Myth · Greek

Athena

Greek mythology — Olympian, goddess of wisdom, craft and strategic war

Athena is the goddess of wisdom, of handicraft and of war conducted by skill rather than slaughter, and the patron deity of Athens, which she won from Poseidon with the gift of the olive. Born fully armed from the head of Zeus, she is the virgin goddess, Parthenos, whose great temple on the Acropolis was built for her. She is the steady helper of heroes — Perseus, Heracles, Bellerophon, Jason and above all Odysseus, whose cunning mirrors her own.

How to spot them

▸Owl, olive tree, the aegis with the Gorgon's head, helmet and spear
▸Born fully armed from the head of Zeus; the virgin goddess, Parthenos
▸Epithets Pallas, Glaukopis ('bright-eyed' or 'owl-eyed'), Promachos and Polias
▸The Parthenon, the Panathenaic festival, and the olive tree on the Acropolis

Stories & episodes

Sprang fully grown and armoured from her father's split skull

Zeus had swallowed her mother Metis; Hephaestus opened his head with an axe.

Turned a Lydian weaver into a spider after losing a contest of tapestry

Arachne's cloth showed the gods' infidelities; Ovid tells the story in Metamorphoses 6.

Gave Perseus a polished shield to use as a mirror against the Gorgon

She afterwards set Medusa's head on her own aegis.

Won a city with the gift of the olive tree

The contest with Poseidon for Attica, judged by Cecrops or the gods.

Shadowed Odysseus home, often in the guise of the old friend Mentor

From that disguise English gets the word 'mentor'.

Invented the aulos, then threw it away on seeing her puffed cheeks in the water

The satyr Marsyas picked it up, with fatal consequences.

Her wooden image was said to keep Troy safe while it stood in the city

The Palladium, stolen by Odysseus and Diomedes; Rome later claimed to hold it.

Tamed Pegasus with a golden bridle and gave it to Bellerophon

One of her many gifts to heroes; the bridle came with the plan for killing the Chimera.

Quick-fire facts

•Roman equivalent: Minerva, one of the Capitoline Triad with Jupiter and Juno
•Daughter of Zeus and the Titaness Metis, whom Zeus swallowed on a prophecy that her child would surpass him
•The Parthenon (447–432 BC) held Phidias' colossal gold-and-ivory Athena Parthenos; his bronze Athena Promachos stood outside
•The Panathenaic festival, held every year and with special splendour every fourth, presented her with a new peplos
•The Athenian tetradrachm — Athena's head on one side, her owl on the other — was the reserve currency of the Aegean, giving the phrase 'owls to Athens'
•In Aeschylus' Eumenides she casts the deciding vote that acquits Orestes and founds the Areopagus court
•Sacred to her: the olive, the owl (Athene noctua, the little owl), the snake and the cockerel
•Called Pallas Athena after Pallas, variously a childhood companion she accidentally killed or a giant she flayed
•The Athena Nike temple and the Erechtheion, with its Caryatids, also stand on her Acropolis
•The asteroid 881 Athene and the mineral minervite carry her Greek and Roman names

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Sources

Aaron J. Atsma, the Theoi Project — Athena
Ovid — Metamorphoses Book 6, the weaving contest with Arachne