Goddess of Wisdom and Strategy, Patron of Athens
Athena, goddess of wisdom, strategic warfare, and craft, was born in full armor from the head of Zeus. Having swallowed her pregnant mother Metis, Zeus was seized by a splitting headache; Hephaestus opened his skull with an axe and the goddess sprang out with a war cry, spear in hand. Her emblems are the helmet, the spear, and the aegis bearing the Gorgon's head; her sacred bird is the owl, her tree the olive.
Competing with Poseidon for the patronage of Attica, she planted the first olive tree against the salt spring he struck from the acropolis rock, and the gods awarded her the city that bears her name. In epic she stands beside the heroes: she plots Odysseus's homecoming and lends Perseus the polished shield that lets him behead Medusa, and she presides over weaving, shipbuilding, and pottery. The Parthenon, built on the Athenian acropolis between 447 and 432 BCE, housed Phidias's colossal gold-and-ivory statue of the goddess, a winged Victory standing on her outstretched hand.
