Pallas Athena

“ The Honor paid Womanhood in Athens.—Obviously from a young woman with a limited intellectual horizon the Athenian gentleman can expect no mental companionship; but it is impossible that he can live in the world as a keenly intelligent being, and not come to realize the enormous value of the “woman spirit” as it affects all things good. Hera, Artemis, Aphrodite, above all Pallas-Athena,—city-warder of Athens,—who are they all but idealizations of that peculiar genius which wife, mother, and daughter show forth every day in their homes? An Athenian never allows his wife to visit the Agora. ”

“ These alien Powers that thus are made
Athenian evermore. To you
Fair be their will henceforth, to do
⁠Whate'er may bless and aid!
Chorus.
Hail to you all! hail yet again,
All who love Athens, Gods and men,
⁠Adoring her as Pallas' home!
And while ye reverence what ye grant—
My sacred shrine and hidden haunt—
⁠Blameless and blissful be your doom!
Athena. ”

“ Furies.
Let her who hungereth still for wrong,
⁠Faction, in Athens ne'er again
Lift on the air her ravening song;
⁠Let not the dust of Pallas' Plain
Drink the dark blood of any son
By fury of revenge fordone.
Rage not to smite the smiter, lest
⁠By rage the City's heart be torn:
Bless him that blesseth: in each breast
⁠So shall a single love be born,
And 'gainst Her foes a single hate.
This also maketh firm a state.
Athena.
Wise are they and have found the way
⁠Of peace. ”

“ She was at first inseparably connected and confounded with Pallas Athena, the dispenser of victory, but gradually separated from her. As an attribute of both Athena and Zeus she is represented as a small figure carried by those divinities in their hand. ”

“ Thus, briefly, the entire material of Art, under Athena's hand, is the contest of life with clay; and all my task in explaining to you the early thought of both the Athenian and Tuscan schools will only be the tracing of this battle of the giants into its full heroic form, when, not in tapestry only, but in sculpture, and on the portal of the Temple of Delphi itself, you have the "κλονος εν τειχεσι λαινοισι γιγαντων," and their defeat hailed by the passionate cry of delight from the Athenian maids, beholding Pallas in her full power, "λευσσω ”

“ Lewis Morris' Athene, in The Epic of Hades; Byron, Childe Harold, 2. 1-15, 87, 91; Ruskin's Lectures entitled "The Queen of the Air" (Athene) ; Thomas Woolner's Pallas Athene, in Tiresias.
In Art. The finest of the statues of this goddess was by Phidias, in the Parthenon, or temple of Athena, at Athens. The Athena of the Parthenon has disappeared; but there is good ground to believe that we have, in several extant statues and busts, the artist's conception. (See Frontispiece, the Lemnian Athena, and Fig. 53, the Hope Athena, ancient marble at Deepdene, Surrey.) ”

“ The whole history of Athens, from the rude beginnings of her civilisation till the age of her imperial glory, may be seen reflected, after a symbolic fashion, in the gradual transition of her worship from the wooden image of Athena Polias, which was said to have fallen from heaven, to the magnificent statue of gold and ivory which Pheidias made for the Parthenon; and one of the most interesting studies in art is to be found in tracing the successive stages through which the majestic virgin-goddess was evolved. ”

“ So slight is thy regard for thine ally?
[Aias appears in the tent door, with a blood-stained
scourge in his hand.]
AIAS
Oh hail, Athena! Hail thou Zeus-born maid!
Nobly hast thou stood by me. Now will I crown thee
With trophies all of gold for this rich conquest.
ATHENA
Thy words are welcome. But now tell me this:
Hast thou dyed well thy sword in the Argive host?
AIAS
Such vaunt is mine. I disclaim not that glory.
ATHENA
Against the Atreidæ didst thou arm thy hand?
AIAS
So that Aias nevermore shall they insult.
ATHENA
The men are dead, if rightly I take thy meaning. ”

“ The scene changes to Athens. In the foreground, the Temple of Athena on the Acropolis; her statue stands in the centre; Orestes is seen clinging to it.
ORESTES
Look on me, queen Athena; lo, I come
By Loxias’ behest; thou of thy grace
Receive me, driven of avenging powers—
Not now a red-hand slayer unannealed,
But with guilt fading, half-effaced, outworn
On many homes and paths of mortal men.
For to the limit of each land, each sea,
I roamed, obedient to Apollo’s hest,
And come at last, O Goddess, to thy fane,
And clinging to thine image, bide my doom. ”

“ Now that practically all the evidence has been brought it is time to investigate the theories propounded by these modern scholars and the various interpretations which they put upon this strange birth of a deity.
Preller looks upon Athena as the goddess of the clear sky. In the cloudy sky, in the midst of the storm and lightning the clear bright heaven appeared, and this was the birth of Athena. The sky is of the greatest beauty in Greece, especially in Attica, so Athena was most honored in this land. ”

“ Though, of course, the worshippers weren't doing him any honor. That bow was not for him, but directed toward the Owl, the symbol of the Goddess embroidered on the breast of the white tunic. As an acolyte, after all, he rated just barely above a layman; he had no powers whatever.
Athena knew that, naturally. But somehow it was a little difficult to get it through his own doubtless too-thick skull. He'd often dreamed of power. Being a priest or a priestess, for instance—now that meant something. At least people paid attention to you if you were a member of the hierarchy, favored of the Gods. ”

“ The statue was made of gold and ivory, and it was to the Athenians the symbol of all that was best in the Athenian ideals. {284} Their passionate desire for freedom, their unfaltering search for truth, their great love of beauty were all personified for them in the calm and queenly figure of her whose battles were won, of Athena Parthenos. Having offered their sacrifices outside, they entered her temple with awe, believing that "he who enters the incense-filled temple must be holy; and holiness is to have a pure mind." ”

“ It has been ingeniously suggested that the ægis had been evolved by art from the skin of a beast worn over the shoulders, with the fierce head hanging over the breast of the wearer, and the legend of Medusa the Gorgon invented to explain it. Anyhow, Athena is a hoplite goddess. Whatever connection she may have with water elsewhere, at Athens she is armed for land warfare.
All these signs convince us that the Athena worshipped on the Acropolis of Athens is not a primitive goddess. Her character, her weapons, and her cult all point to a Northern origin, like that of Zeus and Apollo. ”

“ The two drums of columns in shadow in the foreground reflect the pure blue of the early morning sky. Over their tops may be seen part of the Propylæa, and the mountains of Daphni and Megara.
Athena appears to have been worshipped as a powerful and beneficent deity in many places, but it was at Athens that the more intellectual aspects of her nature were brought into the greatest prominence. How she came to be so closely associated with Athens as to give her name to the city (previously known as “Cecropia”) is a question that is not easily answered. ”

“ In the solemn procession all classes of Athenians were represented: noble maidens, bearing baskets with offerings for the sacrifice; youths with offerings, and youths on horseback; chariots; grave elders and priests; and cattle for the sacrifice. Aliens, too, were there, for it was not only Athens that was symbolized, but the Athenian Empire; symbol of what Athens hoped would be a united Greece. It is very difficult to distinguish between Athenian patriotism and religion. To the Athenian, the city was Athena, and Athena the city, and the Parthenon was the crown of both. ”

“ Athens would seem better worth living for and dying for, when men realized that they held her in joint-possession with Gods, when they recognised that, in guarding as a sacred trust her immemorial institutions, in celebrating her splendid festivals, they were sealing to themselves the blessings intertwined with these, when they grasped the thought that in planning, toiling, and fighting for her, they were fellow-workers with Athena, Apollo, and the Twin Brethren. ”

“ The face has the rigid smile and peculiar type of countenance which characterize the head of Pallas on the early coins of Athens; the corners of the eyes being turned up towards the ears. The hair, arranged in regular curls on the forehead, falls down the back in long tresses; the arms hang down at the sides in the Egyptian manner. The shoulders are broad, the waist pinched in, as if by stays; the line of the upper arm more varied and flowing than is at first sight reconcilable with the general archaic character of the face. ”

“ But for men at least, the Zeus must have lacked some attributes possessed by the Athena. She was in all her etherial loveliness, a woman still, but without a woman’s weakness, or a single taint of earth. The Athenians paid the highest possible compliment to womanhood when they gave wisdom a female form; and the delicacy of the thought was enhanced by surrounding this mythological creation with an atmosphere of purity which no other divinity of the pagan heaven could lay claim to. Nor in beauty did Athena yield even to Aphrodite herself. ”

“ For, just as Ephesus is known to have worshipped especially the great goddess Diana, so Athens devoted herself to the worship of Pallas-Athéné, the goddess of wisdom, the virgin daughter of Jove. She was one of twelve chief gods who were worshipped throughout Greece, but was held as more peculiarly the protecting deity of ancient Athens. A temple to this goddess had stood on the self-same spot before the war, which the Persians had destroyed. ”

“ To appease the god, the citizens deprived the women of the right to vote and forbade them in future to transmit their names to their children and to be called Athenians. But though their political rights were thus sadly infringed and they were relegated to ignorance and obscurity, they retained their part in the exercises of religion, especially in the worship of their patron goddess. Little is known of the various priestesses of Athena, who figured so prominently in the art of Athens and who presided at the goddess's temples on the Acropolis. ”

“ To these wise words the gods were forced to agree, so to Minerva was granted the privilege of naming the city; and as she was called Athena, by the Greeks, she named the place Athens, which it is called to this very day. Before many years passed a splendid marble temple was built on the hill just above the city, and this was dedicated to Athena, whose colossal statue, carved by the famous sculptor Phidias, adorned the interior. They called this temple the Parthenon,7 and from the ruins that still remain we know that the hand of man has never built anything to equal it in beauty. ”

“ The priest assures Phormion that the entrails of the victim foretokened every possible favor in future athletic contests—and this, and his insinuating smile, win him a silver drachma to supplement his share of the lamb. Phormion readjusts the chaplet upon his own head, and turns towards the Parthenon. After the sacrifice will come the prayer.
196. The Interior of the Parthenon and the Great Image of Athena.—The whole Acropolis is the home of Athena. The other gods harbored thereon are only her inferior guests. Upon the Acropolis the dread goddess displays her many aspects. ”

“ In seven out of the nine plays in which the deus ex machinâ appears, the speech of the deity has special reference to Athens and her future. [14] In the Ion, Athena proclaims the divine origin of the Ionian race, and foretells the greatness of her colonial empire. In the Suppliants, the foreign policy of Athens is vindicated, and Athena puts her for ever in the right as against Argos. In the Iphigeneia in Taurica, the Orestes, and the Electra, the origin of some of her religious institutions, particularly of the sacred court of the Areopagus, is stamped with divine sanction. ”

“ As you go to Pellene there is, by the roadside, an image of Hermes, who, in spite of his surname of Crafty, is ready to fulfill the prayers of men. He is of square shape and bearded, and on his head is carved a cap.
7.27.2 On the way to the city, close up to it, is a temple of Athena, built of local stone, but the image is of ivory and gold. They say that Pheidias made it before he made the images of Athena on the Athenian Acropolis and at Plataea. ”

“ Every Athenian is born into accepting the fact that Athena Polias is the divine warder of the city, as much as he is born into accepting the fact that it is his duty to obey the strategi in battle. To repudiate the gods of Athens, e.g. in favor of those of Egypt, is as much iniquity as to join forces against the Athenians if they are at war with Egypt;—the thing is sheer treason, and almost unthinkable. For countless generations the Athenians have worshipped the “Ancestral Gods.” They are proud of them, familiar with them; the gods have participated in all the prosperity of the city. ”

“ Pursued by the Furies, he takes refuge in the temple of Apollo at Delphi, and then, still Fury-haunted, goes to Athens, where Pallas Athené the warrior-maiden, the tutelary goddess of Athens, bids him refer his cause to the Areopagus, the highest court of Athens, Apollo acting as his advocate, and she sitting as umpire in the midst. The white and black balls are thrown into the urn, and are equal; and Orestes is only delivered by the decision of Athené—as the representative of the nearer race of gods, the Olympians, the friends of man, in whose likeness man is made. ”