50 Fun Facts About Athena

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

Handicraft, above all weaving: in Hesiod it is Athena who teaches Pandora, the first woman, how to work a loom.

Which bird is Athena's most famous symbol?

The owl became the emblem of her city, and it is through Athena that the bird came to stand for wisdom.

In Greek myth, Athena was born fully grown from which part of her father Zeus?

His forehead: in most tellings a god split Zeus's aching skull with an axe, and Athena leapt out in full armour, a sight that made the sun god halt his horses.

On Athena's advice, the hero Cadmus sowed what in the ground, raising a crop of armed warriors?

A dragon's teeth: the warriors who sprang up turned on one another, which is why 'sowing dragon's teeth' still means planting the seeds of strife.

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

The first olive tree gave the city wood, oil and food, and it won her Athens over Poseidon's offer of a salt-water spring.

Who was Athena's Roman equivalent?

Minerva took over Athena's armour and imagery, and Rome enthroned her beside Jupiter and Juno in its chief temple on the Capitoline Hill.

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

Metis was called the wisest of gods and mortals, and in Hesiod's telling she went on counselling Zeus from inside him.

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

Arachne is simply the Greek word for spider, which is why spiders, scorpions and mites are classed as arachnids.

In Homer, Athena guides young Telemachus while disguised as which old friend of his father?

Mentor: Athena borrows the old Ithacan's shape to advise the young man, which is how 'mentor' came to mean a wise and trusted guide.

In Ovid's telling, Athena punished which woman for being violated by Poseidon inside her temple?

Medusa: Ovid has Athena turn her hair to snakes, yet the Gorgon's face that Athena wears is far older than his tale and began as a charm against evil.

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

The Parthenon did not become a ruin until 1687, when a Venetian shell set off the gunpowder the Ottomans had stored inside it.

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

Phidias was later accused of stealing gold meant for the statue, and is said to have had its gold taken off and weighed to prove his innocence.

At the Panathenaia, Athena's great midsummer festival, a procession crossed Athens to present her with what?

A newly woven robe: Athenian women and girls began weaving it months ahead, and its delivery is thought to be the scene on the frieze now among the Elgin Marbles.

In one myth, the Pallas of 'Pallas Athena' was whom, killed by the goddess by accident while sparring?

Her childhood friend: the two girls were raised together, and the grieving Athena carved a wooden statue in Pallas's likeness, the first Palladium.

Homer's favourite epithet for Athena, glaukopis, is traditionally translated into English how?

Bright-eyed: glaukos meant 'gleaming' in Homer and only later named a blue-grey colour, which is why some translators write 'grey-eyed' instead.

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

Troy: when it fell, Ajax the Lesser tore Cassandra away from the statue as she clung to it, and in revenge Athena wrecked the Greek fleet on its way home.

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

Orestes went free when the jurors split evenly and Athena's vote settled it; she then ruled that a tied jury would always acquit.

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

A polished bronze shield showed Perseus the Gorgon's reflection, so he never had to look at her; Hermes lent the curved sword and Athena guided his hand.

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

A bit, on a golden bridle: Bellerophon slept in her temple, dreamt that she laid it beside him, and woke to find it there.

Athena fitted the prow of the Argo, Jason's ship, with a beam of sacred oak that had what power?

It could speak: the timber came from the oak of Zeus's oracle at Dodona, so the ship itself could warn and advise the Argonauts.

In Homer, Athena, disguised as a young herdsman, meets which hero on his home shore?

Odysseus: he answers the herdsman with an invented life story, and she smiles, drops the disguise and praises him for the lie.

In the Iliad, Athena tricks which hero into facing Achilles by posing as his brother Deiphobus?

Hector: when he threw his spear and turned to his 'brother' for another, nobody was there, and he realised the gods had called him to his death.

In the Iliad's battle of the gods, Athena flattens which Olympian with a boulder after he charges her?

Ares: both are gods of war, but he stood for blood lust and she for strategy and discipline, which is why Homer lets her floor him with one stone.

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

'For the fairest': Eris, goddess of discord, threw it among the wedding guests, and Athena tried to bribe the judge, Paris, with victory in war before he chose Aphrodite.

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

The language of the birds: his mother begged for mercy, but Athena could not undo the blinding, so she cleansed his ears to read omens in birdsong and gave him a staff to walk by.

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

Hephaestus: Athena hid the earth-born infant in a chest and gave it to the daughters of Cecrops with orders never to look inside, which they could not resist doing.

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

The aulos, a double reed pipe: the satyr Marsyas picked up the one she threw away, challenged Apollo to a contest with it, lost, and was flayed alive.

Athena turned the Attic girl Myrmex into which industrious insect for claiming she had invented the plough?

The ant: myrmex is simply the Greek word for one, the root of 'myrmecology', the study of ants, so the boastful girl kept her own name.

Athena saved Perdix, the nephew Daedalus hurled from a height out of jealousy, by turning him into which bird?

A partridge, perdix in Greek and Latin: Ovid says the bird still nests low in the hedges and shuns the heights, remembering its fall.

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

A crow, korone in Greek: in Ovid the bird tells the story herself, and complains that she later lost her place at Athena's side for carrying tales.

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

Artemis and Hestia: a Homeric hymn names these two and Athena as the only three hearts that Aphrodite, who sways every other god and mortal, can never bend.

The earliest possible mention of Athena is on a Linear B tablet from Knossos, on which island?

Crete: the tablet reads a-ta-na po-ti-ni-ja, which may mean 'Mistress Athena' or only 'the Lady of Athana', a place, so nobody can be sure it names her.

Plato reports that the people of Sais worshipped Athena under the name Neith in which country?

Egypt: in Plato's Timaeus the priests of Sais tell the visiting Athenian Solon that their goddess Neith and his Athena are one and the same.

Athena gave Heracles a bronze rattle to flush out which creatures during his Labours?

The Stymphalian birds: they were hidden in a thick lakeside wood, and the din of the rattle startled them into the air, where Heracles could shoot them.

In the Iliad, which four forces are set on the aegis that Athena wears into battle?

Fear, strife, defence and assault: Homer sets all four on the aegis around the Gorgon's head, and English still says 'under the aegis of' for protection.

Athenians said the Victory statue in Athena Nike's temple was made without what, so she could never leave?

Wings: the statue was really Athena herself in the role of Victory, so it never had any, and later Athenians explained the 'Wingless Victory' as a way of keeping her.

What kind of object is Pallas, discovered in 1802 and named after an epithet of Athena?

An asteroid, only the second ever found: within months the chemist William Wollaston named a newly isolated metal, palladium, in its honour.

Which city walled its general Pausanias inside Athena's 'Bronze House' temple and left him to starve?

Sparta: Pausanias, accused of treason, fled into the temple of Athena Chalcioecus for sanctuary, so instead of dragging him out the Spartans walled up the doors and waited.

Which conqueror paid to finish Athena's temple at Priene and had his name carved on it as its dedicator?

Alexander the Great: Ephesus had turned down his offer to pay for its temple of Artemis in return for his name on it, but Priene accepted, and the inscribed block still survives.

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

Tie him in bonds: the plot collapsed when Thetis fetched the hundred-handed giant Briareus up to Olympus to sit beside Zeus, and the frightened gods backed down.

In Apollodorus, Athena crushed the fleeing giant Enceladus beneath which island, whose volcano was blamed on him?

Sicily: she hurled the whole island on top of him, and the tremors and eruptions of Mount Etna were said to be the buried giant shifting underneath.

Which Renaissance painter's 'Pallas and the Centaur' shows Athena gripping a centaur by the hair?

Botticelli: he strewed her dress with the three-ring emblem of his patrons, the Medici, and the scene is usually read as chastity taming lust.

Which national personification, a helmeted woman with shield and trident, borrows her look from Athena?

Britannia: on Roman coins she already sat with spear and shield like Athena, and the spear was swapped for a trident in 1797 to mark the Royal Navy's victories.

A full-scale replica of Athena's Acropolis temple, with a 42-foot gilded statue, stands in which US city?

Nashville liked to call itself the 'Athens of the South', which is why it chose this building as the centrepiece of Tennessee's 1897 centennial fair.

Which US state's Great Seal shows Athena, in her Roman guise, with a grizzly bear at her feet?

California: the designers chose the goddess who was born fully grown because California became a state without ever serving time as a territory.

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

Sigmund Freud lined his desk with antiquities, and when the Nazis demanded a ransom before he could flee to London in 1938, Princess Marie Bonaparte paid it.

Which former Habsburg land has a fountain statue of Athena directly in front of its parliament building?

Austria: the parliament in Vienna was built in the style of a Greek temple to honour the birthplace of democracy, so the goddess of wisdom was set at its door.

In Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson novels, which demigod is the daughter of Athena?

Annabeth Chase: in The Mark of Athena her quest is to recover a giant statue of her mother that the Romans stole from the Greeks in ancient times.

Athena's title Promachos means what?

She who fights in front: a colossal bronze Athena Promachos stood in the open on the Acropolis, and Pausanias says sailors rounding Cape Sounion could pick out its spear-tip and helmet crest.

The Erechtheion, Athena's other temple on the Acropolis, has a famous porch whose roof is held up by what?

Six sculpted maidens, the Caryatids: Lord Elgin carried one off to London, where she still stands in the British Museum, apart from her five sisters in Athens.