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Athena — Description

There stands a hill in the center of its sanctuary, in the center of its capital, where a marble monument is dedicated to the very idea of wisdom herself. 101 feet wide and 45 feet tall, the entryway, which welcomes in devotees of education and worshippers of their goddess alike, was built with the divine perfection of nature's golden spiral in the minds of its architects. Enthroned at the heart of this mathematic harmonic is the lady herself, a 42-foot dominatrix with ivory skin and golden aegis. She holds Victory in her right hand and a shield in the other, and keeps owl's-sight over the processions of academics and playwrights who sing the praises of the King of Ithaca and of Hellas's unshackling from the yoke of the eastern king. This is the city that sees itself as one glinting spark of enlightenment, keeping the lighthouse staffed in a countryside fogged by barbarity and scarred by civil war. It's also probably much better on your wallet than going all the way to Athens, I mean shit admission to the Parthenon is a measly 10 bucks, that's a steal. The only downside is that you'd have to consciously, of your own free will, go to Nashville, Tennessee, and no mortal is foolish enough to do such a thing, especially not to then awkwardly walk up to the blatantly disappointed goddess of wisdom with the stain of this decision on your soul.
“Ava, did you write an entire poetic prose just to diss Nashville, Tennessee?” No, I wrote an entire academic dissertation to diss Nashville, Tennessee. Consider that my offering to Athena, patron of my creativity, whom I called Minerva a couple months ago because I had covered her Etruscan/Roman import in her own blurb. I'm not much of a Classics reader (trying to amend that), but I wanted to use that to my advantage in order to give Athena's Italic riff her due unbiased research. I decided then I'd go back and dig into Athena in her original Hellenic context. It's honestly kinda strange that Nashville has an exact replica of the original Parthenon, the one constructed in Pericles's Athens all the way back in 447 BCE, right? And no I'm not just dissing Tennessee again, I mean it's strange how given her name, you'd expect Athena to be one of those local shrine goddesses dedicated to the vague idea of her city. But no, she's one of the big main characters of broader Greek mythology, daughter of Zeus and mentor of Odysseus.
Her link with Athens is so old that there's a genuinely unsettled debate about whether the city was named after its goddess or whether the goddess was named after her city. If you're a Classics nerd, this is an easy one. According to Pseudo-Apollodorus's version, written circa the 2nd century in his Bibliotheca, Athens was founded on the Attican hill where first, Poseidon decided his club house would be here now and punctuated his claim by slamming his fork into the ground, causing the acropolis's natural salt spring to burst from the surrendered earth. Athena evidently saw this, told her snake friend Cecrops, “Lol it's mine tho, watch this”, and then spawnkilled Poseidon's planted flag by sprouting the first olive tree on the same hill. Needless to say, Poseidon was not happy when Zeus, big shock, decided his perfect little girl had the more legitimate claim to “Athens”, we're now calling it, than his own brother. Evidently Poseidon threw such a hissy fit that it flooded the Thriasian Plain. For spiritually legal reasons, I Ava Spainhower invoke my Swiss bloodline to make no comment on the validity of either deity's claim, please don't turn me into a newt, oh pants-shittingly terrifying Olympians.
Now that's all well and good for most neopagans but I have the great misfortune of being a neopagan who's also an insufferable academic, so what's the “real” answer, archaeologically? It's a trickier question than you'd expect, believe me. Though the location we'd today call “Athens” has been a continuous human settlement for about five thousand years now, we don't get it or its eponymous goddess dropped by name until about 1450 BCE, and annoyingly both enter the written record via the same slab of rock. KN V 52 is a tablet unearthed from the Room of the Chariot Tablets in Crete's famous Knossos Palace. While the building is Minoan, the Linear B writing reflects the Mycenaean takeover of the island's culture by this time, and KN V 52 is particularly unique in that it preserves a potential Mycenaean theonym for our subject today: “a-ta-na-po-ti-ni-ja”.
These two words sent me down a fucking rabbit hole which I'm still not certain I've managed to crawl out of with my sanity intact, because we can spin the grammar here in two very similar yet obnoxiously distinct ways. That second element appears frequently in ancient Greek poetry as “potnia”, which literally means “mistress” or “lady”, counterpart to masculine “wanax” meaning “lord” or “king”, but in societal context “potnia” is usually used more in the line of modern English “girlboss”. To call someone a “potnia” is to invoke feminine power, societal authority, and magical initiative in an individual. These are hot powerful mamas who get what they want, when they want, by any means necessary, be they goddesses like Hera, Artemis, Demeter, and Circe, or influential human mothers like the one that sired Odysseus. Now, there's one hell of a nerd fight out there about whether or not there was once a single mythological figure known simply as capital P “Potnia”, and even more hair-pulling still about whether this Mycenaean Potnia is some kind of descendant from the Pre-Greek (i.e. Minoan) religious cults which produced thousands of vaguely Mother-Nature-type “goddess” figurines. That debate is, frankly, beyond the scope of this blurb, and the girl writing it is sick in bed. For my two cents, I think it's possible but not provable. We haven't deciphered the Minoans’ language yet, let alone their religion, and the whole Mycenaean corpus seems to entirely treat “potnia” as a title which can be applied to many figures, not a single original girlboss.
In fact, and this is relevant to “a-ta-na-po-ti-ni-ja”, the word “potnia” is almost always accompanied by a qualifier, like how Artemis is referred to as “Potnia Theron”, the “Mistress of Animals”. In this vein, “a-ta-na-po-ti-ni-ja” can be understood at face value as either the straight theonym “The Lady Athena” or as the toponymic qualifier: “The Athenian Lady”. Either way you slice it gets annoyingly circular. If we take the position that the name of the city came first, then we must acknowledge that the word “Athens” has no good correlate in Indo-European roots, and is therefore probably Pre-Greek, so basically it's anyone's guess because those precursor folk didn't leave us much in the way of their own writing. Meanwhile, the position that the city was named after their central cultic character finds strength in other theonymic place names across Greece. That suffix “-enai” is actually the reason why “Athens” is plural in English, fun fact. It implies a group of villages who pulled their administration together under the banner of a shared, usually religious, identity. Just as the “Mycenai” was a city-state conglomerate centered on a local nymph named Mycene, the “Athenai” are the villages around the acropolis which banded together behind a shared wall which worshipped Athena. Its weakness, of course, is that it just leaves us right back to square one of asking well where the fuck does Athena's name come from then?? It doesn't help that if you Google this question, it's just gonna redirect you to the Bibliotheca myth rather than proper etymological dissections, so fuck it, maybe that is the real story.
My reconciliation between the two is to assume that there was some Pan-Aegean myth previously established about a love-hate rivalry between a potnia (maybe a core original Potnia, but I'd prefer more evidence) and an underworld deity. Persephone and Hades are probably the best example of this motif, but Poseidon, notably, was once the chief underworld god in Mycenaean cosmology. Each city state would have their own spin on the same fairy tale (think of how many books you read as a kid which just call the characters “The King” or “The Wizard” and we don't even blink until someone asks which king, which wizard?), and Athens’ version was accordingly referred to as “the Athenian Potnia”. Much like that old dad joke about how in China they just call Chinese food… food, while in practical English we drop the “food” bit altogether and just refer to it as “Chinese”, the “Athenian Potnia” got shorthanded to “Athenian”, ergo the character's name “Athena”. That's the best way I can think to have our cake and eat it too, I just wish we had a bit more icing. Real language isn't about making grammatical sense or correct spelling, it's about the other primates in your immediate vicinity catching your drift in a sea of ever-fluid idioms.
Luckily the internal narrative of Athena's character is a helluva lot easier to follow. It even has a beginning! That's rare but refreshing! Hesiod's Theogony, composed in the ball park of 700 BCE, begins the birth of Athena the way that all Greek myths do: with Zeus cheating on Hera, as if it'll be a good idea this time. Specifically, he's tying himself in knots about a prophecy which foretells that Metis (whose name means something like “advice”) will bear Zeus a son powerful enough to overthrow him the same way he overthrew Cronus. You'd think the simplest answer would just be to not have sex with Metis but lol come on this is Zeus, that's never gonna happen. Instead Zeus plucks another feather from the cap of his father and just… vores Metis. Sure man, I… I guess that works? Except no, it doesn't, because Metis then proceeds to give birth to Zeus's child inside of him, not the prophesied son but rather the goddess Athena. Metis raises her little girl through a whole 80s workout montage to become the ultimate, unstoppable warrior amazon, and once her training is complete, Athena thunders her way out through her father's own skull. Pindar's 7th Olympian Ode (5th century BCE) seems to be the first introduction of the specific embellishment that Zeus sought out Hephaestus near the Triton River to cleave the way open for Athena with a giant fuck off axe, which as we all know is the only correct way to cure a migraine.
Now, a full-grown muscle mommy spear-thrusting her way out of a god's shattered brain bones, fully clad in resplendent, untarnished armor, is about the sexiest thing I can conjure to imagination. This doesn't go unnoticed by the other gods, who all turned their heads at the sight because whatever they were in the process of previously was just objectively less important than watching this God of War cutscene. Unfortunately, Olympian gods are not nearly as classy and smooth as I am with women. Hephaestus in particular has a nasty reputation as a fucking incel, and being there at ground zero got his “m'lady” muscles quiverin’. This came to its culmination when one day Athena rolled up asking Hephaestus for some sick new gear, and instead of doing his one job, forced himself on Athena, as if that was ever going to go the way he wanted it to. Of course, his legs don't work, and Athena is Athena, so she kicks his fucking ass, go girl! Disgustingly though, Hephaestus already has it whipped out and he… uh… got a little… you know… on her… leg. I'd be worried about getting too graphic for DeviantArt if I wasn't on DeviantArt. Athena is absolutely revolted, I would be too, and quickly swats it off with a woolen rag which is quickly tossed over the nearest cliff. Because of the way that biology works in Greek mythology, this impregnates the Earth itself and spawns a writhing reptilian crotch gremlin named Erichthonius. Athena's natural response is to lock this thing in a box and put Cecrops's daughters in charge of supervising it. This is mythology though, so the humans ignore the one rule Athena gave them (don't open the box), and the measured punishment for their being avoidably stupid is Athena drives them over the cliff of the acropolis like lemmings. Erichthonius, strangely enough, in addition to growing up to become the King of Athens, is also the name of the spring in Athens which Poseidon was said to have erupted with his trident, so… take that as you will?
Luckily (I think, I hope), that's the grossest story regarding Athena done and out of the way. Hell, the Parthenon even takes its name from her epithet “Athena Parthenos”, meaning “Athena the Virgin”. I find it really funny how in a Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, its author goes out of its way to specify that Athena, Artemis, and Hestia are the three beings in all of Creation who are straight up immune to the love goddess's shipping magic. Athena's no stranger to more palatable tragic backstories, though. After realizing that the kid Metis birthed him was not, in fact, a son, Zeus completely chills out about Athena's existence, though in true deadbeat fashion, he passes her off to someone else to raise. Specifically, Athena becomes the foster daughter of Triton, son of Poseidon and father of a girl named Pallas. Pallas and Athena became inseparable friends, entering military service together and forming the hottest duo your tiny mortal mind has ever borne witness to on the battlefield. Even besties 4ever get into catfights tho, and though Pseudo-Apollodorus doesn't elaborate what Athena and Pallas got huffy with each other over, it was clearly the type of damaged pride that can only be resolved in one-on-one combat, as all arguments should be settled. Pallas, to her credit, was actually quick enough on her feet that Zeus was convinced he needed to cheat, throwing his Aegis skinshield onto the field to distract his daughter's opponent. The resulting spear-thrust was fatal, and Athena was devastated. This wasn't supposed to be a fight to the death, not between friends, so she honored this worthy shieldmaiden by transforming her into a wooden talisman and assuming her very name, as Pallas Athena.
However, that's not the only origin story behind Athena's most cited epithet, confusingly it's not even the only origin story in the Bibliotheca. Pseudo-Apollodorus elsewhere records an episode in the Olympians’ war against the Gigantes, where Athena flays the skin off a male giant named Pallas and uses it as an Aegis of her own to guard against the incoming retaliation for chucking the entire island of Sicily at a pussy ass motherfucker. So far as I could find, there's no “canon” explanation for this discrepancy. Herodotus and Pausanias, taking a more anthropological stance, seem to corroborate the story of Athena's childhood friend, though strangely they note that this is a legend specific to the tribes of Libya, despite Pseudo-Apollodorus clearly being aware of it. Linguistically, it's a much easier nut to crack. It's descended from the Greek verb “pallo”, which literally means “to swing” but more idiomatically is best understood as “to brandish a weapon”. I'd probably translate it more poetically as “spear-shaker”, a worthy title to take from a fallen opponent in either context.
While the Spear-Shaker's capacity to defend Olympus from any threat single-handedly is unquestioned and sung of, it's her involvement in the affairs of mortals that heroes pray for. It was Athena's polished bronze shield that allowed Perseus to garrote the gorgon on its own loophole. It was Athena alone who broke Pegasus back into its saddle, she simply gave Bellerophon the bit to lead him home. She was really just in the area when she voluntarily took time out of her day to fix four of the twelve of her brother Heracles’ problems, and the Argo was a ship conjured by her perfect creativity. It is, however, that infamous intersection between blind myth and archaeology known as the Trojan War where Athena has left the greatest impact crater in the politics of man. All the gods had been invited to celebrate the wedding of Peleus and Thetis, all save for Strife herself. Eris is the sort of schadenfreude lunatic who gets off on taking the whole world down with her though, so she chucked a golden apple into the space hosting the three most assertive women in all of Greek mythology: Hera, Athena, and scary sexy Aphrodite. “Καλλίστῃ” it reads, to the fairest~<3. It drops at an equal enough distance between the triad to make it a challenge. The three goddesses look to each other, then to Zeus, then Zeus wisely decides it'd result in less property damage to drop the responsibility on one of the mortal monkeys. To the man the Hittites called Alaksandu, Hera offered the Kingdom of Earth in its totality, Athena offered the adrenalinic thrill of taking that kingdom for himself with his own bare fucking hands, and Aphrodite offered him a girlfriend. Paris ruled that Aphrodite was the fairest. This was the correct decision, Paris is an intelligent man.
Very well, Hera and Athena agreed on an extremely girly slumber party handshake, if all the kingdoms of the world are not enough for the King of Wilusa, then all the world will take his kingdom, and they will sing, goddess, of the rage of Achilles. Nine years will Hera grind Ahhiayawan meat against the walls of Wilusa, and when presented with the suggestion that enough has been wrought, Athena's hand will string Pandarus's arrow to alight the flames of war another year. For fun, literally just the sick fuckin thrill of it, come aaaahn. The war will only be over once such immense destruction is laid waste to Troy that it leaves a visible stratigraphy in the archaeological record. Hel's walls surround me, Hellenic gods scare the shit out of me.
Once the dust of Troy VII was settled, and Athena returned Odysseus home with divine confirmation that slaughtering the people who tried to fuck his wife is the objectively correct thing to do, people got sequel burnout with their fairy tales. Cool stories respectably aged into religions and hero cults as we reenter the Classical Period, those ephemeral transitions where we decide we've got enough lore for now. Athens had a temple to Athena atop its acropolis since at least 525 BCE, but the building we know today as the Parthenon wasn't thrown onto the architecture until its completion in 432 BCE. It was a big expensive monument meant both to commemorate the Athenian victory over the Immortal King just a couple generations prior and to accommodate infrastructure for the city's most important holiday: Panathenaea. This was a new year's celebration hosted during the last three days of the first month of their calendar, called Hekatombaion. This was a lunisolar calendar so Hekatombaion is the time between the first new moon after the Summer Solstice and the next, about our late-July/early-August. While it was an annual festival, there's this weirdly specific thing they'd do where every fourth year they'd just give it the full Christmas retail rush treatment, referred to as the “Greater Panathenaea” as opposed to the yearly “Lesser Panathenaea”. This party was kept alive by feasting, competitive sports, musical dance numbers, the works. They even had their own Macy's Day Parade, except that it was a parade of cows led directly up the steps to a mass slaughter in the name of the monkeys’ warrior goddess.
Then the plague ripped through Athens. Then the Romans ripped through Athens. Then Jesus came back, goddamn! In 435, Emperor Theodosius ruined everyone's fun by slamming the doors closed on all pagan temples within the Roman Empire, though the fact that Emperor Zeno had to put his foot down on the matter in 484 suggests that those Athenian hippies weren't following the Man's laws for quite a while. Henceforth this would not be the Temple of Athena Parthenos, it would be the Church of Mary Parthenos, Mother of God, because we never get what we want. This church would flip flop between denominations because nobody had a goddamn clue what they were doing when they called a crusade, and then the Ottomans took over Athens in 1458. The Parthenon was thus converted into a delightful little mosque I'd actually love to see in real life, sounds like a fun aesthetic. That structure was unfortunately blown up by Venice in 1687, and they didn't even bother putting the walls of that structure back up, they just built a tinier mosque inside the ruin, it's another cool visual. Eventually though, this fun little Minecraft idea was torn down in 1843, after the Greeks won their independence from the Ottomans and, in a fit of nationalistic fervor, invested money into the archaeology of the acropolis. Because we never get what we want.
So, what do we learn from this? What's the big question we answer today? I think it's obvious: why the fuck is there an exact replica of the Athenian Parthenon built square in the middle of Nashville, Tennessee? That's right, I'm not done! Apparently this was a decision, much like Tennessee itself, made entirely out of eccentricity. The replica Parthenon was actually intended to be temporary at first, set dressing for the big expo Nashville hosted for its state's 1897 centennial. Goddamn, having money sounds awesome. Hilariously, however, people just… liked the thing too much? Like no one had the heart to tear it down after the event was over, it was just too pretty. It was built to be temporary though, so they had to remodel the thing from the ground up in 1920 to make it structurally permanent. They went the whole nine yards with this one too, I'm not going to lie, it's genuinely impressive, as much as I'm making fun of it. If I heard on the news that the government of Indianapolis has not only done something, gasp, but that something was building an exact replica of the Hagia Sophia on the lakeside of Eagle Creek for strictly educational purposes, I'd be fuckin pumped! Unfortunately, Indianapolis is the objectively lamest big city in the Midwest, and nothing cool has happened here since 1999.
Design notes, I sought to awaken as many lesbians as humanly possible with a single image. No, I won't apologize for making your kids gay, you apologize for making your kids gay. We sure as shit didn't choose this hell to be our default settings.
I think there's one thing that everyone gets crucially wrong about Athena: Athena is not a tomboy. Athena is one of the girliest entities I have ever come across in my theological excavations. Yes she's athletic, yes she's jacked, yes she can extract your spine through your asshole, but that doesn't mean my girl likes being called on for brute force, go to Ares for that dammit. I'm not even entirely convinced that Athena is outright aromantic (though she's certainly asexual, that much is clear). I think she's instead like me: a self-destructively monogamous prude. Athena doesn't want a girlfriend, she wants her girlfriend, the one who died irrecoverably by her own blade, the one who she'll never get back, and that haunts her every night. When Athena retires to her depressingly empty palace after a long day of killing stupid boys, all she wants is a bit of crochet and a good book while she texts with Hera in her PJs “omg we're gonna destroy Aphrodite, right queeeen?” Athena is, in my assessment, the most tortured sort of soul the gods have ever concocted: she is a Joann's lesbian, and as a Joann's lesbian myself (RIP btw), I am so sorry Athena. You scare me shitless, but girl, you welcome in my home any time. We'll have a slumber party and do our naiiils! You need a pedicure honey, and it might as well be from this mortal.