The Taming of Athena the Beautiful: How the Popular Greek Goddess Became the Daughter of Zeus

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

The goddess Athena is one of the three most important deities for the ancient Greeks, along with the Thunderer Zeus and the patron of the arts Apollo. Usually Athena is referred to as the goddess of war and wisdom. In fact, her image and role in the beliefs of the ancient Greeks is much more complicated, and her popularity among the people can even compete with Aphrodite. Even when the Greek gods, according to legend, fled to Egypt, Athena stayed with her people - the Greeks could not imagine anything else.

The daughter of the supreme god. Or the supreme goddess?

If we start with Athens's "official duties", then their list is truly amazing. She patronizes not only wisdom and war. Athena was considered the goddess of a large list of crafts: shipbuilding, weaving, spinning, making horse harness and metal products, pottery and plowing. She patronized the art of medicine and taught him the god of medicine Asclepius. She invented statehood and laws, taught people how to cook food in the hearth.

In fact, the description of what Athena gave to people and what she patronized is very similar to the gifts and areas of influence of the supreme deities or demigods - the founders of civilization among many other peoples. Why then is Zeus considered the supreme god?

I must say that in the Greek lands a large number of large and small deities were worshiped and for a very long time none of them was considered the main one over all other gods. The harmonious system, in which each god is assigned a place in the huge Olympic family, was the result of bringing all local beliefs to a common form by the priests and thinkers. This happened already at the time of the formation of a clear power hierarchy of society, the strengthening of statehood, and the new system of the hierarchy of the gods responded to new ideas about how any community in the world should be organized in general.

So the gods got their king. They became the god of thunder, lightning and, possibly, just revenge - Zeus. Together with the new role, he probably acquired new functions - exactly those that should have been in the divine reflection of the earthly king and patriarch of the family.

Zeus is considered the father of Athena. According to one version of events, he swallowed the goddess of thought Metis, after which Zeus had a terrible headache. Hephaestus, the blacksmith god, split his head, and from there flew Athena and the goddess of victory Nike. In another version, Metis is also absent, and Athena turns out to be the embodied thought of Zeus. Some researchers believe that such a terrifying way of birth speaks of the antiquity of the myth; others consider the version with Metis and the head of Zeus to be an attempt to reconcile and connect the lines of the official supreme god and a much more popular and significant goddess for the common people.

Closer to the original story of birth can be considered, probably, the plot with the giant Pallas. At least the story of the goddess killing her father, a cruel old god trying to rape his daughter, logically parallels the story of Zeus, who rebelled against his father Kronos, who devoured his own children. When people change their ideas about what is good and bad, stories also appear about how new deities kill old ones, too wild and ferocious.

By the way, in another story with Pallas, his daughter turns out to be Athena's friend from Nick's games. Perhaps, Nika and Athena were originally sisters and killed their rapist father together. In any case, they are portrayed as inseparable.

Protector of women

Athena has a complicated relationship not only with Zeus. First, it partially duplicates both his functions and the functions of some other gods, for example, Ares, the god of war, and Hephaestus, the god of blacksmiths and crafts. Secondly, she constantly competes with Ares and Poseidon, the god of the oceans, and invariably comes out of confrontation with them victorious. But Poseidon is the brother of Zeus, the king of the gods. Athena is shown to be virtually equal to him in strength.

The most famous myth about their confrontation is the dispute over who will become the patron saint of the city of Athens. Usually it is known in this version: the gods decide to see who can give people a more valuable gift. Poseidon sticks a trident into the ground, and a spring springs from the rock. Athena jabs her spear and it turns into an olive tree. Only in the spring - salty sea water instead of fresh. Poseidon's gift is declared useless, and Athena wins. The city is named after her.

There is another version of this myth. When the turn of the Athenians comes to vote for the gods, all men choose Poseidon and all women choose Athena. There are one more women than men. The goddess wins. In a rage, Poseidon arranges a flood that nearly swept the city off the face of the earth. As punishment, the Athenians are forever deprived of the right to vote, citizenship and the right to transmit their name (like a patronymic) to children.

This myth shows, first of all, how popular Athena was among women. And not without reason. She patronized not only weaving and spinning. She was asked to help her get pregnant or save her from rape (who else?). For the latter, for example, the Trojan princess Cassandra prayed to Athena. Athena could not help her, but took revenge by depriving the rapist of her mind. Athena herself in myths cleverly avoids rape. Father Zeus gives her as a wife to Hephaestus in payment for weapons for the gods. Hephaestus tries to take Athena by force, but she fights back and runs away.

Goddess of beauty and fertility

Another feature of Athens that is often overlooked is beauty and power over beauty. She participates in stories that challenge her beauty. For example, during the famous trial of Paris, she competes on a par with the main female goddess Hero and the goddess of beauty and love Aphrodite (by the way, the wife of Hephaestus). During the celebrations, they chose to portray Athena as a tall and at the same time very beautiful hetera. Athena herself also gives beauty and youth to Odysseus and Penelope when Odysseus returns home. She patronizes them as a couple in love. So the researchers have every reason to believe that the image of Aphrodite could separate from the image of Athena. Hence the “common” husband.

Is the image of the goddess of love and war at the same time surprising? No. He's not even unique. Combines these qualities, for example, the ancient Akkadian goddess Ishtar. Only, unlike Ishtar, the goddess of war Athena and her favorites Odysseus and Achilles avoid war in every possible way. Odysseus finds a way to prevent a war over the wedding of Elena the Beautiful, for example. True, in the war because of her next marriage, he still has to participate.

We can judge the antiquity of Athena as a deity by the fact that it has animal attributes: it is associated with owls and snakes. She has "owl eyes" (that is, sparkling), she is portrayed with an owl. She conceives a serpent son from Hephaestus (although she bears the conceived Gaia), on her shield is the head of a Gorgon with serpent hair, Virgil describes her armor as covered with snake scales.

Snakes are a very archaic symbol of both fertility and connection with the afterlife. In addition, the goddesses with snakes or serpentine attributes in the mainstream of psychoanalysts are interpreted as female matriarchs who have tamed or appropriated an aggressive masculine principle. In Crete, the island where Athena was especially revered, many very ancient statues of a female deity with snakes in their hands are found. Perhaps the Cretan serpent goddess is related to Owl-Eye! It is significant that women in Crete led an active social life.

And maybe the Athenians once did too. And the myth of the dispute between Athena and Poseidon was needed to assert for granted the removal of their civil rights from the inhabitants of Athens. In any case, one day the Greek gods lost to Christianity, and temples of Athena, including the famous Parthenon, were destroyed by people and time.