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Birds and All Nature, Vol. V, No 1, January 1899

<h2>THE BIRTH OF ATHENA.</h2> BY EMILY C. THOMPSON. IT IS a study, interesting to some of our modern scholars, to fathom the depths of obscurity and bring up from the hidden past, from the minds of men long departed, their conceptions of the beings whom they worshiped. Still more interesting is it to surmise and conjecture the origin of these marvelous beings. Charming books have been written upon these subjects and they prove fascinating to the reader who, with vivid imagination, can follow the theories of each author and the long fantastic proofs. The gods of the Greeks, those anthropomorphic beings, throbbing with life, radiant with beauty, the ideal of all that is fair and lovely, and yet the prey of human passions and desires, are a never-ending source of delight to classical students. All theories start from the supposition that the gods had their origin either in physical or mental phenomena. Many try to trace out the effect which the world of nature with its wonders, its beauties, and its fearful realities, has had upon the savage and primitive mind, and how from these impressions arose the main gods of the Greek religion. Of course there are scholars on the other side who will not admit that there is any physical aspect of any of the gods. So the conflict rages, exciting, even absorbing, but inconclusive. The method of proof must depend largely upon the actual remains of that civilization which are still left for us in the literature and art of that people. The Greeks had an established theogony very early, as we know by the "Theogony" of Hesiod, which still remains. In this the parents of the gods were traced far back, to Gaia, the earth, and Uranus, the sky, who themselves were sprung from Chaos. A minute relationship was figured out between all their deities which is to us almost too perplexing to follow. Many names in this theogony are names taken from nature, as those above, and so the scholars get a basis for their investigations. Athena was one of the principal goddesses of this race, the virgin goddess of wisdom and of the arts of life, especially honored at Athens, the seat of ancient culture. Could any goddess seem farther removed from anything physical or material?—and yet we find many theories from competent, earnest scholars, brought forward to prove that such a relationship did exist. The birth of this goddess as recorded by the ancient writers was peculiar. At a blow given by Hephæstus (Vulcan) or Prometheus, she sprang from the head of Zeus, the great god of Olympus, clad in her armor, full-grown, and perfect. A few quotations will tell us the story and show us all upon which the scholars have to base their theories about the origin of the goddess and her nature. Homer presents Athena to us as the daughter of Zeus, and of Zeus alone, but he does not tell anything about her birth. She seems to be the spoilt darling of her father, or as one German writer calls her, sein anderes Ich. She wears the ægis of her father and sometimes all his armor, as she takes an active part in the battles, aiding her beloved Achæans. Hesiod, Theogony, 886-900; 924-926. "Zeus, the king of the gods, made Metis first his bride—Metis, most knowing of gods and of mortal men. But when she was about to bear the glancing-eyed goddess Athena, then deceiving her mind by craft, by winning words, he swallowed her, by the shrewdness of Gaia and starry Uranus, for thus they advised him, that no other of the ever-living gods might gain kingly honor in place of Zeus. For from her it was decreed that there should spring clever children; first the glancing-eyed maiden, Tritogenia (Athena), having equal strength with her father and wise counsel; but that then she would bear a son, king of gods and men, with overbearing heart. But first Zeus swallowed her, since the goddess purposed both good and evil for him.... So he himself bore from [Pg 30] his head the glancing-eyed Athena, terrible, strife-stirring, leader of the host, the unwearied, revered one, whom the din of battle, wars, and combat delights." Pindar, Olympian VII, 33-38. "Then the golden-haired one (Apollo) spoke from the fragrant shrine of the temple, spoke of the voyage from the Lernæan shores straight to the sea-girt island where the king of the gods, the great one, moistened the city with golden snowflakes, when by the arts of Hephæstus, by his brazen ax, Athena springing down the crest of her father's head, uttered the war cry with a mighty shout, and Heaven and Mother Earth shuddered before her." Homeric Hymn to Athena XXVIII. "Of Pallas Athena, honored goddess, I begin to sing, with glancing eyes, of many counsels and kindly heart, revered maiden, savior of cities, valiant, Tritogenia, whom Zeus himself bore from his sacred head, clad in her arms of war, golden, all-radiant. Wonder held all the immortals as they looked upon her. She quickly sprang before ægis-bearing Zeus from his immortal head shaking her sharp spear. And great Olympus trembled terribly beneath the weight of the glancing-eyed one, and the earth about resounded fearfully, and the sea was moved, agitated with its purple waves, and the salt water was poured forth on a sudden. The glorious son of Hyperion (the sun) stopped his swift-footed steeds for a long time until the maiden Pallas Athena took her arms from her immortal shoulders and all-wise Zeus rejoiced. "So hail to thee, daughter of ægis-bearing Zeus! But of thee and of another song I shall be mindful." Lucian, Dialogi Deorum VIII. In Lucian's "Dialogues of the Gods" we find the following scene which gives an amusing account of the story in the words of Hephæstus and Zeus. Hephæstus.—"What must I do, O Zeus? For I have come with my ax, the sharpest one, if it should be necessary to cleave stones at one blow." Zeus.—"That is good, O Hephæstus, but bring it down and cleave my head in twain." Heph.—"Are you trying me or are you insane? Tell me truly what you wish of me." Zeus.—"This very thing, to cleave my head. If you disobey, not now for the first time will you make trial of my anger. You must strike with your whole heart and not delay for I am tortured by the pains which confuse my brain." Heph.—"See to it, O Zeus, lest we do some harm, for the ax is sharp and not without bloodshed." Zeus.—"Only strike quickly, Hephæstus, for I know the consequences." Heph.—"I am unwilling, but still I shall strike, for what must I do when you bid? What is this? A maiden clad in armor! A great evil, O Zeus, did you have in your head! Naturally were you quick to anger, keeping such a maiden beneath the covering of your brain and armed too. I suppose it has escaped our notice that you had a camp and not a head. She leaps and dances, shakes her shield, brandishes her spear, and is in an ecstasy. And the greatest marvel, she is fair and vigorous—already in this short time. Quick-glancing eyes has she, and a helmet, too, adorns her. Therefore, oh Zeus, as my wages, promise her to me." Zeus.—"You ask what is impossible, Hephæstus, for a maiden always it is her wish to remain. I, as far as I am concerned, do not gainsay it." Heph.—"I wanted this. I'll manage it and I'll snatch her away." Zeus.—"If it is easy for you, do it. Still I know that you ask what is impossible." A certain Philostratus gives descriptions of paintings which he pretended belonged to a gallery in Naples, and this is one of them: "The Birth of Athena." "Those astonished ones are the gods and goddesses to whom the order has been given that even the nymphs are not to be absent from heaven, but are to be present with the rivers from which they are sprung. They shudder at Athena, but just now sprung in her arms from the head of Zeus, by the arts of Hephæstus, as the ax shows. No one could imagine the material of her panoply, for as many as are the colors of the rainbow as it changes into different [Pg 31] lights, so many colors flash from her arms. And Hephæstus seems in doubt by what gift he should win the favor of the goddess for his bait is spent since her arms have grown with her. Zeus gasps with pleasure, as those enduring great pain for great gain, and inquires for his child, proud that he bore her, and Hera is not angry, but rejoices as if she had borne the maiden herself. Now two peoples sacrifice to Athena on two citadels, the Athenians and the Rhodians, land and sea; of the one indeed the sacrifices are without fire and incomplete. Among the Athenians fire is painted and the savor of sacrifices and smoke, as if fragrant and ascending with the savor; therefore, as to the wiser and those sacrificing well, the goddess comes to them. It is said that gold was poured down from heaven for the Rhodians and filled their houses and streets since Zeus poured out a cloud upon them because they, too, revered Athena; and the god Wealth stood upon their acropolis, winged, as if from the clouds and golden from the material in which he appears, and he is painted as having eyes, for from foresight he came to them." 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. To another German scholar, Welcker, she is the æther and also the spirit, presenting both sides of the nature of her father, being æther, the daughter of Zeus dwelling in the æther and spirit, the daughter of Zeus the most high spirit. He lays a great deal of stress upon etymologies in his method of proof, deriving the name Athena from æther, but as every author has a different derivation for this name equally plausible, it is impossible to have full confidence in this gentleman's theory. Ploix regards Athena as the twilight, and Max Müller brings forward his inevitable "Dawn" as the true solution of the question, but the view which is presented in Roscher's Lexicon is perhaps the most sensible of all on this side. Originally Athena was the storm-cloud, and her birth from the head of Zeus shows this, Roscher maintains. This interpretation is evident all through the myth. The clouds appear in different forms, sometimes as the head of Zeus the god of the weather, at other times as the ægis. The lightning is the bright hatchet or glittering lance with which the blow is dealt. The thunder is the terrible war cry. That she was born in the west adds to this evidence, as storms came to the Greeks from that direction. Farnell contends valiantly in support of his theory that Athena represents no physical force in nature, but wisdom. In antiquity he acknowledges that some philosophers did regard Athena in the other light. Aristotle looked upon her as the moon. The stoic Diogenes Babylonius gave a physical explanation of her birth. He recalls also a comment of a scholiast to Pindar, which tells that Aristocles said that the goddess was concealed in a cloud, and that Zeus, striking the cloud, made the goddess appear. He remarks that philosophers then, in their vagaries, were no better than modern scholars, but that the conceptions which the Greek people and poets had are important for us in reaching a true conclusion; so he endeavors to prove that neither in the accounts of the poets nor in the minds of the Greeks was there any physical conception of the goddess. In the hymn quoted above he reminds us that there is no thunder which could not be left out if this were the description of a storm. He says also that there is nothing physical in the picture which Pindar gives us, unless the terrible cry of a deity must be taken to mean thunder. Lucian tells of no storm, and Philostratus, who is [Pg 32] so fond of finding remote allusions does not seem to find any indication of a clash of the elements. The only physical feature in his description is the comparison of the panoply of Athena to a rainbow. So Farnell says: "It may be admitted, then, that these poetical descriptions do not consciously express the physical fact. To make them serve the other theories we must regard their highly wrought phrases as mere survivals of an ancient poetical symbolic diction which did more clearly express this." If this were true, would not the earlier accounts preserve this diction for us? But they do not, for this symbolic language is not found in either Homer or Hesiod. He says: "Is it not more natural to say that as imagination dwelt upon her birth the poets tended to embellish it with the richest phraseology, to represent it as a great cosmic incident in which the powers of heaven and earth were concerned?" His opponents seem to base all their interpretations upon the later accounts, beginning with the Homeric hymn, for this story which Hesiod gives is in the way as there is no phenomenon in the world of nature corresponding to the swallowing of Metis. Metis is Thought or Counsel and is a personification of this abstract idea as Hesiod shows by calling her the most knowing of gods and men. Preller objects to this, and affirms that this primitive language does not deal with abstractions, and that the adjective thus applied to her by Hesiod simply connects her with the water, as there is a sea nymph of that name. But in all the myths which mention Metis, she appears as Thought or Counsel, and it is absurd in a language which personifies grace, righteous indignation, and law not to allow Metis (Thought) to be a similar personification. Of course the worship of Athena had been long in vogue before a story of her birth arose. So Farnell reasons out the origin of the story thus: In her worship Athena appeared to have abundant thought and counsel, therefore she naturally became the daughter of Thought or Counsel, the daughter of Metis; she had all the powers of Zeus, therefore she became the daughter of Zeus, and as she had no feminine weakness and inclined to father more than mother, she could not have been born in the ordinary way, and this might have been so if Zeus had followed a fashion common in myth and had swallowed her mother, Metis. The prophecy given in Hesiod as the reason for the swallowing probably arose after the story, as the fulfillment of the prophecy could have been hindered in easier ways, and it is likely that this reason was borrowed from other myths, as, for example, the Cronos story. The above explanation, Farnell says, is, of course, only a hypothesis, but it has the advantage over the others of being suggested by the most ancient form of the legend and the most ancient ideas concerning the goddess. He adds that the appearance of Prometheus and Hephæstus in later accounts would only strengthen his interpretation, the association of these divine artists with the goddess of wisdom and of the arts of life. This was a favorite subject with the artists from the earliest times as old vase paintings bear witness. But the famous representation was that in the east pediment of the Parthenon, the work of Phidias. Only fragments of this remain to-day. The central group is entirely lost except for the torso of one god, supposed by some to be Hephæstus, but more probably it is that of Prometheus. So the fragments are of the side groups and not so helpful in recalling the original, but still conjectures and reproductions have been innumerable. In Madrid a Roman puteal has been found which is believed to present the central group of the east pediment. Upon this Zeus is seated, before him Athena flees away, Victory flies after her to place a crown upon her head and behind Zeus Prometheus with the ax in his hand draws back in fright and turns away. This group of Phidias was, of course, the culmination of this story in art. The later representations are few and supposed to be merely copies of this. <hr class="chap" /> [Pg 34] <table class="sp2 mc w50" title="WHIPPOORWILL." summary="WHIPPOORWILL."> <tbody> <tr> <td colspan="3"> <ANTIMG style="width:100%" src="images/i_065.jpg" width="600" height="448" alt="" /> </td> </tr> <tr> <td class="xx-smaller ac w30">FROM COL. CHI. ACAD. SCIENCES.</td> <td class="x-smaller ac w40">WHIPPOORWILL. ¾ Life-size.</td> <td class="xx-smaller ac w30">COPYRIGHT 1899, NATURE STUDY PUB. CO., CHICAGO.</td> </tr> </tbody> </table> <hr class="chap" /> [Pg 35] <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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