athena's shield in greek mythology athena's shield in greek mythology

In ancient Greek mythology, the goddess Athena kept an owl on her shoulder that revealed truths to her and represented wisdom and knowledge. Medusa wherever you're right now. In the Iliad when Zeus sends Apollo to revive the wounded Hector, Apollo, holding the aegis, charges the Achaeans, pushing them back to their ships drawn up on the shore. [103][104], After swallowing Metis, Zeus took six more wives in succession until he married his seventh and present wife, Hera. According to other sources, it was not a shield but rather an animal skin worn over the garments of the gods as extra protection. Others highlight the city's connection to their patron goddess, Athena, who was a significant part of Ancient Greece's polytheistic theology. Perseus used this shield to see Medusa's reflection in order to fight her without looking at . They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors. [70] In a temple at Phrixa in Elis, reportedly built by Clymenus, she was known as Cydonia (). [126], In Homer's Iliad, Athena, as a war goddess, inspired and fought alongside the Greek heroes; her aid was synonymous with military prowess. She was widely worshipped, but in modern times she is associated primarily with Athens, to which she gave her name. [117] Although Agamemnon attempted to placate her anger with sacrifices, Athena sent a storm at Cape Kaphereos to destroy almost the entire Greek fleet and scatter all of the surviving ships across the Aegean. [216] During the Middle Ages, however, many attributes of Athena were given to the Virgin Mary,[216] who, in fourth-century portrayals, was often depicted wearing the Gorgoneion. "It produced a sound as from myriad roaring dragons (Iliad, 4.17) and was borne by Athena in battle and among them went bright-eyed Athene, holding the precious aegis which is ageless and immortal: a hundred tassels of pure gold hang fluttering from it, tight-woven each of them, and each the worth of a hundred oxen."[2]. [161][146][162] It is not until he washes up on the shore of the island of the Phaeacians, where Nausicaa is washing her clothes that Athena arrives personally to provide more tangible assistance. [56] This role is expressed in several stories about Athena. [6] In ancient times, scholars argued whether Athena was named after Athens or Athens after Athena. [137], Erichthonius was one of the most important founding heroes of Athens[51] and the legend of the daughters of Cecrops was a cult myth linked to the rituals of the Arrhephoria festival. She was the daughter of Zeus, produced without a mother, so that she emerged full-grown from his forehead. [135] Aglauros, and possibly one of the other sisters,[135] opened the chest. [130], Herodotus records that a serpent lived in a crevice on the north side of the summit of the Athenian Acropolis[130] and that the Athenians left a honey cake for it each month as an offering. [207], Athena appears frequently in classical Greek art, including on coins and in paintings on ceramics. [24] In the third book of the Odyssey, she takes the form of a sea-eagle. [94][95][96] The earliest mention is in Book V of the Iliad, when Ares accuses Zeus of being biased in favor of Athena because "autos egeinao" (literally "you fathered her", but probably intended as "you gave birth to her"). [205] In Sophocles's tragedy Ajax, she punishes Odysseus's rival Ajax the Great, driving him insane and causing him to massacre the Achaeans' cattle, thinking that he is slaughtering the Achaeans themselves. Her half-brother Apollo however, angered and spiteful at the practitioners of an art rival to his own, complained to their father Zeus about it, with the pretext that many people took to casting pebbles, but few actually were true prophets. Her main festival in Athens was the Panathenaia, which was celebrated during the month of Hekatombaion in midsummer and was the most important festival on the Athenian calendar. Athenas 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 blood lust. It established their descent from earlier deities considered to remain powerful. She is the daughter of Zeus and Metis, and is said to have been born fully grown and armored from the . [224] In his book A Revelation of the True Minerva (1582), Thomas Blennerhassett portrays Queen Elizabeth I of England as a "new Minerva" and "the greatest goddesse nowe on earth". [201][202] When the Trojan women go to the temple of Athena on the Acropolis to plead her for protection from Diomedes, Athena ignores them. [20] Best translates the initial a-ta-n-t, which is recurrent in line beginnings, as "I have given". [53][129] Robert Graves was of the opinion that "Poseidon's attempts to take possession of certain cities are political myths",[128] which reflect the conflict between matriarchal and patriarchal religions. [144][145] Pseudo-Apollodorus also records that Athena guided the hero Perseus in his quest to behead Medusa. The shield of a deity as described above. Athena, the patron goddess of the city of Athens, is associated with over a dozen sacred symbols from which she derived her powers. [156] She is presented as his "stern ally",[157] but also the "gentle acknowledger of his achievements. Athena's moral and military superiority to Ares derived in part from the fact that she represented the intellectual and civilized side of war and the virtues of justice and skill, whereas Ares represented mere blood lust. The aegis (/ids/ EE-jis;[1] Ancient Greek: aigs), as stated in the Iliad, is a device carried by Athena and Zeus, variously interpreted as an animal skin or a shield and sometimes featuring the head of a Gorgon. The qualities that lead to victory are found on the aegis, or breastplate, that Athena wears when she goes to war: fear, strife, defense, and assault. [148][149] Athena gave Perseus a polished bronze shield to view Medusa's reflection rather than looking at her directly and thereby avoid being turned to stone. [99][100][98][101] After learning that Metis was pregnant, however, he became afraid that the unborn offspring would try to overthrow him, because Gaia and Ouranos had prophesied that Metis would bear children wiser than their father. [178], A myth told by the early third-century BC Hellenistic poet Callimachus in his Hymn 5 begins with Athena bathing in a spring on Mount Helicon at midday with one of her favorite companions, the nymph Chariclo. [213], Attic black-figure exaleiptron of the birth of Athena from the head of Zeus (c. 570560 BC) by the C Painter[208], Attic red-figure kylix of Athena Promachos holding a spear and standing beside a Doric column (c. 500-490 BC), Restoration of the polychrome decoration of the Athena statue from the Aphaea temple at Aegina, c.490 BC (from the exposition "Bunte Gtter" by the Munich Glyptothek), The Mourning Athena relief (c. 470-460 BC)[211][208], Attic red-figure kylix showing Athena slaying the Giant Enceladus (c. 550500 BC), Relief of Athena and Nike slaying the Giant Alkyoneus (?) Below are all possible answers to this clue ordered by its rank. [120] Distraught over what she had done, Athena took the name Pallas for herself as a sign of her grief. In the Iliad, Athena was the divine form of the heroic, martial ideal: she personified excellence in close combat, victory, and glory. Virgil imagines the Cyclopes in Hephaestus' forge, who "busily burnished the aegis Athena wears in her angry moodsa fearsome thing with a surface of gold like scaly snake-skin, and the linked serpents and the Gorgon herself upon the goddess's breasta severed head rolling its eyes",[5] furnished with golden tassels and bearing the Gorgoneion (Medusa's head) in the central boss. Athena. But how did Athena get the name Pallas? [6][tone] "Aegis-bearing Zeus", as he is in the Iliad, sometimes lends the fearsome aegis to Athena. Medusa is a great representation of a tragic character and she's the most tragic Greek Mythology character of them all. [99][100][98][101] In order to prevent this, Zeus tricked Metis into letting him swallow her, but it was too late because Metis had already conceived. [125] The statue had special talisman-like properties[125] and it was thought that, as long as it was in the city, Troy could never fall. [88], Yet another possible meaning is mentioned in Diogenes Laertius' biography of Democritus, that Athena was called "Tritogeneia" because three things, on which all mortal life depends, come from her. Photograph by Maria Daniels, courtesy of the Dewing Greek Numismatic Foundation She is most famous for being the patron god of the city of Athens. [74], At Athens there is the temple of Athena Phratria, as patron of a phratry, in the Ancient Agora of Athens. [83] Kernyi suggests that "Tritogeneia did not mean that she came into the world on any particular river or lake, but that she was born of the water itself; for the name Triton seems to be associated with water generally. As the guardian of the welfare of kings, Athena became the goddess of good counsel, of prudent restraint and practical insight, as well as of war. "[25], It is generally agreed that the cult of Athena preserves some aspects of the Proto-Indo-European transfunctional goddess. [6] For example, in Mycenae there was a goddess called Mykene, whose sisterhood was known as Mykenai,[6] whereas at Thebes an analogous deity was called Thebe, and the city was known under the plural form Thebai (or Thebes, in English, where the 's' is the plural formation). The daughter of Zeus, the king of the gods, and the Titaness Metis. When Hermes arrives to seduce Herse, Aglaulus stands in his way instead of helping him as she had agreed. [172] Athena's push for Telemachos's journey helps him grow into the man role, that his father once held. [178] Later, the comic playwright Melanippides of Melos (c. 480-430 BC) embellished the story in his comedy Marsyas,[178] claiming that Athena looked in the mirror while she was playing the aulos and saw how blowing into it puffed up her cheeks and made her look silly, so she threw the aulos away and cursed it so that whoever picked it up would meet an awful death. [5] The Parthenon on the Acropolis of Athens is dedicated to her. In a late rendering by Gaius Julius Hyginus (Poetical Astronomy ii. Rank. [130] Another version of the myth of the Athenian maidens is told in Metamorphoses by the Roman poet Ovid (43 BC17 AD); in this late variant Hermes falls in love with Herse. She plays an active role in the Iliad, in which she assists the Achaeans and, in the Odyssey, she is the divine counselor to Odysseus. The owl is one of the most recognizable of these, and is still associated with wisdom and education today. Athena was probably a pre-Hellenic goddess and was later taken over by the Greeks. [47] The Greeks regarded Athena with much higher esteem than Ares. Athena was customarily portrayed wearing body armour and a helmet and carrying a shield and a lance. [193] Arachne's tapestry featured twenty-one episodes of the deities' infidelity,[191][192][190] including Zeus being unfaithful with Leda, with Europa, and with Dana. [207] Ajax later commits suicide as a result of his humiliation. [133][51][134] Athena adopted Erichthonius as her son and raised him. Symbology. [127][53] Cecrops accepted this gift[127] and declared Athena the patron goddess of Athens. Along with Aphrodite and Hera, Athena was one of the three goddesses whose feud resulted in the beginning of the Trojan War. At the end of the day she was viewed as a monster and had her head decapitated by Perseus only to be used as an item on Athena's Aegis Shield. Being the favorite child of Zeus, she had great power. [67] Other epithets include Ageleia, Itonia and Aethyia, under which she was worshiped in Megara. Herse, Aglaulus, and Pandrosus go to the temple to offer sacrifices to Athena. The Goddess Athena represents wisdom, justice, and war. [135] Differing reports say that they either found that the child itself was a serpent, that it was guarded by a serpent, that it was guarded by two serpents, or that it had the legs of a serpent. [124], The palladium was a statue of Athena that was said to have stood in her temple on the Trojan Acropolis. "[84][85] In Ovid's Metamorphoses, Athena is occasionally referred to as "Tritonia". In a similar interpretation, Aex, a daughter of Helios, represented as a great fire-breathing chthonic serpent similar to the Chimera, was slain and flayed by Athena, who afterwards wore its skin, the aegis, as a cuirass (Diodorus Siculus iii. [208][7][209] Scenes in which Athena was represented include her birth from the head of Zeus, her battle with the Gigantes, the birth of Erichthonius, and the Judgement of Paris. John Tzetzes says[10] that aegis was the skin of the monstrous giant Pallas whom Athena overcame and whose name she attached to her own. Perseus made his name by killing Medusa, a monster whose gaze turned . [220][221] Andrea Mantegna's 1502 painting Minerva Expelling the Vices from the Garden of Virtue uses Athena as the personification of Graeco-Roman learning chasing the vices of medievalism from the garden of modern scholarship. [62] Bells made of terracotta and bronze were used in Sparta as part of Athena's cult. [6] A vestige of that appears in a portrait of Alexander the Great in a fresco from Pompeii dated to the first century BC, which shows the image of the head of a woman on his armor that resembles the Gorgon. It was supposed by Euripides (Ion, 995) that the aegis borne by Athena was the skin of the slain Gorgon,[8] yet the usual understanding[9] is that the Gorgoneion was added to the aegis, a votive offering from a grateful Perseus. Athena appears in Homers Odyssey as the tutelary deity of Odysseus, and myths from later sources portray her similarly as helper of Perseus and Heracles (Hercules). Hurt by the girl's betrayal, Athena transformed her into the small insect bearing her name, the ant. [197][134] After bathing in the spring of Mount Ida where Troy was situated, the goddesses appeared before Paris for his decision. [141] An almost exact story was said about another girl, Elaea, who transformed into an olive, Athena's sacred tree. [227], A statue of Athena stands directly in front of the Austrian Parliament Building in Vienna,[228] and depictions of Athena have influenced other symbols of Western freedom, including the Statue of Liberty and Britannia. Athena, also known as Pallas Athena or the Virgin Athena, is the goddess of wisdom, courage, inspiration, civilization, law and justice, strategic warfare, mathematics, strength, strategy, the arts, crafts, and skill in ancient Greek mythology. Zeus, sympathizing with Apollo's grievances, discredited the pebble divination by rendering the pebbles useless. Hermes gives her the money the sisters have already offered to Athena. She was also worshipped in many other cities, notably in Sparta. The modern concept of doing something "under someone's aegis" means doing something under the protection of a powerful, knowledgeable, or benevolent source. No, Athena did not have any known romantic partners or consorts. From her origin as an Aegean palace goddess, Athena was closely associated with the city. She inspired three of Phidiass sculptural masterpieces, including the massive chryselephantine (gold and ivory) statue of Athena Parthenos once housed in the Parthenon; and in Aeschyluss dramatic tragedy Eumenides she founded the Areopagus (Athenss aristocratic council), and, by breaking a deadlock of the judges in favour of Orestes, the defendant, she set the precedent that a tied vote signified acquittal. In Greek mythology, Athena was a maiden goddess and was often depicted as abstaining from romantic and sexual relationships. [237] Pallas Athena is the tutelary goddess of the international social fraternity Phi Delta Theta. [139] The ritual was performed in the dead of night[139] and no one, not even the priestess, knew what the objects were. The second-century AD orator Aelius Aristides attempted to derive natural symbols from the etymological roots of Athena's names to be aether, air, earth, and moon. In every city and village in ancient Greece Athena, the goddess of war and wisdom, was one of the most venerated beings in the entire pantheon. Athena was the patron goddess of heroic endeavor; she was believed to have aided the heroes Perseus, Heracles, Bellerophon, and Jason. [178] The aulos was picked up by the satyr Marsyas, who was later killed by Apollo for his hubris. It bore the head of a Gorgon and made a terrible roaring sound during the battle. [82] One myth relates the foster father relationship of this Triton towards the half-orphan Athena, whom he raised alongside his own daughter Pallas. In art, she is generally depicted wearing a helmet and holding a spear. She is also associated with craftsmanship and handiwork. [197] Aphrodite, Hera, and Athena all claimed to be the fairest, and thus the rightful owner of the apple. 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. [10][17] However, any connection to the city of Athens in the Knossos inscription is uncertain. [128] In an alternative version of the myth from Vergil's Georgics,[113] Poseidon instead gave the Athenians the first horse. [130] On the eve of the Second Persian invasion of Greece in 480 BC, the serpent did not eat the honey cake[130] and the Athenians interpreted it as a sign that Athena herself had abandoned them. [185][190] Arachne scoffed and wished for a weaving contest, so she could prove her skill. [g] The geographer Pausanias was informed that the temenos had been founded by Aleus. Herodotus thought he had identified the source of the aegis in ancient Libya, which was always a distant territory of ancient magic for the Greeks. After Zeus swallowed his wife, who was heavily pregnant with Athena at the time, Athena was born by springing out of Zeus' head, fully grown . Symbols associated with Athena are many, and among them are the owl, the Aegis (her shield), the spear, and snakes. [171] Her actions lead him to travel around to Odysseus's comrades and ask about his father. [167][166] Impressed by his resolve and shrewdness, she reveals herself and tells him what he needs to know to win back his kingdom. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. Our editors will review what youve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. "[157] Artistic depictions of Heracles's apotheosis show Athena driving him to Mount Olympus in her chariot and presenting him to Zeus for his deification. Nor shall we be far wrong in supposing that the author of it wished to identify this Goddess with moral intelligence [ , en thei nesin], and therefore gave her the name Etheonoe; which, however, either he or his successors have altered into what they thought a nicer form, and called her Athena. [186][187] The story does not appear to have been well known prior to Ovid's rendition of it[186] and the only earlier reference to it is a brief allusion in Virgil's Georgics, (29 BC) (iv, 246) that does not mention Arachne by name. [91][92][93][h] The story of her birth comes in several versions. As the guardian of the welfare of kings, Athena became the goddess of good counsel, prudent restraint and practical insight, and war. [176] Poseidon lusted after Medusa, and raped her in the temple of Athena,[176] refusing to allow her vow of chastity to stand in his way. Athena is associated with courage and braveness. [46] The various cults of Athena were all branches of her panhellenic cult[46] and often proctored various initiation rites of Grecian youth, such as the passage into citizenship by young men or the passage of young women into marriage. [33][34] The "Black Athena" hypothesis stirred up widespread controversy near the end of the twentieth century,[35][36] but it has now been widely rejected by modern scholars. [78], The word glax (,[79] "little owl")[80] is from the same root, presumably according to some, because of the bird's own distinctive eyes. [46] The epithet Ergane ( "the Industrious") pointed her out as the patron of craftsmen and artisans. 449 - 420 B.C. In Homers Iliad, Athena, as a war goddess, inspires and fights alongside the Greek heroes; her aid is synonymous with military prowess. [114] Fragments attributed by the Christian Eusebius of Caesarea to the semi-legendary Phoenician historian Sanchuniathon, which Eusebius thought had been written before the Trojan war, make Athena instead the daughter of Cronus, a king of Byblos who visited "the inhabitable world" and bequeathed Attica to Athena. Essentially urban and civilized, Athena was probably a pre-Hellenic goddess later taken over by the Greeks. [12][39][40] In Athens, the Plynteria, or "Feast of the Bath", was observed every year at the end of the month of Thargelion. . [198], All three goddesses were ideally beautiful and Paris could not decide between them, so they resorted to bribes. In this article, I will explain 9 symbols of Athena and their meanings. [194], The myth of the Judgement of Paris is mentioned briefly in the Iliad,[195] but is described in depth in an epitome of the Cypria, a lost poem of the Epic Cycle,[196] which records that all the gods and goddesses as well as various mortals were invited to the marriage of Peleus and Thetis (the eventual parents of Achilles). While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. Her emergence there as city goddess, Athena Polias (Athena, Guardian of the City), accompanied the ancient city-states transition from monarchy to democracy. [160][145] For the first part of the poem, however, she largely is confined to aiding him only from afar, mainly by implanting thoughts in his head during his journey home from Troy. [119], In one version of the myth, Pallas was the daughter of the sea-god Triton;[83] she and Athena were childhood friends, but Athena accidentally killed her during a friendly sparring match. [62] An Ionic-style temple to Athena Polias was built at Priene in the fourth century BC. The temple of Athena Alea in Tegea was an important religious center of ancient Greece. Identified in the Roman mythology as the goddess Minerva.She was always accompanied by her owl and the goddess of victory, Nike. [217] During the Middle Ages, Athena became widely used as a Christian symbol and allegory, and she appeared on the family crests of certain noble houses. [189][190] Athena gave Arachne a chance to redeem herself by assuming the form of an old woman and warning Arachne not to offend the deities. [106][98][93][108] The "First Homeric Hymn to Athena" states in lines 916 that the gods were awestruck by Athena's appearance[109] and even Helios, the god of the sun, stopped his chariot in the sky. In some pottery it appears as a tasselled cover over Athena's dress. She is not considered a goddess or Olympian, but some variations on her legend say she consorted with one. "[111] According to a version of the story in a scholium on the Iliad (found nowhere else), when Zeus swallowed Metis, she was pregnant with Athena by the Cyclops Brontes. [200][145] Several artistic representations from the early sixth century BC may show Athena and Diomedes,[200] including an early sixth-century BC shield band depicting Athena and an unidentified warrior riding on a chariot, a vase painting of a warrior with his charioteer facing Athena, and an inscribed clay plaque showing Diomedes and Athena riding in a chariot. [6] The name Athenai is likely of Pre-Greek origin because it contains the presumably Pre-Greek morpheme *-n-.[8]. Also in the Iliad, Zeus, the chief god, specifically assigns the sphere of war to Ares, the god of war, and Athena. [208] In classical depictions, Athena is usually portrayed standing upright, wearing a full-length chiton. [63] It was designed by Pytheos of Priene,[64] the same architect who designed the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus. She was essentially urban and civilized, the antithesis in many respects of Artemis, goddess of the outdoors. It is sometimes represented on the statues of Roman emperors, heroes, and warriors, and on cameos and vases. Perseus, the mortal son of Zeus and the Argive princess Danae, was a Greek hero, king, and slayer of monsters. [11][12], Nilsson and others have claimed that, in early times, Athena was either an owl herself or a bird goddess in general. That she ultimately became allegorized to personify wisdom and righteousness was a natural development of her patronage of skill. [101] Then Zeus experienced an enormous headache. Watch on. Two Athenians, the sculptor Phidias and the playwright Aeschylus, contributed significantly to the cultural dissemination of Athenas image. This was supposedly the origin of calling Athena's sacred olive tree moria, for Halirrhotius's attempt at revenge proved fatal (moros in Greek). [99][102][98][101] A later account of the story from the Bibliotheca of Pseudo-Apollodorus, written in the second century AD, makes Metis Zeus's unwilling sexual partner, rather than his wife. The second-century AD Christian apologist Justin Martyr takes issue with those pagans who erect at springs images of Kore, whom he interprets as Athena: "They said that Athena was the daughter of Zeus not from intercourse, but when the god had in mind the making of a world through a word (logos) his first thought was Athena. She was known as Polias and Poliouchos (both derived from polis, meaning "city-state"), and her temples were usually located atop the fortified acropolis in the central part of the city. [63], Athena was known as Atrytone ( "the Unwearying"), Parthenos ( "Virgin"), and Promachos ( "she who fights in front"). [191][192][190] Athena's tapestry also depicted the 12 Olympian gods and defeat of mythological figures who challenged their authority. Perhaps, however, the name Theonoe may mean "she who knows divine things" [ , ta theia noousa] better than others. [87] Michael Janda has connected the myth of Trita to the scene in the Iliad in which the "three brothers" Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades divide the world between them, receiving the "broad sky", the sea, and the underworld respectively. [206] Even after Odysseus himself expresses pity for Ajax,[207] Athena declares, "To laugh at your enemies - what sweeter laughter can there be than that?"