Athena

Athena, the Roman Minerva, is the goddess of wisdom, skilled craft, and disciplined warfare — the clear-eyed patroness of heroes, of weavers and artisans, and of her city Athens, whose Parthenon was raised in her honor. Unlike the blood-lust of Ares, her warfare is strategy in defense of order; unlike mere cleverness, her wisdom is practical and just.

She was born not from a mother but sprang full-grown and armored from the head of Zeus — a birth the Platonists read as the image of Intellect proceeding undivided from the paternal cause, Wisdom issuing directly from the divine mind. For this reason Athena became the special patroness of the philosophers: when her statue was removed from the Athenian Acropolis, the goddess appeared in a dream to Proclus (his biographer Marinus reports) saying she wished to dwell with him — a sign that wisdom had passed from the temple to the school.

Epithets

• Pallas Παλλάς — the maiden, the brandisher
• Polias Πολιάς — guardian of the city
• Parthenos Παρθένος — the virgin
• Promachos Πρόμαχος — who fights in the front rank
• Glaukopis Γλαυκῶπις — bright-eyed, owl-eyed
• Ergane Ἐργάνη — patroness of craftsmen
• Nike Νίκη — bringer of victory
• Tritogeneia Τριτογένεια — the Trito-born