Athena
Who was Athena?
How was Athena born?
How is Athena usually portrayed?
What is Athena’s animal symbol?
What was Athena’s role in the Iliad?
Athena, in Greek religion, the city protector, the goddess of war, handicraft, and practical reason, and one of the 12 Olympians. She was identified by the Romans with Minerva. Athena was essentially urban and civilized, the antithesis in many respects of Artemis, goddess of the outdoors. She was probably a pre-Hellenic goddess later taken over by the Greeks. Yet the Greek economy, unlike that of the Minoans, was largely military, so that Athena, while retaining her earlier domestic functions, became a goddess of war. The owl and the olive tree were sacred to her, and she was associated with an aegis—either a shield, breastplate, or cloak, which in some accounts originally belonged to Zeus.
Mythology
Birth
Athena was the daughter of Zeus and was known for her miraculous birth, emerging fully grown, in armor, and emitting a battle cry from Zeus’s forehead. In some accounts she was produced without a mother, and in an alternative story her mother was Metis, the goddess of counsel, whom Zeus swallowed while she was pregnant with Athena. Being the favorite child of Zeus, Athena had great power. In turn, she favored such mortal heroes as Odysseus, Heracles, and Perseus.
Role in the Gigantomachy
Athena was crucial to the gods’ victory over the race of Giants in a battle for supremacy known as the Gigantomachy. She was instrumental in Heracles’s defeat of the Giant Alcyoneus, who could not die as long as he was in his hometown of Pallene. Athena was directly responsible for the death of the Giant Enceladus, at whom she threw the island of Sicily, burying him. In some versions Athena or Zeus turned the Giants into rocks, hills, and mountains.
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Athena is often referred to as Pallas Athena, possibly in honor of the goddess’s childhood friend Pallas, whom she killed accidentally. The Palladium of Troy was supposedly made in the image of Pallas. Another Pallas mentioned in myths about Athena was a Giant whom she defeated and from whose skin she fashioned her aegis. The word pallas can also be translated as “maiden.”
Patron of Athens
Athena and Poseidon, god of the sea and brother of Zeus, were rivals for dominance over the city of Athens. In a contest to become the city’s patron, Poseidon created a spring of salt water from a rock (in some versions he produced the first horse) while Athena planted the first olive tree. Her gift won the citizens over; Athens got its name and was forever associated with its patron goddess. Athena was also regarded as a protector of other cities, including Troy: In the Trojan War the Greeks removed the Palladium, the statue of Athena that protected the city, to secure their victory by means of the Trojan horse.
Punishment of Medusa
Athena was responsible for the transformation of Medusa into a monster and was also involved in her slaying. Medusa, born a beautiful woman, was violated by Poseidon in a temple to Athena, whom she served as priestess. Enraged, Athena dispensed a curse that left Medusa with a head of snakes for hair and a face that turned all those who looked upon it into stone. When Perseus set out on his quest to bring back Medusa’s head, Athena lent him her polished, reflective shield and advised him against looking at Medusa directly. After Perseus decapitated Medusa, Athena placed the head on her aegis.
Punishment of Arachne
Athena was challenged to a weaving contest by the mortal Arachne and produced a tapestry depicting the gods in their majesty. Arachne, however, chose to show their amorous adventures. Either jealous of the perfection of Arachne’s weaving or offended by the subject matter, Athena tore up her rival’s tapestry, after which the unfortunate Arachne hanged herself. Out of pity, Athena changed the rope into a web and Arachne into a spider.
Birth of Erichthonius
Athena is regarded as the adoptive mother of the half-human, half-serpent Erichthonius, who was born from semen spilled on the earth when Hephaestus, the divine smith, attempted to assault Athena. She gave a basket with the infant Erichthonius hidden in it to the Athenian princess Pandrosus, with orders not to open it. Pandrosus’s sisters, however, opened the basket (in some versions they persuaded Pandrosus to take part), and they were driven insane. Athena then raised Erichthonius herself, and he later became king of Athens.
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The “judgment of Paris”
A divine dispute occurred when Athena, Hera, and Aphrodite all claimed a golden apple meant for the fairest goddess. The Trojan prince Paris was appointed by Zeus to act as arbitrator and awarded the apple to Aphrodite, who had promised him the love of the most beautiful woman in the world, Helen. The “judgment of Paris” anticipated the Trojan War, in which Athena favored the Greek side.
Role in the Odyssey
Athena played a significant role in Homer’s Odyssey, which chronicled the wanderings of Odysseus after the Trojan War. She was instrumental in securing Odysseus’s release from the nymph Calypso by persuading Zeus to intervene. Athena helped Odysseus reach the Phaeacian shore after being shipwrecked by Poseidon, and she facilitated the discovery of him by the Phaeacian princess Nausicaa. In Ithaca she disguised him as a beggar as a precautionary measure and guided him in the final battle against the suitors of his wife, Penelope, to reclaim his family and throne.
Attributes
Athena’s association with the acropolises of various Greek cities probably stemmed from the location of the kings’ palaces there. She was thought to have had neither consort nor offspring apart from the adopted Erichthonius. She may not have been described as a virgin originally, but virginity was attributed to her very early on and was the basis for the interpretation of her epithets Pallas, translated as “maiden,” and Parthenos. As a war goddess Athena could not be dominated by other goddesses, such as Aphrodite, and as a palace goddess she could not be violated.
In Homer’s Iliad, Athena, as a war goddess, inspires and fights alongside the Greek heroes; her aid is synonymous with military prowess. Also in the Iliad, Zeus, the chief god, specifically assigns the sphere of war to Ares, the god of war, and Athena. Athena’s moral and military superiority to Ares derives in part from the fact that she represents the intellectual and civilized side of war and the virtues of justice and skill, whereas Ares represents mere bloodlust. Her superiority also derives in part from the vastly greater variety and importance of her functions and from the patriotism of Homer’s predecessors, Ares being of foreign origin. In the Iliad, Athena is the divine form of the heroic martial ideal: She personifies excellence in close combat, victory, and glory. The qualities that lead to victory are found on the aegis Athena wears when she goes to war: fear, strife, defense, and assault. Athena appears in Homer’s Odyssey as the tutelary deity of Odysseus, and myths from later sources portray her similarly as helper of Perseus and Heracles. As the guardian of the welfare of kings, Athena became the goddess of good counsel, prudent restraint, and practical insight, as well as of war.
In post-Mycenaean times, the city, especially its citadel, replaced the palace as Athena’s domain. She was widely worshipped, but in modern times she is associated primarily with Athens, to which she gave her name. Her emergence there as city goddess, Athena Polias (“Athena, Guardian of the City”), accompanied the ancient city-state’s transition from monarchy to democracy. She was associated with birds, particularly the little owl, which became famous as the city’s symbol, and with the snake. Her birth and her contest with Poseidon were depicted on the pediments of the Parthenon, and the great festival of the Panathenaea, in July, was a celebration of her birthday. She was also worshipped in many other cities, notably Sparta.
Athena became the goddess of crafts and skilled peacetime pursuits in general. She was particularly known as the patroness of spinning and weaving. That she ultimately became allegorized to personify wisdom and righteousness was a natural development of her patronage of skill.
In art and culture
Athena was customarily portrayed wearing body armor and a helmet and carrying a shield and lance. Two Athenians, the sculptor Phidias and the playwright Aeschylus, contributed significantly to the cultural dissemination of Athena’s image. She inspired three of Phidias’s sculptural masterpieces, including the massive chryselephantine (gold and ivory) statue of Athena Parthenos once housed in the Parthenon and now lost. In Aeschylus’s dramatic tragedy Eumenides, Athena founded the Areopagus (Athens’s aristocratic council), and, by breaking a deadlock of the judges in favor of Orestes, the defendant, she set the precedent that a tied vote signified acquittal.
Post-classical artistic representations of Athena include Sandro Botticelli’s Pallas and the Centaur, painted about 1482, and Andrea Mantegna’s Minerva Expelling the Vices from the Garden of Virtue, painted about 1502. Athena was sometimes used by artists as a symbol of powerful queens. Peter Paul Rubens, for instance, depicted Marie de Médicis as the goddess in one of a series of paintings known as the Marie de Medici cycle (1622–25).
In popular culture Isabella Rossellini played Athena in the 1997 miniseries The Odyssey. Athena was portrayed by Melina Kanakaredes in the film Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief (2010). Zendaya has been cast as Athena in director Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey (2026), also starring Matt Damon as Odysseus, Anne Hathaway as Penelope, and Tom Holland as Telemachus.
