Mythos: A Retelling of the Myths of Ancient Greece

‘Athena!’

‘Father!’ she said, smiling gently in return.

Athena

The qualities that ATHENAfn19 embodied were ones that would become the paramount virtues and accomplishments of the great city state that would bear her name: Athens. Wisdom and insight were inherited from her mother, Metis. Handicraft, warcraft and statecraft were hers. Law and justice too. She took a share in what had been uniquely Aphrodite’s domains of love and beauty. Athena’s kind of beauty was expressed in aesthetics, in the apprehension of its ideal in art, representation, thought and character, rather than in the more physical, obvious and perhaps superficial kinds that would always be the business of Aphrodite. The love that Athena stood for had a less heated and physical emphasis too; it was the kind that would later become known as ‘Platonic’. The Athenians were to prize these attributes of Athena above all others, just as they prized her, their patroness, over all existing immortals. I say ‘existing’ for – as we shall discover – two other Olympian deities, as yet unborn, would soon play their part in defining what it was to be an Athenian and a Greek.

In later years Athena and Poseidon would vie for the special patronage of the city of Cecropia. He struck his trident into the high rock on which they stood and produced a spring of seawater; an impressive trick, but its saltiness rendered it more or less useless as anything more than a picturesque public fountain. Athena’s simple gift was the first olive tree. The citizens of Cecropia in their wisdom saw the manifold benefits of its fruit, oil and wood and chose her as their presiding deity and protectress, changing the name of their city to Athens in her honour.fn20

In Rome she was worshipped as MINERVA, but without really that special personal connection that the Greeks felt for her. Her favoured animals were the owl, that dignified symbol of watchful wisdom, and the serpent – in which guise her father had won her mother. The olive tree, whose soft and versatile fruit proved to be such a blessing to Greece, was sacred to her also.fn21

The apparent gentleness of those grey eyes belied a new kind of ideal, one which combined physical power with strength of character and strength of mind. It was not wise to anger her. Besides, if you crossed Athena, you crossed Zeus. He was besotted with his daughter and she could do no wrong in his eyes. Ares, his least favourite child, made an interesting contrast to his new half-sister. They were both gods of war, but Athena’s interests lay in planning, tactics, strategy and the intelligent art of war, while Ares was a god of battles, combat and all forms of fighting. He understood only violence, force, aggression, conquest and coercion. It is distressing but essential to recognize that neither was as powerful when not allied with the other.

Athena was often given the forename PALLAS, and as Pallas Athena she protected her city Athens. The symbol of her guardianship was called the palladium, a word that has somehow found its way into the naming of theatres as well as giving us the element Pd. The original Pallas was a daughter of the sea god Triton and a dear childhood friend of Athena’s. They would play semi-serious war games together. On one occasion, when Pallas was winning against Athena, Zeus (ever watchful and protective of his darling) intervened and, setting one of his thunderbolts to stun, knocked Pallas unconscious. Athena, in the heat of the moment, administered the coup de grâce and killed her friend. For ever after she bore Pallas’s name as a sorrowful token of her enduring affection and remorse.

Athena, like Demeter, remained untouched by man.fn22 Her childless, single life and her youthful relationship with Pallas have led some to maintain that she should stand as a symbol of feminine same-sex love.

Metis Within

When Zeus had tricked Athena’s mother into becoming a fly in order to use his lizard tongue to reel her in, Metis had been uncharacteristically foolish. Or so it seemed.

In fact she had not been tricked at all. She had done the tricking. Metis means ‘craft’ and ‘guile’ after all. She had quite deliberately allowed herself to be consumed by Zeus – more than that, she had duped him into doing so. She saw that, if she sacrificed her freedom and remained inside him always, she could assume the role of a wise counsellor, a kind of consigliere, for ever able to whisper advice to him. Whether he liked it or not.

Those who speak truth to power usually end up in chains or an early grave, but inside Zeus’s head Metis could never be silenced. She would be a prudent check on the reckless excesses and headlong passions that often threatened to get the god of thunder into trouble. His storms of temper, lust and jealousy needed to be balanced by her calm voice, a voice that could urge his instincts into more rational and enlightened channels.