a war cry so mighty that heaven and earth trembled.

The Virgin Warrior

Athena never married, never took a lover. The Parthenon in Athens bore her title: Parthenos, the virgin. On the battlefield, she was nothing like Ares. Where the war god waded into slaughter for the love of blood, Athena chose her moments and guided her champions.

In the Iliad, when Achilles is about to draw his sword on Agamemnon in a rage that would shatter the Greek alliance, Athena appears behind him, unseen by all others, and seizes him by the hair. His fury turns to restraint. She grants Diomedes the power to see through divine disguises and wound both Ares and Aphrodite on the battlefield.

Patroness of Athens

Both Athena and Poseidon desired to be patron of the city rising on the Attic peninsula. They agreed to settle it by each offering a gift. Poseidon struck the Acropolis with his trident and a spring of salt water gushed forth. Athena planted the first olive tree.

The citizens chose Athena. Poseidon, furious, flooded the Attic plain in revenge, but the decision stood. A sacred olive tree grew on the Acropolis, said to be the very one she had planted. When the Persians burned Athens in 480 BCE, the tree was destroyed, but Herodotus records that it had already sprouted a new shoot by the next day.

Every four years, Athens celebrated the Panathenaia: a procession wound through the city to drape her cult statue in a newly woven peplos, and victors in the accompanying games won oil pressed from her sacred olives.

Erichthonius and the Sacred Serpent

When Hephaestus attempted to force himself upon Athena, she fought him off, and his seed fell upon the earth. From this the child Erichthonius was conceived, born of Gaia but claimed by Athena as her ward. She placed the infant in a chest and entrusted it to the three daughters of Cecrops, king of Athens, with strict orders never to open it. Herse and Aglauros disobeyed. According to Apollodorus, they found the child guarded by a serpent. Driven mad by the sight, they threw themselves from the Acropolis.

Athena raised Erichthonius herself. He became king of Athens, established the Panathenaic festival, and placed Athena's image on the Acropolis. The sacred snake kept in the cella of the Parthenon was believed to be his living manifestation. When the priests found its honey-cake offerings untouched before the Persian invasion, they knew the goddess had left the city.

Athena and the Founding of Law

When Orestes killed his mother Clytemnestra to avenge the murder of Agamemnon, the Erinyes hounded him across Greece. Apollo had commanded the killing, but the Erinyes did not answer to Apollo. In Aeschylus's Eumenides, Athena broke the impasse. She established the Areopagus, Athens's first court of law, and empaneled Athenian citizens as jurors. The votes split evenly. Athena cast the deciding ballot for acquittal.

The Erinyes raged at the verdict. Athena offered them a dwelling beneath the Acropolis, honored with processions and first-fruits from the Athenians. They accepted and took a new name: the Eumenides, the Kindly Ones.

Champion of Heroes

Athena armed her favorites and guided them through impossible tasks. When Perseus set out to slay the Gorgon Medusa, she gave him her polished bronze shield to use as a mirror, so he could find Medusa's neck without meeting her gaze. He returned the severed head to Athena, and she fixed it to her aegis, the divine shield she carried into battle.

Her longest devotion was to Odysseus. She watched over his ten-year wandering, steering him home through storms and the hatred of Poseidon. When they meet at last on Ithaca, she tells him: "We both know tricks, since you are by far the best among all men in counsel and tales, but I among all the gods have renown for wit and tricks."

At the wedding of Peleus and Thetis, Eris had thrown a golden apple inscribed "for the fairest" among the guests. Athena, Hera, and Aphrodite each claimed it. Paris, a Trojan prince, chose Aphrodite. Athena never forgave him. She never forgave Troy.

Athena and Arachne

Arachne was a mortal woman of Lydia so skilled at weaving that people traveled to watch her hands move across the loom. She boasted that her skill surpassed Athena's.

In Ovid's Metamorphoses, Athena visited her disguised as an old woman, warning her to withdraw the claim. Arachne refused. Athena revealed herself and they wove side by side. Athena's cloth showed the gods enthroned in their glory. Arachne's showed Zeus as a bull carrying off Europa and as gold pouring into Danaë's lap. The work was flawless.

Athena tore the cloth apart and struck Arachne. In despair, Arachne knotted a rope and hanged herself. Athena loosened the noose but did not relent. She sprinkled Arachne with Hecate's herbs, and the woman shrank: her hair fell out, her fingers thinned to legs. She became the first spider, weaving still.