and embroidery, in which arts the goddess had instructed her, ventured to deny her obligation, and challenged her patroness to a trial of skill. Athéna, assuming the form of an old woman, warned her to desist from her boasting; and when she found her admonitions were vain, she resumed her proper form and accepted the challenge. The skill of Arachné was such, and the subject she chose (the love-transformations of the gods) so offensive to Athéna, that she struck her several times on the forehead with the shuttle. The high-spirited maid unable to endure this affront hung herself, and the goddess relenting changed her into a spider (ἀράχνη).1 The invention of the flute or pipe (avλòs) is also ascribed to this goddess. When Perseus, says Pindar,2 had slain Medusa, her two remaining sisters bitterly lamented her death. The snakes which formed their ringlets mourned in concert with them, and Athéna hearing the sound was pleased with it, and resolved to imitate it: she in consequence invented the pipe, whose music was named many-headed (ñoλvкépaλos), on account of the number of the serpents whose lugubrious hissing had given origin to it. Others say that the goddess formed the pipe from the bone of a stag, and bringing it with her to the banquet of the gods began to play on it. Being laughed at by Héra and Aphrodíté, on account of her green eyes and her swollen cheeks, she went to a fountain on Mount Ida, and played before the liquid mirror. Satisfied that the goddesses had had reason for their mirth, she threw her pipe away: Marsyas unfortunately found it, and learning to play on it, ventured to become the rival of Apolló. His fate has been already related. The favourite plant of Athéna was the olive, to which she had given origin. Among animals the owl and the serpent were sacred to her. Athéna was most honoured in Athens (Ava), the city whence she probably derived her name, and where the splendid festivals of the Panathénæa were celebrated in her honour. She had also temples at Thébes, Argos, Sparta, and elsewhere. At Tegea she was worshipped under the title of Alea. She contended, 1 Ov. Met. vi. 1 seq.,-the name as usual giving origin to the fable. In the Semitic languages arag () is, to weave, and it is used of the spider, Is. lix. 5. Our own spider (Germ. spinne) is evidently a corruption of spinner, or possibly spinder. We know not what Greek authority Ovid followed, probably Nicander. Vergil alludes to this legend, aut invisa Minervæ Laxos in foribus suspendit aranea casses.-Geor. iv. 246. See Servius and Probus in loc. 2 Puth. xii. 7 (15) seq. cum Sch. Non. xxiv. 37; xl. 227 seq. Hygin. Fab. 165. as we have seen, with Poseidón for Athens and Træzén, and, according to one account, for Argos. This goddess is represented with a serious thoughtful countenance, her eyes are large and steady, her hair hangs in ringlets on her shoulders, a helmet covers her head; she wears a long tunic and mantle, she bears the ægis on her breast or on her arm, and the head of the Gorgón is on its centre. She often has bracelets and ear-rings, but her general air is that of a young man in female attire. Pallas-Athéné was called by the poets,1 1. Owl- or Green-eyed;2 2. Town-destroying; 3. Town-protecting; 4. Plundering; 5. Unwearied or Invincible; 6. People-rouser, &c. We are now to inquire into the signification of the name of this goddess and her original nature. The simplest and most natural interpretation of Pallas-Athénæé appears to be Athenian Maid, and she thus forms a parallel to the Eleusinian Maid (Kópn), Persephoné. As this is her constant title in Homer, it is manifest that she had long been regarded as the tutelar deity of Athens. We may therefore safely reject the legends of her being the same with the Néith of Saïs in Egypt, or a war-goddess imported from the banks of the lake Tritónis in Libya, and view in her one of the deities worshipped by the agricultural Pelasgians, and therefore probably one of the powers engaged in causing the productiveness of the earth. Her being represented in the poetic creed as the goddess of arts and war alone, need not cause us any hesitation, as that transition from physical to moral agents, of which we shall presently give an explanation, was by no means uncommon. It is to the ethic side of her character that the mythe of her birth from the head of her sire belongs. The most probable theory, in our opinion, is that which views in Pallas-Athéné the temperate celestial heat and its principal agent on vegetation, the moon.* This idea was not unknown to the ancients; Athéna is by Aristotle expressly called the moon;5 on the coins of Attica, anterior to the time of Periklés, there was a moon along with the owl and olive-branch; there was a torch1 1. γλαυκώπις: 2. πολιπόρθος: 3. πολιοῦχος, ἐρυσίπτολις: 4. ἀγελεία: 5. ἀτρυτώνη: 6. λαοσσόος. 2 More probably Bright-eyed: see Appendix C. 6 3 Müller, Proleg. 244. See also Eudocia, 4. Schwen'. 30. Welcker, Tril. 282. Müller says that Пaλλàs is the same as Tάλλα originally maid; the terms are to each other as yvvý and гYNAIZ. There was a temple of Athéna Koria near Cleitor in Arcadia. Paus. viii. 21, 4. Müller, Minerva Polias, 5. 5 Arnob. iii. 31. Proleg. 213. Welcker, Tril. 277 siq. 3 5 race (auradopopia) at the Panathénæa, a contest with which none but light-bearing deities were honoured;' at the festival of the Skira or Skirophoria the priest of the Sun and the priestess of Athéna went together in procession beneath the shade of a large white umbrella (σkípov);2 a title of Athéna was All-dew (Pandrosos); in the ancient legend of Athens there was a Sacred Marriage between Athéna and Héphæstos,* in whose temple stood a statue of the goddess: she was also said to have given fire to the Athenians; and a perpetual flame was maintained in her temples at Athens and Alalkomenæ. It could hardly have been from any other cause than that of her being regarded as the moon, that the nocturnal owl, whose broad full eyes shine so brightly in the dark, was consecrated to her; the shield or corselet with the Gorgón's head on it seems to represent the full-orbed moon; and finally the epithet Glaukópis, which is as it were appropriated to Athéna, is also given to Seléné. 6 To these proofs respecting the Athenian goddess we may add that at Tegea Athéna was called Alea, that is probably Warmer;' a festival with a lamp-race was celebrated at Corinth in honour of Athéna Hellótia; 10 at Sparta she was named Ophthalmitis or Eyed, and at Argos Quick-seer (ỏέudeρкá).1 11 If this theory be correct, the best explanation of the perplexing epithet Tritogeneia might seem to be that which derives it from the three phases of the moon." 12 There are two other interpretations of this name which have had more general currency. The one supposes it to signify Head-sprung, as the word тperò is said to have signified Head in some of the obscurer dialects of Greece." But accounts like this are very suspicious, and the later Greeks would have made little scruple about coining a term if they wanted 1 Pan, Artemis, Athéna, Héphæstos, Prométheus: see Müller, Min. Pol. ut supra. 2 Harpocrat. v. Σκίρα. Hence the goddess was named Ekipás, and the month (about midsummer) Ekipоooρiv. 3 Sch. Aristoph. Lys. 440. 5 Paus. i. 14, 5. 7 Paus. i. 26, 7; ix. 34, 1. See Part II. chap. v. Erichthonios. 6 Plut. Cim. 10. 8 See above, p. 56, and Appendix C. Lauer labours to prove that Athéna was the clouds, but everything that he alleges applies as well or better to the moon; besides the clouds could hardly be regarded as a unity, as they generally present a scattered appearance. 9 Paus. viii. 4, 3; 9, 3. 11 Paus. ii. 24, 2; iii. 18, 2. 10 Sch. Pind. Ol. xiii. 40 (56). 12 Τριπλόον εἶδος ἔχουσα πέλει Τριτωνὶς ̓Αθήνη. Nonn. v. 73. 13 That of the Athamanes, according to Nikander of Kolophon, Hésych. s. v. Etym. Mag. and Photius, s. v. ; that of the Crétans, Eustath. on Il. iv. p. 524, viii. p. 696, Od. iii. p. 1473; that of the Bocôtians, Tzetz. Lyc. 519. it to suit any purpose. The other interpretation, which makes the banks of the river or lake Tritón the birth-place of Athéna, has found a greater number of supporters; but as so many countries sought to appropriate the Tritón to themselves,1 the choice among them might seem difficult. The contest, however, has lain between the river or lake Tritón in Libya and a small stream of the same name in Bœótia. The ancients in general were in favour of the former; but as there is no reason to suppose that the Greeks knew anything of the Libyan Tritón in the days of Homer, or probably till after the colony had been settled at Kyréné, this theory seems to have little in its favour. Müller2 therefore at once rejects it, and fixes on the banks of the Boótian brook as the natal spot of the goddess. Here, however, again Homer presents a difficulty, for, as we have already observed, the practice of assigning birth-places on earth to the gods does not seem to have prevailed in his age. Indeed, we strongly suspect that the streamlet that flowed by Alalkomenæ got its name in the same manner as the hill Délos at Tegyra, and the grove Ortygia at Ephesos. Lauer, regarding as correct the account of this goddess, i.e. the cloud, being the daughter of Poseidón, renders Tritogeneia Water-born. After all we fear that the term is one of those which are fated never to be satisfactorily explained. The moon-goddess of the Athenians may have come by her moral and political character in the following manner. It was the practice of the different classes and orders in a state to appropriate the general tutelar deity to themselves by some suitable appellation. The Attic peasantry, therefore, named Athéna the Ox-yoker (Bovdeía), the citizens called her Worker (épyávn), while the military class styled her Front-fighter (πрóμaɣos). As these last were the ruling order, their view of the character of the goddess became the prevalent one; yet even in the epic poetry we find the idea of the goddess presiding over the arts still retained. Some of the ancients regarded Athéna as the air, others as the earth. There are some mythes which can be explained with so much more ease on this last hypothesis, that we think it not im1 There were Tritons in Baótia, Thessaly (Sch. Apoll. Rh. i. 109), Arcadia (Paus. viii. 26, 6), Krété (Diodor. v. 72), Thrace (Interp. to Vib. Sequester, p. 285). 2 Orchom. 355. 3 See below, chap. xv., Artemis of Ephesos. 4 System, etc., 315. He makes a verb TPI, i. q. péw, and thence TρIT, i. q. peûua. 5 See Muller, Min. Pol. p. 1. 6 Diodor. i. 12. Tzetz. Lyc. 519. Heraklid. Alleg. Hom. p. 444. Völcker, Myth. der Jap. 191. probable that the Pelasgian goddess of Argos and other places, who had been identified with the Athenian Maid, may have originally been the same with Héra and Démétér.1 Ερμείας, Ἑρμῆς, Ερμάων. (Mercurius.) Hermeias (as Homer always names this god) is in one place of the Ilias called the son of Zeus, but his mother is unnoticed. When, in the same poem, Dioné is consoling her wounded daughter, she reminds her how others of the Celestials had suffered similar calamities inflicted by mortals. Thus Arés, she says, was once shut up in a brazen prison by O'tos and Ephialtés, where he languished till Hermeias, being informed of his state, contrived to steal him out of his dungeon. Elsewhere the poet tells us that of all the Trojans Hermeias most loved Phorbas (Feeder), rich in sheep, and bestowed on him wealth (krîσw);5 and that Eudóros (Wealthy or Munificent) was the son of Hermeias by Polymélé (Sheep-full), the daughter of Phylas (Keeper).* Hermeias is opposed in the battle of the gods to Létó, but declines the combat on the plea of the impolicy of making an enemy of one of the consorts of Zeus; at the same time courtierlike telling her that, if she pleases, she may boast of having vanquished him by main strength. When the corse of Hektór was exposed by Achilleus, the gods, pitying the fate of the hero, urged Hermeias to steal it away. On king Priamos' setting forth to ransom the body of his son, Zeus desires Hermeias to accompany him, reminding him of his fondness for associating with mankind. The god obeys his sire, puts on his 'immortal golden sandals, which bear him over the water and the extensive earth like the blasts of the wind,' and takes his rod, with which he lays asleep the eyes of what men he will, and wakes again the sleepers.' He accompanies the aged monarch in the form of a Grecian youth, telling him that he is the son of a wealthy man named Polyktor (Much-possessing). In the Odyssey Hermeias takes the place of Iris, who does not appear at all in this poem, and becomes the messenger of Zeus. He still retains his character of a friend to man, and comes unsent to point out to Odysseus the herb Moly, which will enable him to escape the enchantments of Kirké.9 Eumæos the swine-herd 1 For Athéna Hippia and Gorgó, see below, Part II. Bellerophontés and Perseus. 2 Wherever the form 'Epuns occurs, the passage may be regarded as an interpolation. 3 Il. xxiv. 333. 4 Il. v. 390. 5 Il. xiv. 490. quλλàs, púλλov, comes from púw. 8 Il. xxiv. 333. 9 Od. x. 277 seq. 6 Īl. xvi. 179. Perhaps Phylas, like 7 Il. xx. 35; xxi. 498. |