Volume II Part 24 (2/2)

Among deities for whom an origin has been sought in the personification of elemental phenomena, Athene is remarkable. Perhaps no divine figure has caused more diverse speculations. The study of her legend is rather valuable for the varieties of opinion which it ill.u.s.trates than for any real contribution to actual knowledge which it supplies. We can discover little, if anything, about the rise and development of the conception of Athene. Her local myths and local _sacra_ seem, on the whole, less barbaric than those of many other Olympians. But in comparing the conjectures of the learned, one lesson comes out with astonis.h.i.+ng clearness. It is most perilous, as this comparison demonstrates, to guess at an origin of any G.o.d in natural phenomena, and then to explain the details of the G.o.d's legend with exclusive reference to that fancied elemental origin.

As usual, the oldest literary references to Athene are found in the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_. It were superfluous to collect and compare texts so numerous and so familiar. Athene appears in the _Iliad_ as a martial maiden, daughter of Zeus, and, apparently, of Zeus alone without female mate.*

* Iliad, v. 875, 880. This is stated explicitly in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, where Athene is said to have been born from the head of Zeus (Pindar, Olympic Odes, vii.).

She is the patron of valour and the inspirer of counsel; she arrests the hand of Achilles when his sword is half drawn from the sheath in his quarrel with Agamemnon; she is the constant companion and protector of Odysseus; and though she is wors.h.i.+pped in the citadel of Troy, she is constant to the cause of the Achaeans. Occasionally it is recorded of her that she a.s.sumed the shape of various birds; a sea-bird and a swallow are among her metamorphoses; and she could put on the form of any man she pleased; for example, of Deiphobus.* It has often been observed that among the lower races the G.o.ds habitually appear in the form of animals. ”Entre ces facultes qui possedent les immortels, l'une des plus frappantes est celle de se metamorphoser, de prendre des apparences non seulement animales, mais encore de se transformer en objets inanimes.”**

Of this faculty, inherited from the savage stage of thought, Athene has her due share even in Homer. But in almost every other respect she is free from the heritage of barbarism, and might very well be regarded as the ideal representative of wisdom, valour and manfulness in man, of purity, courage and n.o.bility in woman, as in the Phaeacian maid Nausicae.

* _Iliad_, xxii. 227, xvii. 351, Od. iii. 372. v. 353; _Iliad_, vii. 59.

** Maury, _Religion de la Grece_, i. 256.

In Hesiod, as has already been shown, the myth of the birth of Athene retains the old barbaric stamp. It is the peculiarity of the Hesiodic poems to preserve the very features of religious narrative which Homer disregards. According to Hesiod, Zeus, the youngest child of child-swallowing Cronus, married Metis after he had conquered and expelled his father. Now Metis, like other G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses, had the power of transforming herself into any shape she pleased. Her husband learned that her child--for she was pregnant--would be greater than its father, as in the case of the child of Thetis. Zeus, therefore, persuaded Metis to transform herself into a fly. No sooner was the metamorphosis complete than he swallowed the fly, and himself produced the child of Metis out of his head.* The later philosophers explained this myth** by a variety of metaphysical interpretations, in which the G.o.d is said to contain the all in himself, and again to reproduce it.

Any such ideas must have been alien to the inventors of a tale which, as we have shown, possesses many counterparts among the lowest and least Platonic races.*** C. O. Muller remarks plausibly that ”the figure of the swallowing is employed in imitation of still older legends,” such as those of Africa and Australia. This leaves him free to imagine a philosophic explanation of the myth based on the word Metis.**** We may agree with Muller that the ”swallow-myth” is extremely archaic in character, as it is so common among the backward races. As to the precise amount, however, of philosophic reflection and allegory which was present to the cosmogonic poet's mind when he used Metis as the name of the being who could become a fly, and so be swallowed by her husband, it is impossible to speak with confidence. Very probably the poet meant to read a moral and speculative meaning into a barbaric _marchen_ surviving in religious tradition.

To the birth of Athene from her father's head savage parallels are not lacking. In the legends of the South Pacific, especially of Mangaia, Tangaroa is fabled to have been born from the head of Papa.*****

* Hesiod, Theog., 886, and the Scholiast

** Lobeck, i. 613, note 2.

*** See the Cronus myth.

**** Proleg. Engl. transl., p. 308.

***** Gill, Myths and Songs, p. 10.

In the _Vafthrudismal_ (31) a maid and a man-child are born from under the armpits of a primeval gigantic being. The remarks of Lucian on miraculous birth have already been quoted.*

With this mythical birth for a starting-point, and relying on their private interpretations of the _cognomina_ of the G.o.ddess, of her _sacra_, and of her actions in other parts of her legend, the modern mythologists have built up their various theories. Athene is now the personification of wisdom, now the dawn, now the air or aether, now the lightning as it leaps from the thunder-cloud; and if she has not been recognised as the moon, it is not for lack of opportunity.** These explanations rest on the habit of twisting each detail of a divine legend into conformity with aspects of certain natural and elemental forces, or they rely on etymological conjecture. For example, Welcker***

maintains that Athene is ”a feminine personification of the upper air, daughter of Zeus, the dweller in aether”. Her name Tritogenia is derived**** from an ancient word for water, which, like fire, has its source in aether.***** Welcker presses the t.i.tle of the G.o.ddess, ”Glaucopis,” the ”grey-green-eyed,” into the service. The heaven in Attica _oft ebenfalls wunderbar grun ist_.******

* Cf. Dionysus.

** Welcker, i. 305.

*** Griechische Gotterlehre, Gottingen, 1857, i. 303.

**** Op. cit., 311.

***** The ancients themselves were in doubt whether Trito were the name of a river or mere, or whether the Cretan for the head was intended. See Odyssey, Butcher and Lang, note 10, p. 415.

****** Op. cit., i. 303.

Moreover, there was a temple at Methone of Athene of the Winds (Anemotis), which would be a better argument had there not been also temples of Athene of the Pathway, Athene of the Ivy, Athene of the Crag, Athene of the Market-place, Athene of the Trumpet, and so forth.

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