by Imonikhe Ahimie

Created on: March 09, 2009

Pallas Athena, Tritogeneia, was one of the great deities worshipped by the ancient Greeks and she was also worshipped by the Romans under the name of Minerva. Archaeological evidence suggests that her worship predates the arrival of Hellenes and she was considered by the pre-Hellenic Minoan and Mycenaean rulers as patroness of their fortress-palaces and her association with the snake and the olive tree date back to this period. in fact, the Acropolis in Athens is built on the site of an earlier Mycenaean palace or temple, and it is probable that the invading Hellenes appropriated the goddess of the citadel along with the citadel identifying her with a virgin warlike goddess of their own and it seems that it was at this time that Pallas was added to her name.

Now that we have the more or less academic stuff behind us, let's get down to the true origins of the great goddess whom, I admit, is my favorite ancient Greek deity, as she is of so many others.

As it has come down to us, Athena, like Aphrodite, did not have a childhood certainly not in the way that childhood is normally thought of, because she came into existence fully grown and ready to take her rightful position in the Greek pantheon. The favourite child of Zeus, Athena was the daughter of the Titaness Mtis, the daughter of Oceanus and Tethys. Mtis was Zeus' first consort, but Zeus was desperately afraid of the consequences of their relationship, for it had been prophesied that Mtis first child, a goddess, would be the greatest of all the goddesses and that her second child, a god, would grow to be even more powerful than Zeus and who would overthrow Zeus. Considering that Zeus himself had overthrown his father, Coronos, who, himself, had overthrown his own father, Uranus, it is fair to say that Zeus felt concerned. Zeus therefore tricked Mtis to change herself into a fly and promptly swallowed her! But Mtis had already conceived Athena, and the goddess grew to adulthood inside her father. In due course, Zeus developed a terrible headache for which there seemed no cure, although the reason for the headache was fairly straightforward. Athena was ready to come out into the world, and her mother had made her a robe and a helmet; it was the hammering of the helmet by Mtis that had resulted in Zeus' headache. Hermes, the ever youthful messenger of the gods, was able to decipher the cause of Zeus headache and, on the banks of the River Triton, split open Zeus' head with an axe and out sprang Athena, fully grown,

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