BOOK II. Birth of Athênê, The Hesiodic Theogony assigns Metis (a name akin to that ot the wise Medeia) as a mother to Athene ; but this story is reconciled with the other myth by saying, that by the counsel of Ouranos and Gaia Zeus swallowed Metis before her child was born. The saying of Pindar, that Hephaistos at her birth split the forehead of Zeus with a brazen axe, may point to the sudden stream of light shooting up in the morning sky, or to the lightning flash which reveals the darkened heaven , ^ and in the golden shower which falls at her birth, we have a repetition of the mode in which Danae became the mother of Perseus.'^ When Apollodoros and others say that the forehead of Zeus was cloven by Prometheus or Hermes, we have only to remember that these are both spoken of (together with the Argive Phoroneus) as the first givers of the boon of fire to mankind.'
Parentage of Athene. As springing from the forehead of Zeus, Athene was known as Koryphasia in Messene, as Akria in Argos, while INIinerva was called Capta (capita) at Rome.* But there were also traditions which spoke of her as a child not of Zeus, but of the giant Pallas,* w^ho attempts to violate her purity, and is therefore slain by her. Here we have the dawn regarded as springing from the night, and the night as seeking to mar or to destroy his offspring. It is, in short, the myth which makes Laios, Akrisios, and Astyages hate their children, who are in their turn doomed to slay their sires, as Athene slays the monster Pallas. The legend which makes her a daughter of Poseidon is merely a statement that the morning is born from the waters. But as with the dawn there comes generally the morning breeze (Sara- meya, Hermeias, Hermes, the child of Sarama) with its sweet and soothing tones, so when, by the aid of Athene, Perseus has slain the dark Gorgon, Athene is said, like Hermes, to have invented the flute in order to imitate the plaintive sounds in which the Gorgon sisters mourned the slain Medousa.®
Ath6n6 mother of Fhoibos and Lychnos. But pure and undefiled though the dawn may be, she is yet followed by the sun, who may therefore be regarded as her offspring ; and thus Phoibos ApoUon was sometimes called a son of Hephaistos
- Preller, Grieschische Mythologie, i.
151, regards the axe sjjlitting the fore- head of Zeus as the lightning.
- Pind. Olymp. vii. 65. The ex-
pression applied to Athene, hx6.Kakv virepfiaKii (ioa, indicates the din of a thunderstorm.
' Apollod. i. 3, 5. Tile myth which makes Hephaistos himself her father speaks only of the burst of flaming light from which the day seems to be born.
- Ma. Miiller, Lectures on Language,
second series, 503.
- This name is manifestly only
another form of Phallos.
« Pind, Pyth. xii. 35. The knife with which Perseus slays the Gorgon comes from Athene ; it is the same weapon with which Hermes put out the eyes of Argos. But when the head of the dark Gorgon has been cut off, "the light, veiled for a moment, soon reappears on the Aigis of the dawn-queen." — Brown, The Unicom, 52.
