The Ancients - Athena: Goddess of Wisdom

Episode Date: April 9, 2023

This episode contains graphic references of a sexual nature.Athena is the goddess of wisdom, tactical war and skilled craft in Greek mythology.She is the favourite daughter of Zeus and Metis, and is actually born from Zeus himself. She is one of the most recognisable Greek divinities, often depicted with her signature peaked helmet, spear, breast plate and shield, often with Medusa’s head it. One of the most important myths of Athena is the contest between herself and her uncle, Poseidon, for the patronage of Athens. Spoiler alert: Athena wins. To continue our immersion into the deities of the Greek Gods, this week Tristan Hughes is joined by Rachel Kousser, Professor of Art History at the City University of New York. Together they discuss Athena’s most iconic representations in both art and literature, and how she has become one of the must enduring figures of antiquity. The Senior Producer was Elena GuthrieScript written by Andrew HulseVoice over performed by Nicola WoolleyThe Assistant Producer was Annie ColoeEdited by Aidan LonerganIf you enjoyed this episode, you might also enjoy other episodes in the series: Zeus: King of the Gods, Hera: Queen of the Gods, Hephaestus: God of Fire, Aphrodite: Goddess of Love, and Ares: God of War.For more Ancients content, subscribe to our Ancients newsletter here.If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - enter promo code ANCIENTS for a free trial, plus 50% off your first three months' subscription.To download, go to the Android or Apple store.

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like the Ancient ad-free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. Sing, muses. Sing to me a story of Olympus and the deathless gods who govern Earth, sea and sky. That is what Zeus commands. He will hear the details of this dispute. At the plea of King Ketkrops, he and his fellow Olympians have come to act as a jury.

King Ketkrops himself, he bows his head in a reverent silence, but the sound of his anxiety, the sound of his worry, still fills the palace. It is not the drumming of fingers, the grinding of teeth or the tapping of feet. It is the whisper of scales against stone. The King Ketcrops is an autochthon. He is born of the earth itself, neither mother nor father, and so while he has the head and body of a man, his legs are the coiled tail of a snake.

The sound is that tail nervously coiling and uncoiling about his throat. What is it that fills his mind with worry? Why has he called on this deathless jury? King Kekrops has been asked to make an impossible judgment, to choose between two gods for patron of his city, Poseidon, lord of the deep, and the grey-eyed Athena, Lord of the Deep, and the grey-eyed Athena, Maiden of Wisdom and War. And as for the stakes? They are no more or less than his city's very survival. It's the Ancients on History Hit.

I'm Tristan Hughes, your host. And in today's episode, well, our Greek gods and goddesses series, it goes storming on. It's relentless. We're on deity number six now, and we're talking all about the goddess of wisdom, Athena. In today's episode, naturally, with all of our episodes in the Greek Gods and Goddesses series, it's got quite a special format because we kick it off with a story related to Athena, a particular myth where she battles, she vies with her uncle Poseidon for patronage over the city of Athens. Our guest today is Professor Rachel Cusser. Rachel is a professor at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center at the City University of New York, and it was a pleasure to interview her about all things this goddess of wisdom. So without further ado, Athena, now is your time.

The Muses' story begins with Kekrops himself. He is without doubt the finest king the plain of Attica has ever seen. His autochthonous origin is his insight. He has taken inspiration from the harmony of nature, and now the warring tribes of Attica are a single people. He has taken inspiration from the laws of nature, and now courts, priesthoods and professions flourish under his protection. He has faceted his city into a priceless jewel. So it was inevitable that eventually one of the gods would come to claim it for their crown. Kekrops has already discouraged lesser deities, nymphs, satyrs and bastard demigods. No. He seeks the favour of a greater patron.

An Olympian. Grey-eyed Athena. The goddess would represent his city's every virtue. She is wise, but curious, a patron of tradition and innovation alike. She is pitiless in war, but temperate too, a paragon of strategy, not savagery. And she is a direct line to the father of gods and men himself. She is the favorite child of Zeus. Athena meets Kekrops atop the city's highest hill, the Acropolis. There she presents a gift. She thrusts her spear into the ground. She tills the good black earth, her blade as fork and spade.

She presses a single seed into the furrow. An olive tree grows forth. It is a gift as versatile as Athena herself. Not merely food, but oil, wood, fuel, fire, shade. Not merely food, but oil, wood, fuel, fire, shade. With it, Kekrop sees the kind of staple that would make his city the centre of the world. But another presumptive patron is not far behind. Poseidon.

Now the lord of the deep, he has a mood of salt and disposition of storm. He regards himself eternally cheated. When he and his brothers drew lots of their domains, it was Zeus, the youngest, who was awarded the highest office. So with Olympus beyond his reach, Poseidon claims the cities of mortal men as his due instead. And he is voracious as any collector. He has had little success though. Corinth he lost to sun-touched Helios, Naxos to the reveler Dionysus, Argyles to royal Hera.

His grievance seethed some bubbles in the deep palaces of the wine-dark sea. It shakes the earth and stirs the waves. So when he hears of Athena's intent to claim Attica, he journeys to the Acropolis too. It is a delicate matter then. When the muses sing of divine wrath, Poseidon's refrain of crashing cymbals and pounding drums is a reoccurring theme. Keckrupps can only hope in a simple answer. Athena has presented the city with her gift first. Poseidon disagrees. He says his gift has been there all along. He drives his trident into the rock, like a fisherman spearing a prize catch, and a wondrous spring bursts forth, a well beneath the hill. But when Ketcrups fills the cup of his hands and drinks deep, it is only to gag. The spring is salt water, little better than brine.

Spring is salt water, little better than brine. And yet what choice does the king have? Meager though Poseidon's gift may be, the well was here first. So was not Poseidon's patronage also? And now Ketkrops is in danger of angering the goddess Athena instead. A jury of the gods is his only option. They will hear both sides. They will make a judgment. With the Musa's story complete, Zeus commands the arguments be heard. Poseidon begins. His temper is tempest. His rhetoric the roar of a sea squall.

He speaks of dues, of obligations, of rightful law. His every word is drenched in threat. But Athena is silent throughout. She brings neither objection nor point of order. Her great peaked helmet disguises any hint of her thoughts. It is only when Poseidon is finished that she removes it. She explains then that she will make no opening statement, no narration, no peroration. She will simply call a witness, King Kekrops. She will simply call a witness, King Kekrops.

Were you there when I presented my gift to the city? She asks. Yes, I watched you thrust your spear into the ground. I watched you till the good black earth, your blade as fork and spade. I watched you press a single seed into the furrow. Then Athena asks about Poseidon's gift, and again, Kekrops affirms, he watched the Lord of the Deep drive his trident into the rock. But Athena looks puzzled at this. I don't understand, dear king. I know I am merely the goddess of wisdom. Water is my uncle's domain. But a spring is a conduit, yes?

Athena plays up her confusion for the jewellery, her expression drawn into a comedy's mask. Did my uncle not claim his gift predated mine? That it was the well beneath the Acropolis. Keckrops nods. So did you see him present that gift? Athena asks. To the sound of a nervous sliver, the king shakes his head. Then do we even know it is his gift to give?

Athena continues. Do we know it is he who set this well beneath the earth? Who among us saw it? Mercifully, she turns her questions from Ketcrops then, addressing the jewelry of the gods instead. A deed. A contract. A deed, a contract, a witness. Patronage should be an easy thing to evidence, should it not? Mine stands before you now. Good King Ketcrops and his testimony.

So where is my uncle's evidence? Titor winds its way through the jury, Zeus at its head. He can barely contain his amusement. The father of gods and men has always enjoyed the precocity of his firstborn. All know the verdict then. Poseidon's temper might threaten to flood the entire plain of Attica, but the matter has been decided by gods, not men. The city is Athena's. It will forever bear her name. Athens. Rachel, it is wonderful to have you on the podcast today. Thank you. It's great to be here. Rachel, it is wonderful to have you on the podcast today. Thank you. It's great to be here.

Now, we are continuing our Greek Gods and Goddesses series, and let's delve straight into it with our protagonist today. Rachel, who was Athena? So Athena was a really fascinating goddess because she's goddess of a kind of disparate bunch of different things. So she's a goddess, first of all, of wisdom. Then another important aspect of her is a goddess of war. And a final really critical one is a goddess of skilled craft, particularly weaving, which is the kind of paradigmatic women's work of Greek antiquity. And although they seem all very different, to me, what is the kind of through line of all of them different. To me, what is the kind of through line of all of them is that they all have to do with strategic intelligence that she has that allows her to kind of harness powerful forces of nature and powerful, you know, natural resources and make them useful.

So that's really interesting because when you said war and then weaving in the same sentence when describing Athena, I was trying to think of any way that you could link those two together, but you just said it right there. It's this idea of strategic thinking. Absolutely. And she comes by it very naturally because strategic thinking is how I would translate Metis, which is the name of her mother. So Metis is, another word for it is cunning, but I feel like in English, cunning doesn't have such a good resonance. It's like something that, you know, is low cunning. But for Athena and for the Greeks,

cunning and strategic intelligence is a really good thing to have. And it's signaled by the fact that Metis, the goddess of this, is in fact the chosen first wife of the king of the gods, because she is, according to Hesiod, the early Greek poet, the wisest of gods and men. And so therefore, if we're talking about her father Zeus and her mother Metis, so what is this absolutely mad origin story of Athena? It's a very, very weird one.

But the background you have to understand is that, you know, Zeus and Metis are getting along swimmingly up until the point where Metis gets pregnant. And this poses a real problem for Zeus because in Greek mythology, the relations of parents and children are, shall we say, vexed. These are, after all, the people who gave us the myth of Oedipus and particularly the relationships of fathers and sons. And Zeus has no idea whether he's going to have a son or a daughter with Metis, but he's afraid, he's terribly afraid of having a son who will be greater than himself and who will therefore overthrow him. Because that's in fact

what happened with him and his father, Kronos, or time, and then what Kronos had in fact done to his own father, Ouranos, the sky. So Zeus is afraid that this is a bad set of precedents. And so Gaia and Ouranos, earth and sky, his grandparents tell him, got to do something with Metis. So he swallows her and thinks that will do it. She's apparently still advising him in his belly, not making this up. He thinks, okay, that should, you know, put paid to any possible pregnancy, but doesn't work out that way. As the time comes for Mises to give birth, Zeus has a splitting headache. And from it comes Athena, fully grown and armed to the teeth with a shield, a spear, a helmet, her aegis, this sort of breastplate thing

she has. And there are these really fascinating Greek face paintings where there she is fully armed, just like a grownup, but about the size of an energetic toddler on Zeus's lap. And that's how she's born. So she comes from Zeus and has this connection to parts of life that are often considered or considered by the Greeks as masculine, like war, from her father Zeus. And it, you know, has a sort of identification with the male that way. And I think that's what people usually say about this birth myth. But I also think it's important to bear in mind that Zeus, therefore, is also a bit like a mother. And in fact, he is the only god I can think of, male god, who manages to give birth. And he manages to do so twice,

not just to Athena, who comes from his head, but also to Dionysus, the god of wine, who comes out of his thigh. So I think one should see this as an interesting myth from both their perspectives. That is so interesting indeed. And as you say, it is such a bizarre myth. I also love the fact that, well, I find it hilarious that he swallows Metis and then she's still giving him advice. I mean, if we keep going on with the portrayal of Athena, you mentioned how she's the size of a toddler, but she has all of these objects with her and these objects that become symbols of this goddess. Absolutely. So Athena is one of the easiest divinities to recognize in Greek art because she's almost always shown. a breastplate and a cloak and often has on it the gorgon medusa whose head she helps perseus the great hero perseus cut off so she has a very distinctive iconography which is so ferocious

and warlike at the same time as it's very much emphasized through her long hair through her peplos her dress and in g face painting, through her very pale skin, that she is female. So she's an interesting mix that way. And I've also got my notes here, the word epithet. Now, we normally associate that with Homeric heroes, but of course with gods and goddesses too. First of all, what are epithets, so we know what they are, and what epithets are associated with Athena? So an epithet is like, particularly for divinities, is a word that describes the particular aspect of a god or goddess that you are trying to reach. So, and Athena has a whole range of them. whole range of them. So for example, she is Athena Parthenos, Athena the Virgin, and that's one of the most important aspects of her in Athens. But she is also Athena Ergane, which is Athena the

worker, Athena of the skilled craftsmen. So people like potters and sculptors try to reach her through Athena Ergane. So I almost feel like it's a way of particularly specifying, you know, this is the part of Athena that I would like to call on as a worshipper. So can you say that her epithets, the things that she's associated with in regards to epithets, it can change, it's flexible depending on the situation? Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, there are some in homer for instance that are very recurrent like laucopus which means something that's like owl eye but it seems also to mean kind of gray green eyes and that's the color of her eyes these bright

flashing eyes that she has so there it just helps us identify her and tells us something about her connection to owls the bird with which she's most associated because they're wise too, theoretically. But most of the time, it's a way of sort of almost getting the direct line to the part of Athena that you want to access. Now, of course, we've got to talk about Athens, the city of Athens, given its similar name to Athena. But set the scene, therefore, with this most famous of all these mainland Greek city-states. How does, in the mythology, this relationship between the goddess Athena and the city-state of Athens come about? Right. So there are two really important myths to keep in mind here in terms of Athena's ties to Athens.

The first one is the contest of Athena and Poseidon. So on the Acropolis of Athens, they both want the city, supposedly. It's such a desirable city, at least the way the Athenians tell the story. They both want to be the patron deity. So the person in charge of dealing with this is Kekrops, who is actually a person who's not quite right because he's half man, half snake. He's the oldest of Athens. So very appropriately, Kekrops and the Athenians, very appropriately for a democracy, get to vote on this one. And what they do is they ask Athena and Poseidon, they say they'll give Athens to the one who will give them the best gift.

In essence, bribing the judges is fine. Think of the judgment of Paris. So Athena goes second, Poseidon goes first, and he strikes the ground with his trident and a saltwater spring supposedly appears on the Acropolis. And Keckrogrog thinks, oh, this is very impressive, but let's see what she has to offer. And Athena strikes the ground, and what comes up is not a spring, but instead an olive tree. Not as showy as the water, not as dramatic, but the Athenians, who also are people of Matis I would say people of strategic intelligence think about how this olive could shade them Athens is very hot very dusty not a lot of trees grow there I must say it can provide firewood always useful in a society that didn't have any electricity

and needed a lot of heating and most importantly importantly, it could provide olives, which both in their form as olives and also particularly in their form of olive oil. That was one of the most important exports in Athens and a real center. I mean, they are a real center of that. And it's a really central part of the diet of the time. Think ancient Mediterranean diet in essence. So they decide that they are going to give their city to Athena and they in fact name it in Greek, Athena the city, Athens the city is the same as Athena the goddess. So that's one important myth about the relation of Athens and Athena. And it's about them choosing something that may not seem so dramatic, but that is actually really important. Poseidon gets really

angry and goes and floods the nearest plane. But he eventually becomes helpful to them and is a key god that they consider important for their navy, which is, after all, the foundation of their political power. The second important myth is a myth of Athena and Hephaestus. Athena comes to Hephaestus, the god of the forge, asking him to make her armor. And Hephaestus is so filled with desire for her that he runs after her and she being a parthenos a virgin does not want to have anything to do with him runs away because he's lame it's not easy for him to catch up with

her but he eventually does and he ejaculates on her and she throws a spear at him and so much for Hephaestus for that day. But in the meantime, she is disgusted and she wipes off with a piece of wool. She wipes off her thigh where he's ejaculated on her and throws it on the ground. And this being Athena and Hephaestus and their powerful connection, a child springs up from the earth. And this is a child known as Ericthonius or as Erechtheus, meaning born from the ground. And Athena then picks him up. There are these really lovely vase paintings where she's picking him up very motherly and turning her aegis around so that the gorgon is on the back and doesn't scare the child. Very sweet. And she's then, although a Parthenos, she is also a mother, a kind of foster mother,

to Erechtheus, who becomes an important early king of Athens. And I think this story sort of shows her connection to Athens, Hephaestus' connection to Athens because it's his sperm, but also the way that the Athenians saw themselves as what they called a Tochthynus, so springing up from the soil themselves. And they saw that as important because it differentiated themselves from their big enemies, the Spartans, who are famous in mythology and perhaps in history for having come from elsewhere and invaded the Peloponnese. On Gone Medieval from History Hit, we set out to solve the biggest mysteries of the Middle Ages.

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Listen and follow on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's really interesting how Athens, although Athena, as you say, is the central figure in the mythology, you also have these other two very important gods in Poseidon and Hephaestus who are also most because they're involved in the story they are still later embraced by the Athenians and you said the idea of autochthony and something you highlighted there that I think

be really good to focus in on a bit more is in the past over previous episodes of the gods and goddesses series we focused in quite a lot on the lovers of various gods and goddesses, whether it's a Vistus or Aphrodite, Zeus or Hera. But Athena, she's unusual. She's different. As you say, she's a virgin goddess. So I'm guessing therefore she doesn't have lovers in the mythology. She definitely doesn't have lovers. She has what I would call close male friends. Think of Odysseus, but also she's the helper of Heracles during his 12 labors, of Theseus, the great Athenian hero, of Perseus, the killer of Medusa. You know, she is sort of the quintessential helpmate for a whole range of male heroes. And I think that very much has to do with the fact that simultaneously,

she's not stealing their thunder, partly because she's female. But on the other hand, she's super useful. Like if I wanted a god on my side, it would be Athena. There's no question. She is fierce, but she is also intelligent. Like she is the perfect divinity for that. So I would say that while she doesn't have lovers and Hephaestus and Erechtheus are the closest she ever gets to a partner and child, she does have a very rich kind of network of relationships. And we'll definitely delve into Odysseus a bit later on. But if we focus on Athens, historical Athens for a bit longer, Rachel. So how do the Athenians, how do they celebrate Athena? What sorts of celebrations

are associated with this goddess? They do a tremendous range, as one would imagine, for their state goddess. But the most important is a festival they call the Panathenaia, the all Athenian festival. And they do it every year. And every four years, they have a really big one, kind of like the Olympics. But what happens in this festival, like the Olympics, they have athletic games. They also, very Athenian-like, have contests in singing, in a kind of martial dancing, and in recitation of Homer. So it's a rather intellectual contest as well as a physical one. And then they have this amazing procession. And I'm from Pasadena, home of the Rose Parade, so I always envision this a little like the Rose Parade of classical antiquity. So it involves all the Athenians and they have certain ones that are chosen, like young women who are chosen to bear sort of baskets. There are also, interestingly, as well as citizens, they explicitly bring in the people that the Athenians called medics who are immigrants to Athens but don't have full citizen status.

And by the time of the Athenian Empire in the 5th century BC, one of the things that the Athens allies slash subjects have to do is they have to send a cow and a suit of armor for the Panathenaia every year. And the cow is to sacrifice because animal sacrifice is the most important part of Greek religion. And the suit of armor clearly has ties, you know, suggests their sort of contribution to Athens' defense of Greece from the Persians. And they all get together and march from the Kerameikos, which is the major cemetery of Athens, up the Acropolis to the top of the citadel, the Acropolis where the Parthenon is today, and have an enormous animal sacrifice and also present a peplos, a dress, that they have woven to the image of Athena Polyus, the statue of Athena Polyus, the city goddess of Athens. And that's the kind of culminating event.

So this is a big state-sponsored festival that is really important as a showcase for Athens' kind of representation of itself. And as well, I think its representation to its allies who must have had to show up, participate, and see Athens as this really powerful imperial state in the 5th century BCE. And wasn't there also, so that's Athena Polyas, but is there also, Rachel, this other massive statue within the Parthenon itself, the Athena Parthenos, and it's absolutely beautiful. It's another of these wonders of the ancient world that isn't actually a wonder. Yeah. So, Athena is fascinating in Athens because she has not one, but two major temples in pretty much the same place. The Acropolis is not that big,

and there are these two enormous temples in the 5th century BCE, and they express rather different aspects of Athena. So the Athena Polyas is this statue that is made of olive wood, seems very appropriate for Athena, and it's so old the Greeks believed it had fallen from heaven, although it clearly also gets dolled up, we have inscriptions in the 5th century BCE talking about its golden earrings, for example. And that's the site of the oldest cult of Athens. It was eventually placed in what is now the,

what we call the Erechtheion, the temple of Erexias, on the north side of the Acropolis. And that's really the old sort of civic goddess connecting the Athenians to this very long history. On the south side of the Acropolis is a very different temple. The first one that we have foundations for, at any rate, is from the early 5th century, right after the Battle of Marathon and the Athenians' spectacular victory over the Persians. It was then destroyed by the Persians during the Second Persian War and rebuilt as the enormous, most ambitious, first all-marble temple in mainland Greece. And that's the one where you have this statue of Athena. It's 40 feet tall. It's made of golden ivory, the most expensive materials you could possibly imagine.

It's made by the top sculptor in Athens and indeed in the Greek world at the time, Phidias, who also made the Olympian Zeus. That's one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. Phidias, who also made the Olympian Zeus. That's one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. And it was clearly spectacular. To give you a sense, it had over a ton of gold on it. And we know this because in his speech to the Athenians at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War, the famous statesman Pericles says, when he's numbering all the resources, you know, we have this many ships and we have this many soldiers. Then he goes, and we have a ton of gold from the Athena Parthenos statue. And in case of emergency, it is all removable. And they didn't do it in the Persian and the Peloponnesian war, but later on, it does get

made use of. So it must have been an astonishing statue. And it seems to me to represent kind of imperial Athens at its height, particularly since it was made with the money from the tribute that Athens subjects paid them. I love the fact that, well, infamously how that gold was unraveled later on by successors like Demetrius, which is another podcast in itself. I do love that figure, but we will move on because we're talking about Athena all day today. Rachel, that's all so fascinating. And of course, really highlighting unsurprisingly, the importance that the Athenians

placed on Athena. I must also ask though, because we always do focus on Athens with the worship of Athena. But were there any other Greek city-states across the ancient Greek world that worshipped her predominantly? Absolutely. The two best documented are Pergamon, the famous Hellenistic kingdom, and Praene, which is another important Greek city on the coast of what is now the western coast of what is now Turkey. And in both cases, she is the main civic goddess. And the Pergamians, in fact, had a copy. It's a mere 10 feet tall and made of marble, but it's still quite impressive of the Athena

Parthenos from Athens, really suggesting that they see themselves as the successors of Athens suggesting that they see themselves as the successors of Athens in their intellectual interests. She showed up, it's put in a library, but also in their sort of defense of the Greeks from their new enemies who are the Gauls. One should also say like the Greeks are not monotheists. So every city has cults of anybody they think would be useful to them or dangerous to them if they didn't worship them. So, you know, many cities, there are cults of her in Corinth, there are cults of her in Delphi, there are cults all over the Greek world. Even as a major civic deity, Athens is not alone. The Athenians just, you know, they write a lot and they use a lot of money to make art. So we tend to prioritize them, but they probably

loom larger in our consciousness than maybe they did in the Greek world of the 5th century. Yeah, they definitely do steal the limelight, don't they? But I'm glad that you mentioned Pergamum among all of those other places that worship. And yes, you heard Rachel right, the Gauls, which we will have to cover in a future episode because that's a fascinating story of the Gauls in modern day Anatolia. But if we go back to the mythology of Athena, Rachel, we've talked about her origin story, how she becomes the patron deity of Athens. But like all of these gods, they're all very complicated characters. And Athena, she's got a dark side too, doesn't she? I mean, one would say she has just as much or just as little of a dark side

as all the other gods. I think that the myths of Greece allow people to speculate about what it would be like to be omnipotent. And that means being able to do whatever you feel like to people who anger you. So for example, in the myth of Arachne, Arachne is a very skilled weaver who boasts that she's better than Athena. They have a contest. Athena wins. Arachne turns into a spider. She's probably getting off easy as these things go relative to other mortals who try to vie with gods. When the sadder Marcia says he's better at playing music than Apollo, he gets flayed a lot.

Not making this one up. So Athena then certainly is violent against those who attempt to vie with her. Also to those who disobey her. There's a story of the daughters of Kecrops, this early king of Athens. She gives them Erechseus in a basket and says, don't open the basket. Kind of like Pandora, and they do, and they are driven mad and jump off a cliff. And Medusa has an encounter with Poseidon in the temple of Athena, and that's not so good for her. She gets turned into a gorgon. So yeah, going against Athena is really a bad idea, but as I said, true of any Greek god in my view. and then try and focus on the more negative aspects of Athena. As you say, every god or

goddess had this, and actually some were more punitive than others. So you shouldn't really get a view of the Athenians from that because it's not a focus just on Athena having a bad side. Exactly. There's a really interesting quote from Thucydides in the middle of the Melian dialogues when the Athenians are mad at the city-state of Melos where the famous Venus de Milo was later created. And the Melians want to be neutral in the battle with them in Sparta and Athenians don't like neutrality. And the Athenians, according to Thucydides, say, of men we know and of the gods we know, no, of men we know, and of the gods we believe, that the strong take what they can, and the weak suffer what they must. After which, the Athenians go ahead, sack the

city of Melos, kill all the men, and sell the women and children into slavery. I think that tells you pretty much everything you need to know about their view of both men and gods and the relationship between them. Let's go back to that figure of Odysseus, which we highlighted earlier. So as you say, Athena, she doesn't take lovers. She's very much this virgin goddess, but she has a lot of close male friends that she plays an active role in helping. And so what is her relationship, this close relationship with Odysseus? Odysseus is, because of the Odyssey, because of Homer's Odyssey, the relationship with a god, with Athena that we know most for a hero. And they are very much alike. Odysseus too

is one of the epithets Homer uses for him is polymetis, which means like skilled in all ways of deceiving. And he is a clever person. He succeeds not by overwhelming force, but with his brain. And I think that the quintessential moment that shows the connection between him and Athena is in book 13 of the Odyssey. So he's finally, after all his travels, gotten back to Ithaca. And Athena appears to him in the guise of a young shepherd. And he asks her where he is. And she says, Ithaca. And you might think at this point, he's like, great, I'm Odysseus. I'm the king of this place. Here I am. No, instead, she asks him who he is. And he gives her this huge, tall tale. I'm a Cretan, and I killed this Cretan hero, and then I had to run away, so I went with the Phoenicians, and then we got blown off course, and I've been sailing for a long time.

I mean, it goes on for like 20 to 30 lines. It's not just those short lines. It's like one of Odysseus's really long elaborate lies and at the end of it Athena smiles and she reaches out to him and she says wow she's not mad at him for lying to her she says even now you Odysseus, are still telling these tales. And that is why we are close. Because you are the craftiest of men, and I am the wisest of the gods. And it's a really beautiful moment in a way. Like she recognizes both his good qualities and his bad qualities in this moment and sort of valorizes that they are alike. And with the story of Athena and Odysseus' relationship and Athena helping Odysseus,

does this stretch all the way back to the Trojan War itself when you have the gods and goddesses taking either side? Is Athena on the side of the Greeks and is she actively helping Odysseus from that point on? Absolutely. She is, of course, mad at the Trojans because during the judgment of Paris, Paris chooses Aphrodite over her and Hera. So both she and Hera are on the side of the Greeks from the get-go. And notably, so is Poseidon. So although they have some times when they're mad at each other, Athena and Poseidon, in this they are allies. And she's very helpful to all the Greek heroes. In the Iliad, she shows up helping both Diomedes and Odysseus.

And, you know, depending on which story you get, she may have given Odysseus the idea of the famous wooden horse, which provides the way they get into Troy. So she's the one you want on your side. And you mentioned Poseidon there. Of course, we mentioned Poseidon earlier as Athena's great rival. Do we see this kind of, although the Trojan War is an example, as you highlighted, where they're on the same side, but is there a repetition in quite a few different mythical stories where it's almost Athena on one side versus Poseidon on the other. Yeah. I would also say, though, she tangles with a lot of divinity. She tangles with Ares, as we said, who she defeats twice. She tangles with Hephaestus. She's not afraid to go head to head with any male except Zeus. But Poseidon, yes, she seems to have

a particular, because she's a protector of so many of Athens and also so many important heroes, she often tangles with Poseidon. And I think that this has to do with Poseidon as a kind of unbridled force of nature, the force of the sea, which is a very dangerous, scary thing for the Greeks. The relationship with them, to me, is best shown by the fact that Poseidon is also the god of horses in Greek belief, but Athena is the goddess of the bit, the thing that allows you to control the horse and make it manageable. So they have this kind of complementary opposition where he's this kind of force of nature and she's the like restraining force i never realized that so actually athena those massive words that we associate athena with wisdom war even weaving but it's almost smaller things like that cunning small devices like the bits that she is also very

much associated with that's fascinating yeah yeah that kind of technical know-how is really a key part it's very pragmatic very practical very athenian okay well as we now wrap up completely it's been fascinating i'm sure we should talk about athena for much much longer but i do also want to ask about athena when the romans come knocking so correct me if i'm wrong but sometimes we see the romans almost blatantly stealing the greek gods and then adopting them absolutely there we go but when it comes to athena i mean how do the romans almost translate this particular venerable greek goddess okay so the first thing one should think is that the romans probably come to this this Greek goddess through the Etruscans, through Minerva, who very early in Etruscan art, we have images that are labeled Minerva, which look like Athena and where she's showing up in myths where, like the Judgment of Paris,

where Athena would be. So the Romans are sort of getting this partly at second hand from Greek mythology. And in Roman art, whenever we see her identifiably, she looks a lot like Athena. She's wearing a shield. She's holding a spear, helmet, the whole nine yards. And Minerva has some similar qualities. She also is a goddess of wisdom. Menos is a very ancient word in Indo-European, and the Romans take that on. She's also a goddess of war. She's also a goddess of weaving. So she has all those things that are similar.

But there are also ways that, you know, the thing I love about the Romans is they're always taking, but they're also doing their own thing. So two ways in which to wrap up, in which they do their own thing. One is that she's part of the Capitoline Triad with Juno, that is Hera and Jupiter, Zeus. And that means she is part of what the Romans thought of as their oldest, most venerable state cult on the Capitoline Hill in Rome, which is very different. Athena doesn't tend to show up with Zeus and Hera in anything. And the whole idea of a god triad is very un-Greek. The other is that Minerva is also a really important goddess of healing. So she's the goddess of doctors, but also of places that can be places of healing. So if you think of in the UK,

of places that can be places of healing. So if you think of in the UK, the most important shrine of Minerva is at Bath. She's equated with the Celtic god Sulis because the springs of Bath were supposed to be a healing shrine in the Celtic world. And then when the Romans come in, the Romans love Bath, so they're all into it. So both of those are rather different from at least the sort of key roles of Athena in Greece. Well, there you go. It's so interesting how, as you mentioned that Capitoline Triad, I remember seeing a bracelet, not too far, a Roman bracelet or an armilla, and it showed the three. And I didn't realize how Minerva, he said, almost elevated in importance with the Romans to align with Jupiter

and Juno. Rachel, this has been absolutely fantastic. Is there anything else you'd like to highlight about Athena before we completely wrap up this episode? I think the only one thing I would like to say is to keep in mind that religion is different from myth. We tend to think that everything that the Greeks talked about in mythology, from myth. We tend to think that everything that the Greeks talked about in mythology, they believed when they were worshiping Athena. And I think that that can't be true or no one would ever worship Ares, for example, because he's terrible in myth. But we have to imagine that in mythology, she probably had many more roles than we can quite access through the myths and literature we have.

So, I mean, she seems important enough, but she was probably had more, you know, more than I can understand or appreciate now. And it just goes to me to say, therefore, Rachel, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast today. You're welcome. Well, there you go. There was the latest episode in our greek gods and goddesses series

we've now done athena and stay tuned for when we release the next episode which will be all about athena's uncle the god of the sea poseidon thank you so much to rachel for being a brilliant guest in this interview today the script script writer was Andrew Hulse. The voice actor was Nicola Woolley. The assistant producer was Annie Colo. The senior producer was Elena Guthrie. And the episode was edited by Aidan Lonergan. But that's enough from me,

and I will see you in the next episode. Thank you.