50 Fun Facts About Athena

Athena is the Greek goddess of wisdom, warfare and what third domain?

As Athena Ergane she was patron of weavers, potters and metalworkers.

Which bird is Athena's most famous symbol?

It became the mascot of her city and, through her, a symbol of wisdom.

According to Hesiod, Athena was born from which part of her father Zeus?

Someone had to split his skull with a double-headed axe to let her out, and the sun god stopped his chariot in shock.

Modern scholars generally agree that Athena took her name from what?

The -ene ending is common in place names and rare in personal names; other cities had similar goddesses named after them, like Mykene and Thebe.

What gift did Athena give the Athenians to win their patronage?

It provided wood, oil and food, and became the symbol of Athenian prosperity.

Who was Athena's Roman equivalent?

The Roman goddess took over most of Athena's imagery and joined Jupiter and Juno in the Capitoline Triad.

Zeus swallowed which pregnant goddess, Athena's mother, to stop a prophesied son overthrowing him?

She was called the wisest of gods and mortals, and is said to keep advising Zeus from inside his mind.

Which mortal weaver challenged Athena to a contest and was turned into the first spider?

Ovid is almost the only source; her name simply means 'spider' in Greek.

Which Roman poet is nearly the sole source for the story of the spider-weaver?

It appears in his Metamorphoses; the only earlier hint is a passing line in Virgil's Georgics.

In Ovid's version, which woman did Athena turn into a snake-haired Gorgon after she was raped in Athena's temple?

The gorgoneion, the Gorgon's face on Athena's shield, is much older than this story and began as a charm to ward off evil.

Athena's famous temple on the Athenian Acropolis is called what?

It takes its name from her title Parthenos, 'the virgin'.

Which sculptor made the lost gold-and-ivory statue of Athena inside her great temple on the Acropolis?

It stood 11.5 metres tall and held the winged goddess Nike in its right hand.

What was Athena's main festival in her own city, held in midsummer?

It fell in the month Hekatombaion and was the most important date on the Athenian calendar.

Athena's famous epithet, Pallas, is thought to derive from a Greek word meaning what?

Later Greeks, having forgotten this, invented a friend named Pallas whom she accidentally killed.

What was Athena's most common epithet in Homer, usually translated 'bright-eyed' or 'grey-eyed'?

It shares a root with the Greek word for the little owl.

The palladium, a statue of Athena, was believed to protect which city from ever falling?

Cassandra clung to it during the sack; Ajax the Lesser dragged her off, and Athena wrecked the Greek fleet in revenge.

Athena cast the deciding vote to acquit which hero of murdering Clytemnestra?

She ruled that from then on a tied jury would always acquit.

What did Athena lend Perseus so he could look at the Gorgon without being turned to stone?

Hermes lent the curved sword, and Athena guided the blow.

Athena helped Bellerophon tame the winged horse Pegasus by giving him what?

As Athena Hippia she was credited with inventing the bit, bridle, chariot and wagon.

Athena advised the builder of which famous ship, sailed by Jason and his crew?

The builder was also called Argos, which is why the ship shares his name.

In the Odyssey, Athena is the special protector of which cunning hero?

She first appears to him on Ithaca disguised as a herdsman, and he lies to her; she is delighted.

In the Iliad, Athena tricks Hector into facing Achilles by disguising herself as which brother of his?

When Hector throws his spear and turns for another, she has vanished.

Which god of bloodlust and slaughter is contrasted with Athena's disciplined, strategic side of war?

In the Iliad he attacks her and she flattens him with a boulder.

The golden apple that set Athena against Hera and Aphrodite was inscribed with what?

Eris threw it at the wedding of Peleus and Thetis; the goddesses took the dispute to Paris.

Athena struck the hunter Tiresias blind for seeing her naked, then gave him what compensating gift?

His mother Chariclo, Athena's bathing companion, begged for mercy on his behalf.

Athena's adopted son Erichthonius was born from the earth after which god tried to rape her?

She hid the infant in a chest and gave it to the daughters of Cecrops, who could not resist opening it.

Athena invented which musical instrument, then threw it away because playing it puffed out her cheeks?

The satyr Marsyas picked up the cursed flute and was later flayed by Apollo.

Athena turned the chaste Attic girl Myrmex into which insect for claiming to have invented the plough?

The Greek word for ant is myrmex, hence the Myrmidons.

Athena saved Perdix, the nephew Daedalus pushed from a tower, by turning him into which bird?

The bird nests in hedges and avoids high places, mindful of the fall.

Athena saved the maiden Corone from Poseidon by turning her into what?

'The virgin goddess feels pity for a virgin,' as Ovid puts it.

Athena remained perpetually a virgin, like which two other goddesses?

Her title Parthenos records it, and gave her great temple its name.

Athena's earliest possible appearance is on a Linear B tablet from which Bronze Age palace?

The tablet reads a-ta-na po-ti-ni-ja, perhaps 'Mistress Athena' or 'the Lady of her city'.

Plato identified Athena with which Egyptian goddess worshipped at Sais?

The comparison later fed Martin Bernal's controversial and now widely rejected 'Black Athena' hypothesis.

Athena's Homeric epithet Tritogeneia has been read as 'triple-born' or born of what?

One myth makes the sea god Triton her foster father, raising her beside his daughter Pallas.

Athena wore the aegis to war; what qualities did it carry, according to Homer?

In art it appears as a cloak or breastplate edged with snakes and bearing the Gorgon's head.

In her Athenian cult title Polias, Athena was goddess of what?

Her temples were normally set on the fortified acropolis at the centre of a city.

At the Athenian festival of the Plynteria, what happened to Athena's statue?

The 'Feast of the Bath' lasted five days at the end of the month Thargelion.

Athena was worshipped at Sparta as Chalcioecus, meaning 'of the' what house?

The name may refer to bronze walls, a bronze cult statue, or her role as patron of metalworkers.

Athena's temple at Priene was designed by the architect of which ancient wonder?

Alexander the Great dedicated the temple, and his dedicatory inscription is held by the British Museum.

Along with Hera and Poseidon, Athena once conspired to do what to Zeus in the Iliad?

Thetis fetched the hundred-handed Briareus to Olympus and the plotters backed down.

Athena's birth story may echo the descent and return of which Sumerian goddess?

Scholars also compare her armed image to the Semitic warrior goddesses Ishtar and Anat.

In Botticelli's Pallas and the Centaur, which virtue does Athena personify?

The centaur stands for lust; the painting probably dates to the 1480s.

Statues of Athena survived the French Revolution because she was recast as what?

A statue of her stood in the centre of the Place de la Révolution in Paris.

A full-scale Parthenon replica with a 42-foot gilded Athena stands in which US city?

The concrete-and-fibreglass Athena was added in 1990.

The Great Seal of which US state shows Athena kneeling beside a grizzly bear?

Her head also appears on the $50 Panama-Pacific commemorative coin of 1915.

Which famous psychoanalyst kept a small bronze Athena on his desk?

He called her 'a woman who is unapproachable and repels all sexual desires'.

A statue of Athena stands directly in front of the parliament building of which country?

Her image also influenced the Statue of Liberty and Britannia.

Which Pennsylvania institution has a tradition of leaving exam-time offerings to a statue of Athena in its Great Hall?

Students also leave notes apologising for breaking the college's many other traditions.

Athena's title Promachos means what?

As Promachos she was believed to lead soldiers into battle.

Athena's title Ergane, 'the industrious', marked her as patron of whom?

The Chalceia festival honoured her in that role, especially as patron of weaving.