Athena

Also known as: Athene / Pallas Athene / Tritogeneia · Family: Olympian · Role: goddess · First appears: Apollodorus, Library 1.3

🌐 Also appears in: The Iliad (as Minerva) · The Odyssey (as Minerva) · The Metamorphoses of Ovid (as Minerva) · Greek Tragedy — The Same Myth, Three Voices (as Athena)

Athena, also called Athene, Pallas Athene, and Tritogeneia, was associated with Metis and Zeus as her parents in different accounts. Zeus swallowed pregnant Metis after Earth warned that her son would rule heaven; when the birth came, Prometheus or Hephaestus struck Zeus’s head, and Athena emerged fully armed at the river Triton. Another account says Zeus gave birth to her from his head by the river Trito, while Triton brought her up. Hephaestus later pursued her after being forsaken by Aphrodite, and some accounts made Athena the parent of Erichthonius, whom she secretly raised.

In the accounts of the gods’ conflicts, Athena fought Pallas and used his skin as a shield, and defeated Enceladus by throwing Sicily upon him. She and Pallas—the daughter of Triton—had been raised together and practised warfare before they fell out, after which Pallas was wounded by Athena. Athena also advised Heracles against Alcyoneus, helped him reach the giants’ battle through her agency, supplied him with a robe, and supported him with a medicine sought from Zeus for Tydeus. Through Athena’s plans, Heracles and Iolaus destroyed the Hydra of Lerna; she also gave Heracles brazen castanets received from Hephaestus.

At Attica, Poseidon and Athena disputed possession of the country, and the verdict awarded it to her because Cecrops testified that she had first planted the olive; Athena then named the city Athens after herself. She procured the kingdom for Cadmus after his servitude and gave Aesculapius the Gorgon’s blood. She was dear to Chariclo, and one account says she blinded Tiresias after he saw her naked. Auge hid her child in Athena’s precinct, where she held the priesthood, while Athena secretly raised Erichthonius. Athena also aided Apollo’s contest with Marsyas by association with the pipes he found after she discarded them.

In the contest set off by Strife, Athena competed with Hera and Aphrodite for the prize of beauty and promised Paris victory in war. She drove Ajax son of Telamon mad among the cattle, while Ajax son of Oileus incurred her anger through his impiety; Calchas warned the Greeks of it, and Athena later entreated Zeus to send a tempest against them.