Athena is famous in Greek mythology for helping out heroes on their adventures. She helped Hercules achieve his twelve labors, Perseus figure out how to defeat Medusa, Odysseus on his adventures in the Odyssey, and Jason in building his magical ship the Argo.
Athena's life passion was to protect and lead the people of Athens. She fought for values like justice, truth, and moral values and put it all on the line to protect her beliefs. She was fearless and was exalted for her heroic endeavors and her unmatched intellect earned her the title of the Goddess of War.
Athena became the goddess of crafts and skilled peacetime pursuits in general. She was particularly known as the patroness of spinning and weaving. That she ultimately became allegorized to personify wisdom and righteousness was a natural development of her patronage of skill.
Athena is one of the most popular of the Olympic goddesses, mainly because she represented wisdom and intellectual thought, traits that were highly valued to the Ancient Greeks. She was also the goddess of war, or more specifically, military strategy. Her influence can still be found today at the Parthenon in Athens.
As such, Athena was revered for her wisdom and unmatched intelligence, especially when it came to matters of war or even peace. This was because unlike many of the other Olympian Gods, who were temperamental at the best of times, she made rational decisions and could also be a good broker of the peace.
Aphrodite was the most beautiful of all the Goddesses and there are many tales of how she could encourage both Gods and humans to fall in love with her.
The Greeks personified these traits into such figures as Discord and Envy. Many other characteristics, both good and bad, were also made into deities. The goddess Athena represented wisdom, the evil side of battle, and feminism.
Athena was an armed warrior goddess. The Parthenon at Athens was her most famous shrine. She never had a true lover or someone to hug and hold her; all she had was her loving mother, caring father and most of all her brothers and sisters.
People would always compliment and praise Athena about her wisdom, kindness and her caring nature. As time went by, Athena started to become quite arrogant with all the praise she was receiving and thought she was the best Goddess. She started to think that the most important trait was wisdom and she possessed it.
In Greek mythology, the goddess Athena is immune to romantic love, so there is no particular lover for her.
She was not interested in relationships or love. Athena was a virgin, which is why she was also considered the patron saint of chastity. She has helped the heroes many times. Among others, she helped Perseus kill Medusa and Heracles during his work, when she helped him kill the Stymphalian birds.
Athena's strengths: Rational, intelligent, a powerful defender in war but also a potent peacemaker. Athena's weaknesses: Reason rules her; she is not usually emotional or compassionate but she does have her favorites, such as the beleaguered heroes Odysseus and Perseus.
Athena is confident, practical, clever, a master of disguises, and a great warrior, characteristics she finds reflected in Telemachus. Her role as goddess of the womanly arts gets very little attention in The Odyssey.
She was a benevolent being and punished the harshness to whom deserved the punishment with justice and law. The citizens put her images on coins, festivals, athletic games, armor and weapons, and she was a major protector of Sparta, Corinth and Thebes (Cartwright, 2012).
23 She is a female goddess, but she is also a soldier, which traditionally is a male role. Throughout Greek history, Athena's cult eventually came to replace that of other palace-citadel goddesses, so she fulfilled the role of female deity for a large geographical area.
Acropolis: The Sacred Hill of Athena
It was at this time that the Athenians chose to honor their patron deity with a great temple, the Parthenon. Inside this temple, one would find a monumental gold and ivory statue of Athena, the work of antiquity's greatest sculptor, Phidias.
Athena has long been associated with wisdom, intelligence, and innovation. Having sprung fully formed from Zeus's head at birth, Athena has been said to teach humans both sciences and crafts and is credited with the invention of various tools.
TEIRESIAS (Tiresias) A seer of Thebes in Boiotia (central Greece) who accidentally came across the goddess Athena bathing in a mountain stream. As punishment for seeing her naked she took away his sight, but in recompense also bestowed him with gifts, since his crime was not a deliberate one.
According to the Bibliotheca, Athena visited the smith-god Hephaestus to request some weapons, but Hephaestus was so overcome by desire that he tried to seduce her in his workshop. Determined to maintain her virginity, Athena fled, pursued by Hephaestus. He caught Athena and tried to rape her, but she fought him off.
In fact, Athena was jealous of Medusa's beauty and lustrous hair. Poseidon ravaged her and took what she held dearly, her purity. Athena, outraged by this incident, cursed Medusa and turned her wonderful hair into venomous snakes, her beautiful face turned so ugly that any man who gazed upon would turn to stone.
Athena bested Poseidon by producing an olive tree on the Acropolis. Poseidon also raped Medusa—a mortal who had the reputation of being beautiful—in Athena's temple, desecrating it. Athena could not do anything to her uncle, so she took vengeance on Medusa by turning her into a woman with snakes on her head.
Strengths: Rational, intelligent, a powerful defender in war but also a potent peacemaker. Weaknesses: Reason rules her; she is not usually emotional or compassionate but she does have her favorites, such as the beleaguered hero Odysseus. Birthplace: From the forehead of her father Zeus.
Zeus did not fear Athena, though it was foretold that her wisdom and strength would match his own. But he dared not risk the birth of a second child by Metis: a son destined to usurp his dominion.
Like all the Olympians, Athena was an immortal goddess and could not die. She was one of the most intelligent and wisest of the Greek gods. She was also good at war strategy and giving heroes courage.