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 illustrates 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 astonishing clearness. It is most perilous, as this comparison demonstrates, to guess at an origin of any god in natural phenomena, and then to explain the details of the god’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.195

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 worshipped in the citadel of Troy, she is constant to the cause of the Ach?ans. Occasionally it is recorded of her that she assumed 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.196 It has often been observed that among the lower races the gods 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.”197 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 nobility in woman, as in the Ph?acian maid Nausic?.

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 gods and goddesses, 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.198 The later philosophers explained this myth199 by a variety of metaphysical interpretations, in which the god 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.200 C. O. Müller 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.201 We may agree with Müller 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 m?rchen 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.202

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.203

With this mythical birth for a starting-point, and relying on their private interpretations of the cognomina of the goddess, 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.204 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, Welcker205 maintains that Athene is “a feminine personification of the upper air, daughter of Zeus, the dweller in ?ther”. Her name Tritogenia is derived206 from an ancient word for water, which, like fire, has its source in ?ther.207 Welcker presses the title of the goddess, “Glaucopis,” the “grey-green-eyed,” into the service. The heaven in Attica oft ebenfalls wunderbar grun ist.208

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. 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 ?ther.209 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 goddess of the air.210

Leaving Welcker, who has many equally plausible proofs to give, and turning to Mr. Max Müller, we learn that Athene was the dawn. This theory is founded on the belief that Athene = Ahana, which Mr. Max Müller 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. Müller 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 pronounce on their relative merits. But the world cannot be expected to be convinced by philological scholars before they have convinced each other. Mr. Max Müller had not convinced Benfey, who offered another etymology of Athene, as the feminine of the Zend Thr?tana athwyana, an etymology of which Mr. Müller remarks that “whoever will take the trouble to examine its phonetic foundation will be obliged in common honesty to confess that it is untenable”.211 Meanwhile Curtius212 is neither for Ahana and Sanskrit and Mr. Max Müller, nor for Benfey and Zend. He derives Athene from the root aio, whence perhaps comes Athene, the blooming one” = the maiden. Preller, again,213 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 ?ther.

Manifestly no one can be expected to accept as matter of faith an etymological solution which is rejected by philologists. The more fashionable theory for the moment is that maintained some time since by Lauer and Schwartz, and now by Furtwangler in Roscher’s Lexikon, that Athene is the “cloud-goddess,” or the goddess of the lightning as it springs from the clouds.214 As the lightning in mythology is often a serpent, and as Athene had her sacred serpent, “which might be Erichthonios,”215

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 Furtwangler, and deserves some attention. The passage excellently illustrates the error of taking poetic details in authors as late as Pindar for survivals of the absolute original form of an elemental myth.

Furtwangler finds the proof of his opinion that Athene is originally the goddess of the thunder-cloud and the lightning that leaps from it in the Olympic ode.216 “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 ?gis or goat-skin she wore is the cloud again, though the cloud has just been the head of Zeus.217 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,218 or fleets from the sky like a meteor.219 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,............