Volume II Part 25 (1/2)

Moreover, the olive tree is one of the sacred plants of Athene. Now why should this be? Clearly, thinks Welcker, because olive-oil gives light from a lamp, and light also comes from aether.* Athene also gives Telemachus a fair wind in the _Odyssey_, and though any Lapland witch could do as much, this goes down to her account as a G.o.ddess of the air.**

* Op. cit. i. 318.

** Mr. Ruskin's _Queen qf the Air_ is full of similar ingenuities.

Leaving Welcker, who has many equally plausible proofs to give, and turning to Mr. Max Muller, we learn that Athene was the dawn. This theory is founded on the belief that Athene = Ahana, which Mr. Max Muller regards as a Sanskrit word for dawn. ”Phonetically there is not one word to be said against, Ahana = Athene, and that the morning light offers the best starting-point for the later growth of Athene has been proved, I believe, beyond the reach of doubt, or even of cavil.” Mr.

Muller adds that ”nothing really important could be brought forward against my equation Ahana = Athene”.

It is no part of our province here to decide between the conjectures of rival etymologists, nor to p.r.o.nounce on their relative merits. But the world cannot be expected to be convinced by philological scholars before they have convinced each other. Mr. Max Muller had not convinced Benfey, who offered another etymology of Athene, as the feminine of the Zend _Thraetana athwyana_, an etymology of which Mr. Muller remarks that ”whoever will take the trouble to examine its phonetic foundation will be obliged in common honesty to confess that it is untenable”.*

Meanwhile Curtius** is neither for Ahana and Sanskrit and Mr. Max Muller, nor for Benfey and Zend. He derives Athene from the root _aio_, whence perhaps comes Athene, the blooming one” = the maiden. Preller, again,*** finds the source of the name Athene in _aio_, whence _aion_, ”the air,” or a flower”. He does not regard these etymologies as certain, though he agrees with Welcker that Athene is the clear height of aether.

Manifestly no one can be expected to accept as matter of faith an etymological solution which is rejected by philologists. The more fas.h.i.+onable theory for the moment is that maintained some time since by Lauer and Schwartz, and now by Furtw.a.n.gler in Roscher's Lexikon, that Athene is the ”cloud-G.o.ddess,” or the G.o.ddess of the lightning as it springs from the clouds.**** As the lightning in mythology is often a serpent, and as Athene had her sacred serpent, ”which might be Erichthonios,”*****

* _Nineteenth Century_, October, 1885, pp. 636, 639.

** Gr. Et., Engl, transl., i. 300.

*** Preller, i. 161.

**** Cf. Lauer, _System der Oriesch. Myth_., Berlin, 1853, p. 220; Schwartz _Ursprung der Mythol_, Berlin, 1863, p.

38.

***** Paus., xxiv. 7.

Schwartz conjectures that the serpent is the lightning and Athene the cloud. A long list of equally cogent reasons for identifying Athene with the lightning and the thunder-cloud has been compiled by Furtw.a.n.gler, and deserves some attention. The pa.s.sage excellently ill.u.s.trates the error of taking poetic details in authors as late as Pindar for survivals of the absolute original form of an elemental myth.

Furtw.a.n.gler finds the proof of his opinion that Athene is originally the G.o.ddess of the thunder-cloud and the lightning that leaps from it in the Olympic ode.* ”By Hephaistos' handicraft beneath the bronze-wrought axe from the crown of her father's head Athene leapt to light, and cried aloud an exceeding cry, and heaven trembled at her coming, and earth, the mother.” The ”cry” she gave is the thunderpeal; the spear she carried is the lightning; the aegis or goat-skin she wore is the cloud again, though the cloud has just been the head of Zeus.** Another proof of Athene's connection with storm is the miracle she works when she sets a flame to fly from the head of Diomede or of Achilles,*** or fleets from the sky like a meteor.**** Her possession, on certain coins, of the thunderbolts of Zeus is another argument. Again, as the Trumpet-Athene she is connected with the thunder-peal, though it seems more rational to account for her supposed invention of a military instrument by the mere fact that she is a warlike G.o.ddess. But Furtw.a.n.gler explains her martial attributes as those of a thunder-G.o.ddess, while Preller finds it just as easy to explain her moral character as G.o.ddess of wisdom by her elemental character as G.o.ddess, not at all of the cloud, but of the clear sky.*****

* Ode, vii. 35, Myers.

** Cf. Schwartz. Ursprung, etc., pp. 68, 83.

*** Iliad, v. 7,18,203.

**** Ibid, iv. 74.

***** Preller, i. 183.

”Lastly, as G.o.ddess of the heavenly clearness, she is also G.o.ddess of spiritual clearness.” Again, ”As G.o.ddess of the cloudless heaven, she is also G.o.ddess of health”,* There could be no more instructive examples of the levity of conjecture than these, in which two scholars interpret a myth with equal ease and freedom, though they start from diametrically opposite conceptions. Let Athene be lightning and cloud, and all is plain to Furtw.a.n.gler. Let Athene be cloudless sky, and Preller finds no difficulties. Athene as the G.o.ddess of woman's work as well as of man's, Athene Ergane, becomes clear to Furtw.a.n.gler as he thinks of the _fleecy_ clouds. Probably the storm-G.o.ddess, when she is not thundering, is regarded as weaving the fleeces of the upper air. Hence the myth that Arachne was once a woman, changed by Athene into a spider because she contended with her in spinning.**

* Preller, i. 179.

** Ovid, Metamorph., vi. 5-146.

The metamorphosis of Arachne is merely one of the half-playful aetiological myths of which we have seen examples all over the world.

The spider, like the swallow, the nightingale, the dolphin, the frog, was once a human being, metamorphosed by an angry deity. As Preller makes Athene G.o.ddess of wisdom because she is G.o.ddess of clearness in the sky, so Furtw.a.n.gler derives her intellectual attributes from her skill in weaving clouds. It is tedious and unprofitable to examine these and similar exercises of facile ingenuity. There is no proof that Athene was ever a nature-G.o.ddess at all, and if she was, there is nothing to show what was her department of nature. When we meet her in Homer, she is patroness of moral and physical excellence in man and woman. Manly virtue she typifies in her martial aspect, the armed and warlike maid of Zeus; womanly excellence she protects in her capacity of _Ergane_, the toiler. She is the companion and guardian of Perseus no less than of Odysseus.*

The sacred animals of Athene were the owl, the snake (which accompanies her effigy in Athens, and is a form of her foster-child Erechtheus), the c.o.c.k,** and the crow.*** Probably she had some connection with the goat, which might not be sacrificed in her fane on the Acropolis, where she was settled by aegeus (”goat-man ”?). She wears the goat-skin, _aegis_, in art, but this is usually regarded as another type of the storm-cloud.****

* Pindar, Olymp., x. ad Jin.