Athena in Athenian Literature and Cult

Author(s): C. J. Herington
Source: Greece & Rome, Second Series, Vol. 10, Supplement: Parthenos and Parthenon (1963),
pp. 61-73
Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association
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ATHENA IN ATHENIAN LITERATURE

AND CULT
By c. J.

HERINGTON

IF the subject of this article is to be fully appreciated, it is necessary

to begin with a contrast.
The still centre of Athena-worship at Athens lay towards the north
side of the Acropolis, in the eastern half of the shrine nowadays called
the Erechtheion, and in the predecessors of that building. There, from
the time of our earliest records of Athenian history until the downfall
of the classical world, sat an olive-wood image of Athena. It could be
dressed and undressed, like a doll. This in fact was done towards each
midsummer, at the feast Plynteria. High summer saw a moment of
great glory for the image, the festival of the Panathenaia; now cattle and
sheep were slaughtered in its honour within the temple, while every
fourth year a new-woven robe, the peplos, was presented to it. In early
autumn, probably, the shrine witnessed a mysterious night-ritual, the
Arrephoria, when unknown objects were carried to and from the sanctuary of Aphrodite in the Gardens. And there were other ceremonies of
which we know little, such as the Kallynteria, and that unnamed rite
wherein the priestess carried the goddess's aegis to welcome newly wed
Athenian couples.
So far as our records extend this olive-wood Athena (like Auden's
lunar beauty) 'has no history, is complete and early'. The only exception,
the only break in the placid recurrence of ritual, is significant: when the
Persians came in 480, it was the only divine image that is recorded to have
been carried to safety from the doomed city. This piece of wood was
evidently valued above the marvellously fashioned statues in marble
and bronze that had accumulated on the Acropolis during the past
four generations. And six hundred years later, when Pausanias wrote his
guide-book to Greece, the piece of wood was still, in his words, 'the
holiest thing' of all Attica. The importance of the image and of the cults
connected with it was therefore demonstrably great in the life of the
people; especially, no doubt, for the simple folk, the class who, like it,
continued much the same before, during, and after the flowering of
classical Athenian culture.I
I A recent discussion of the olive-wood Athena (often miscalled 'Athena
Polias') is to be found in C. J. Herington, Athena Parthenos and Athena Polias

62

ATHENA

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LITERATURE

AND CULT

It, and its worshippers, may in fact be thought of as the steady

thoroughbass above which the articulate class composed the tremendous music of the sixth to fourth centuries. But such an Athena could
make little imaginative appeal to statesman, poet, or artist; and it is
with the evolution of their Athena that this article is henceforth concerned. The outlines of that goddess had long been drawn for them by
Homer and Hesiod. The fundamental distinction between her and the
Athenas of local cult (whether at Athens or elsewhere) is that she is no
still and secretive numen but a person, vivid and outgoing, capable of
development just as mortal persons are. Her attributes, also, are far
more clearly defined: she is an ebullient armed warrior (e.g. Iliad, v. 73347), a shrewd companion of hero-kings (e.g. Odyssey, xiii. 296-302), and
a patroness of the crafts (e.g. Odyssey, vi. 232 ff., xx. 72). Clearly defined,
too, is her place in the family of Panhellenic gods: she is the favoured
daughter of Zeus. On this last point Hesiod knows, or says, more than
Homer, namely that she was born from the head of the Lord of the Gods
(Theogony, 924-6).

We may say at once that the personality of this epic Athena was never
radically altered in Athenian literature or cult; it was only modified
according to contemporary needs. But the history of the modifications
in the sixth and fifth centuries, so far as the evidence allows us to trace
it, is of extreme interest.
The first extant mention of Athena by an Athenian is this:'
Aibs oUTroT' o6\ETcXa
1IETEpa6 irO6A KcrarpiEV
v pov vaS a&OavTrcAov
acioav KCi ioan<dpcov
ETriKoTroS o6ppiloTard'rpri
TOirl yap sEy&duOvoS
UrrEpOEv
Fac?&s
As0rvairl XEipcas
iXEt.

In these famous lines Solon describes the epic goddess in epic language,
reminding us, especially with the traditional epithet opplWpoTrTprn, that

she is the daughter of Zeus and a member of the Hellenic pantheon.2

(Manchester, 1955). The account there given of the architecture of the sixthcentury Acropolis should be modified in the light of W. H. Plommer's article,
'The Archaic Acropolis: Some Problems', in J.H.S. lxxx (1960), I27ff.; an
article which has seriously weakened the writer's belief in the existence of a
large sixth-century Athena-temple on the south side of the Acropolis, though
not his suspicion, on non-architectural grounds, that a specific cult of Athena
Parthenos once existed there in some form.
Solon, Fr. 3, lines I-4 in E. Diehl, Anthologia Lyrica Graeca (Leipzig,
I922).
2 For the full list of Solon's epic borrowings in this passage, cf. the commentary in E. Buchholz and R. Peppmuller, Anthologie aus den Lyrikern der
Griechen, is (Leipzig, I900), 46ff.

ATHENA

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AND CULT

63
But at the same time he departs entirely from Homer in representing
her as the champion of Athens in particular, assuring her city's prosperity under the Olympian regime. Thus by implication we have the
hierarchy, Zeus-his favoured daughter-that daughter'sfavoured city.
This concept of Athena, which tactfully reconciles the local and the
Panhellenic goddess, will hereafter be referred to, for brevity's sake, as
the 'Solonian'. In the absence of earlier Athenian literature we cannot,
of course, be certain that it was Solon's own invention, but this seems
quite possible; in which case it would appear that his flair for compromise was not restricted to economic and constitutional matters. Is it too
fanciful to draw a parallel with his change to the Euboic standard of
weights and measures, to see an attempt to attach Athens to a wider
spiritual besides a wider economic community?
Once Athena's possibilities as an epic and political goddess had been
thus grasped, no thinking citizen could neglect them. Most unfortunately, we can call on no contemporary literature for evidence about the
undoubtedly crucial period in the evolution of the Athenian Athena
which extends from the old age of Solon to the maturity of Aeschylus.
Such evidence as we have is derived from the material monuments and
from later literary notices; and not much even of this evidence is immune
from dispute. Yet two significant developments are, in their outlines,
certain: the interest which the Athenians began to take in the story of
the Birth of Athena, and the successive reforms (accompanied by increasing secularization) of the Panathenaic festival.
The primitive-looking story of the birth of Athena from the head of
Zeus was both created and developed outside Athens. It is first found in
Hesiod; and according to an apparently well-informed Alexandrian
source the standard legend was completed-with the detail that the
goddess was born fully armed-by Stesichoros of Himera.1 But it is
clear from the vase-paintings that the developed theme acquired a
rather sudden popularity at Athens early in the second quarter of the
sixth century B.C., and maintained it for some fifty years thereafter.2
Now in the light of the 'Solonian' interpretation of Athena the importance of this legend, with its graphic insistence on the miraculous and
unparalleled origin of Athena from Zeus alone, is obvious: if Athena
stands in such a unique relationship with the Father of the Gods, so
will the city which Athena uniquely favours. As it happens we cannot
I D. L. Page, Poetae Melici Graeci (Oxford, I962), No. 233, and scholiast on
Apollonius Rhodius there cited.
2 See J. D. Beazley, Attic Black-Figure Vase-Painters (Oxford, 1956),
Index II, s.v. 'Athena'.

64 ATHENA IN ATHENIAN LITERATURE AND CULT

show that it was in this sense that the story was understood or employed
by the Athenians before the fifth century, when Aeschylus wrote his
Eumenidesand Pheidias designed the East Pediment of the Parthenon.
But at least it may be reasonably asked whether the sixth-century
Athenians had not already some such idea in mind.'
It is attested on good ancient authority that the feast of the Panathenaia had existed since the earliest times.2 In what shape we do not
know, though it is to be conjectured that before the sixth century it had
been primarily a domestic affair, devoted to the cult of the ancient
image; on this view we can explain the lesser sacrifices in the northern
temple and the presentation of the peplos there (which centuries later
formed part of the festival) as the festival's original nucleus. If any of the
antique ritual was capable of expansion in order to honour Athena in
her new 'Solonian' aspect, it was this; what could even the most resourceful politician have made of the Arrephoria, for example, or of the
Plynteria? But whatever the reason, it was certainly the Panathenaia
alone that was selected for reorganization with this aim at least twice in
the sixth century. On each occasion contests were added that were open
to foreign competitors, and had no relation to the cult of the ancient
image; and in the chronological vicinity of each occasion a new temple,
grandiose for its date, was built in Athena's honour. Although there is
no direct evidence on the subject, it seems likely that the new temple
and the reorganization were the outcome of a single plan in each case;
the pattern seems to be repeated in the following century also, when the
Periklean regime sees both the Parthenon and an addition to the
Panathenaic contests.
The earlier reorganization, generally dated (though not with absolute certainty) to 566/5 B.C., added equestrian and athletic contests to
the festival. The second, attributed to Hipparchos in our oldest mention
of it,3 may have been of profound consequence to the history of both
Homeric Hymns, xxviii, our finest literary description of the Birth, now
seems to me impossible to date or localize with any certainty (except by circular
argument). It has been thought that it was composed for a celebration of the
Panathenaia (Wilamowitz), and even that it is contemporary with the Parthenon
(F. Winter).
2 Aristotle in the Peplus, Fr. 594 Rose, ranked it second only to the Eleusinia
in antiquity among the festivals of Greece. For a recent full discussion of this
subject, and of the subjects mentioned in the next two paragraphs of my text,
I refer to J. A. Davison, 'Notes on the Panathenaea' in J.H.S. lxxviii (1958),
23ff., with 'Addenda' in J.H.S. Ixxxii (I962), 4I f.; and, for the rhapsodic
contests and the alleged Peisistratean recension of Homer, to the same writer,
'Peisistratus and Homer', Trans. Amer. Phil. Ass. lxxxvi (1955), I-21.
3 Ps.-Plato, Hipparchos, 228 b.

ATHENA

IN ATHENIAN

LITERATURE

AND CULT

65
Greek and Athenian civilization. Now rhapsode-contests were instituted
at which the poems of Homer were recited, one rhapsode apparently
taking up where his predecessor finished. Details-as usual for the
major events of the sixth century-are lacking, but it is certain that this
feature of Athena's games proved to be an enormous popular success.
In Plato's Ion,' the dramatic date of which falls about a century later,
we have a famous description of such a recitation: the rhapsode on his
platform, gorgeously dressed and crowned, the sea of faces (Plato
numbers them at twenty thousand) reflecting, from moment to moment,
the moods of the poem. And, perhaps another century later still, the
Hipparchos informs us that the event is still in existence. Just what
effect the institution of the contests may have had on the transmission
and standardization of the text of Homer we cannot say, but it is hard to
believe that it had none.2 Is it possible that the institution also affected
the maturing of classical Athenian tragedy ? The chronological sequence
is suggestive: the tragic contests had been instituted at the Great
Dionysia about 534 B.C., but (if we may trust the ancient tradition)3 the
earliest tragedies were relatively short and trivial; it was Aeschylus who
made tragedy a major art-form, that same Aeschylus who once described
his plays as 'cuts from Homer's great banquets'.4 It may well be asked
whether Aeschylus' achievement was not made possible to some extent
by the fact that, thanks to the Panathenaic rhapsodes, his was the first
generation of Athenian tragedians and audiences that was thoroughly
familiar with Homer's epics-dramatically delivered.5
It might be said, without too much paradox, that the 'Solonian'
Athena is the most important single constant in Athenian politics
throughout the period from Solon to Perikles. For the goddess of
Athens, honoured by the tyrants, was not rejected by the democracy,
but received with even greater fervour. First in Athenaios' collection of
Athenian anti-tyrannical skolia, most of which seems to date from the
Ion, 535 d-e.

2
Though the circumstantial stories of a 'Peisistratean recension', which are
found in some later writers, seem to have been satisfactorily disposed of by
Davison.
3
Beginning with Aristoph. Frogs 1004 f., and Aristotle, Poetics, iv. I449a9-24.
4 Athen. viii.
347e.
5 Few, if any, would now suggest that the Homeric poems were unknown to
anyone in Athens before Hipparchos' reform of the Panathenaia. But it is a fact,
several times noted in recent years, that themes from the Iliad have not been
identified in Athenian vase-paintings before c. 530 B.C. See Davison in A. J. B.
Wace and F. H. Stubbings, A Companion to Homer (London, I962), 237
and n. 1.

66

ATHENA

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CULT

period just before and just after the fall of the tyrants, stands the little
song:'
TToras Tprroyivei'avava' Airvai,
wroiTCra
Tr'6v TEKaCi
opOou TrnvSE
aT?p AcyiEc) Kai oracUEcov
Kai eavacrov acopcov, oi TrE
Kai TroarTp.

This is clearly in the tradition of the Solonian lines which were quoted
above: Athena protects her city, while at the same time her special
relationship to Zeus is stressed. As a physical witness to this belief there
began to rise, in the decade 490-80 B.C., an Athena-temple greater than
any hitherto seen on the Acropolis.2 It was on the site of the present
Parthenon, and may have been the first separate temple to be built
specifically in honour of the 'Solonian' Athena-a monument, like its
successor on the site, to something higher than politics, lower than
religion, in the modern understanding of those terms.
But (unlike the olive-wood image) this temple did not survive the
coming of the Persians in 480. To that terrible year belongs a nonAthenian document relating to the Athena of Athens that is of some
interest for the present discussion: the second response of the Delphic
Oracle :3
oU 8suvcrat nacA&S Al' 'OAij1TnoviatXoauOai,
....
AIcaopEvri rroAoToaX6yoiStKati JilTri8iTrUKVi
ZEUS
818oTEOpUorCra
'rETXOS
TPIToyEveTVAXivov
ioUvov &rr6prl-Trov
T-reXeEi. ..

Only in the light of the 'Solonian' concept can we appreciate just how
cruel this reply is. The God accepts part of the concept, namely that
Athena is the special champion of Athens, only to reject the other part.
'Athena', says Apollo cuttingly, 'has not quite the influence with Zeus
that you Athenians suppose.'
But of course the Wooden Walls alone proved to be enough in the end;
and we are now confronted with that period of nearly eighty years
during which Athena, following the fortunes of her city, rose to her
greatest heights and then precipitately fell.
I Athen. xv. 694cff.; D. L. Page, Poetae Melici Graeci, Nos. 884ff. The
collection includes the song on the Alkmaionid defeat at Leipsydrion (No. 907
Page), and the Harmodios-song (Nos. 893-6).
2 For details see the article by Plommer cited in our first note.
3 Herod. vii.
141. 3. The one contemporary Athenian reference to the goddess
is to be found in lines 4-5 of the Themistokles decree (M. H. Jameson in Hesperia,
xxix (I960), I98ff.), where the city is entrusted to the care of 'AOrqv&
AOlvcv
pESiouoca.

ATHENA

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AND CULT

67
The period saw the building of three marble temples to Athena on
the Acropolis: Parthenon, Erechtheion, Temple of Athena Nike. Of
these it is for others to speak, but we should notice here how the two
larger of them visually confirm the conclusions which one might have
drawn from the literature and cult alone. By far the greater space and
splendour are assigned to the goddess as she was conceived by Solon,
the epic-political goddess of the Parthenon. By comparison the Erechtheion, which sheltered the olive-wood image, seems a retiring, almost
a secretive building, with its eccentric ground-plan, its feminine sculptural adornment, its long spaces of blank wall and latticed window.
Correspondingly there are few direct references to the olive-wood
image or its cult in the Athenian literature of the period.I That Athena,
as we have already suggested, was not of the stuff that makes tragedy
or comedy; or history, either. Nor would the purely literary investigator, now or at any period, find much to remind him of the existence of
the Athena who patronizes the craftsmen of Athens.2
It is likely that the earliest surviving Athenian mention of Athena after
the Persian Wars is the song by Lamprokles, which began something
like this:3
KArC
3co wroEIIGa8oKoV
ayvav
na-AccScawTEpcETr'OAV
TrciTbaAios upEyaou
oovA ba ranrov.

Here rhythm combines with words to render the epic aspect of the
goddess, an aspect congenial to that fire-breathing generation of the
Persian Wars whom Aristophanes, long after, loved to portray; in fact
it is Lamprokles' song that Aristophanes (through the mouth of the
Just Argument) quotes as an example of the stirring music taught in
school in the grand days of the apXaicta Trclaica.4 Now Lamprokles

is

I Most of such references are to the peplos, doubtless because this antique
offering had evolved also into one of the most spectacular features of the
Panathenaic procession. They are: Eur. Hec. 466 ff.; Ar. Knights 566, i 80, and
Birds, 827; Strattis, Macedonians or Pausanias, Fr. 30 Kock, cf. Fr. 69. Literary
references to other aspects of the ancient cult: Aristoph. Lys. 262, on the ancient
image; ibid. 642, on the Arrephoria; id. Fr. 841 Kock, on the Plyntrides; Xen.
Hellen. i. 4. 12, on the Plynteria. To this writer it remains doubtful whether
aSfc which
it is the olive-wood image or the Palladion of the court Errifla7TT
is referred to in connexion with the flight of Orestes to Athens in Aesch. Eum.
79 f., etc., and Eur. El. I254-7.
2 The only exception is Soph. Fr. 760 Nauck2, which finely recaptures for
us the clang of the fifth-century Athenian anvils. The importance of this aspect
of Athena to the humbler folk, which must have been great throughout the
period covered by this article, must mainly be inferred from the inscribed votives:
see M. P. Nilsson, Gesch. der griech. Religion, i2 (Munich, I953), 439 f.
3 D. L.
4 Clouds, 967.
Page, Poetae Melici Graeci, No. 735.

68

ATHENA

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known to have been a musical theorist as well as a practising composer,

and in this capacity also he may not be irrelevant to our theme. For
Lamprokles taught the great theorist Damon,' echoes of whose views
on the relationship between music, morals, and politics may perhaps
still be heard in the Republic; and Damon taught music to none other
than Perikles.2 No more than this is stated in our ancient sources. Yet
it seems permissible to recognize here an Athenian musical movement,
one which had been in existence for some time before it culminated in
Perikles' institution of musical contests at the Panathenaic Games,
probably some time in the forties of the fifth century.3 Unfortunatelysince for us the sounds of the ancient music are now almost as faint
and tantalizing as the flavours of the ancient wines-it is impossible
even to guess at the effects of this measure on the musical (and moral ?and political ?) life of Athens. But it is interesting to see this art also now
brought, just as the rhapsodic art had been brought three generations
earlier, under the patronage of the city's goddess.4 With that innovation
in the Panathenaia, and with the dedication of the Parthenon, a cycle is
complete. For the third-and last-time in the history of Athens there
has been an addition to Athena's most political festival, accompanied
under the same regime by a new temple for the goddess.
Next to the Parthenon the noblest and most extensive monument to
the 'Solonian' Athena is Aeschylus' Eumenides,performed in 458 B.C.not more than a decade before the Parthenon was begun. The Athena
who appears in this play is more fully realized as a living, acting person
than anywhere else in Greek literature outside Homer. And yet at the
same time she has qualities that are not Homeric at all, but purely
Athenian. Here, in the triumphant coda of the play and of the trilogy,
we in fact meet the clearest of all formulations of the 'Solonian' concept:
XaipETr'&o-TKOSXEcbS,
lKTap ?iLEVOIAi6S,

rrapOevou(piAas9iXol
aCogppovoVrT?SEvXp6vc.

TcLac&8os8' 'irro 'TEpoTs

OVTarS
a3erai -rrcrrTip. (997-1002.)
2
3

Scholiast on Plato, Alkibiades, I8 c.

See, e.g., Isokrates, xv. 25; Plato, Alk. II8 c.
Full discussion by J. A. Davison, Y.H.S. lxxviii (1958), 36-41. He shows

some groundsfor thinkingthat Perikleswas actuallyrevivingan archaicevent

that had been discontinuedearlierin the century.
4 The AthenianAthena'spatronageof music is also alluded
to, perhaps,in

Ar. Thesm. II36, Eur. Heracl. 780, and I.G. ii2. 1417, in which competent
authoritiesrestorean 'Aeiva MouovIK'i.

ATHENA

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CULT

69

A special love unites supreme God and city, city and goddess, goddess
and supreme God; it could not have been more economically expressed.
Not surprisingly the story of the birth from Zeus's head is heavily
stressed in the same play, being indeed a motif of crucial importance to
the entire action of the Oresteia. It is this that Apollo throws into the
peroration of his plea for the defence (Eum. 663 ff.):
TrAcaS
TCraI
'OAuprriouAt6S,
i&apT-rS
TTrpEO-rr
oi6' Evo'K6roTo'vVqS6oSTrEepaI.Evri,

dA,' olov Epvoso'TrSav T-rKOI

8E6S.

And it is this that Athena (ibid. 734 ff.) cites as the reason for a vote that
acquits Orestes and breaks for ever the ancient cycle of human vendetta. Nor can Athena's own immense importance in the human and
divine action of the trilogy be overlooked. She (and, correspondingly,
her city) stands out as a force of intelligence and compromise among
warring, purblind gods and men. This aspect of Athena is of course
represented by Aeschylus as one quality among others in a living
personality. It was for other writers, mostly at a much later date, to
isolate this quality and to desiccate the goddess into a mere abstraction
of Wisdom, 'a pallid bust of Pallas just above the chamber door'.' But
for Aeschylus, as for the other poets and artists of the fifth century, the
vivid Homeric goddess is still central; it is always to this that they add
the new characteristics, political, moral, or intellectual, that their aims
at the time require.
The perfect balance of this Aeschylean version of Athena is no more
repeated in other extant tragedy than the Parthenonic version is
rivalled in other sculpture; the conditions for such balance came and
went in the middle decades of the century. It is true that Athena continued to appear as a character on the Athenian tragic stage far more
frequently than any other deity.2 But there is henceforth a diversity and
unevenness of treatment, reflecting the creeping uncertainties that beset
the latter part of the fifth century. Perhaps nearest to the Athena of the
Eumenides(but by a long interval) stands the Athena who appears in the
C. J. Herington, Athena Parthenos and Athena Polias, 54, n. i, gives

referencesfor sixth- and fifth-century allegorizationsof Athena. But the

practiceonly becamewidespreadlater on, with the Stoics.
3
Apartfrom the Eumenides,Athenaappearssix times in extantplays (Soph.
Aias; Eur. Suppl.,Ion, Tro.,I.T., Rhesos),and almostcertainlyappearedin the
lost Auge of Euripides. Her closest Olympian competitorin this respect is
Apollo (Eum.,Ichneutai,Alkestis,Orestes).

70 ATHENA IN ATHENIAN LITERATURE AND CULT

exodos of Euripides' Suppliants, again the sponsor of reason and moderation in human affairs, again almost identified with her city; as Theseus
says in reply to her long speech,

ovvyap p' avopeOoScbcTrEPi'

...

JapaopTaxvE?v...
p6vov

oV pE

ESopeov To-Trr(cTOyap EpIEVOVSTrOAEt

TO?OItrrTV
OUVToS
S oiKiloOPEV.(I228ff.)
d,op&cAq

In the same tradition, but this time emphasizing the closeness of Athena
to Zeus, is an impassioned chorus (too long to quote) in that other
'political' play of Euripides, the Herakleidai (748-83); probably the
finest hymn to Athena that has survived from antiquity. And enough of
the lost Erechtheusis preserved to suggest that, in its attitude to Athena
as in several other respects, it resembled the Herakleidai and the Suppliants.' All three plays, it will be noticed, fall within a limited period of
Euripides' and Athens' career, the decade 430-420 B.C.2 To this group
we may add-though now with some reservations in view of the possible ironies at play in the exodos-the portrait of Athena and Athens
drawn in the Ion, a play set by most critics not very long after the latter
date.
That, however, is only one end of the tragic spectrum. At the centre
stands a neutral Athena, without noticeable political or moral overtones,
who materializes in the exodos of the Iphigenia in Tauris. And then in
four other plays-the Aias of Sophokles, the Auge and Troades of
Euripides, and the Rhesos-we move over towards the opposite extreme.
Here the personality and attributes of the Homeric Athena are rendered
with great clarity; but whereas Homer had refused comment on the
behaviour of his gods (even on that of Athena in the twenty-second book
of the Iliad), these plays are critical. In the Aias Sophokles represents
Athena as a demon rather than as a goddess, inferior to the noble human
whom she tempts, Odysseus, and even to the erring human, Aias,
whom she destroys with superfluous cruelty.3 A famous fragment of
I

Cf. Erechtheus,Frr. 35I, 360. 46-49 (Nauck2).

Opinionsvarywith regardto the exact date of the firsttwo, but few would
put them outside these limits; the latest account, that of G. Zuntz in The
PoliticalPlaysof Euripides(Manchester,1955),puts themrespectivelyat 430 and
424 B.c. The Erechtheus,by commonconsent,is datableto 421 (Zuntz, op. cit.
2

89 and n. 2).

3 Viewingthe Aias as a whole, the presentwritercannotescapethis conclusion, in spite of the fine lines put into Athena'smouth at 127-33. Sophokles
rarely mentions the AthenianAthena, with the notable exception of his last
work (O.C., Io7 f., 703-5, o090), where it is no doubt the contemporarysituation of his city that has overcomeeven his detachment,causinghim to speak

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Euripides' Auge is more explicit;' reproved by Athena for giving birth

in a sanctuary, the heroine argued back:
pEvppoTro9ppa
cKuXca
EpEiTrca,
XaipEtsopcoaocKcaVEKpCOV
KOUpiapa oot TcOT' EOT'V Ei 8' EyCo ETEKOV,
8eiv6v T'r68' yij;

In the Aias and in what we have of the Auge (neither certainly dated)
the criticism is on moral grounds only, and we have no reason to think
that the Athenas here are to be connected specifically with Athens any
more than is the Athena of the Iliad. Somewhat more sinister is the
rendering of the goddess in the prologue of the Troades, produced in
415 B.C.-the weathercock-goddess who causes a city to be destroyed
to its foundations at one moment (lines 46-47), and at the next rounds
savagely on the human agents of that destruction. It is difficult not to
feel that there is some reference to contemporary Athens here, especially
at the moments when she brushes aside Poseidon's pointed question
(59 f.), 'Why, have you come to pity Troy after she is razed to ashes ?', or
when he asks (67 f.),
,
'r 68'cbS TrrnqS&?Xo-r'
EiSiAAousTrp6rroup

AXiavKai 9l1AE1S
6av&v 'rTXS;
p1Ei1STrE

Many have explained the tone of this prologue by the obliteration of

Melos in the preceding winter, and they may well be right. Towards this
end of the spectrum, therefore, Athena once again (as at the other end)
coalesces with Athens, but goddess and city begin to assume grim
shapes. Even more open, and more vicious, is the attack in the Rhesos. In
the scene of that play where Athena actually appears (595-674) she is
already a thing of the night, as she had been in the Aias: leading the
reluctant Odysseus on to murder, deluding Alexander. But the moral
comment, and the quasi-identification of the goddess with Athens, are
in the accents of Euripides' 'political'plays of twenty years before. Another
apparent reference to her is Fr. 760 (above, p. 67, n. 2). I should also accord a

mentionhere to the lyricfragmentprintedin D. L. Page, GreekLiteraryPapyri

(Oxford, 1942), p. I50 (c), and there very hesitantly assigned to Sophokles'

Tereus.This is unique in Greekpoetryin that it scornfullyattacksthe foolishness of the idea that Athena or Zeus care speciallyfor any one city. But the
authoritiesare not even agreed that the fragmentis from tragedy, or by an
Athenianauthorat all. For me, it remainsan unsolvedproblem.
I Fr. 266 Nauck2. The lost context may, of course, have modified the
apparentseverityof the criticismhere; rememberingother Euripideanagones,
one may conceive that Athena came back with a devastatingpiece of rhetoric
in her turn. But on any view the goddesswill retainlittle dignity.

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reservedfor the exodos.Here the Muse, the mother of Rhesos, lays on

Athenathe whole blamefor the deathof her son (938-40; cf. 945, 978),
and adds (94 iff.):
KCiTOlTro6XvOcilVoyyovoI

TpEcpEuO

Moucrati piAtrLra KdTriXPoPEOaX0ovi . . .

Kai TCr)V6E
piaOoV TWrai8'
EXovU' Ev &yK&XAais

eprlv&$.

In the Rhesos a mean and murderous goddess presides over a city that
does not even know how to be grateful for the unique artistic gifts
which the Muses have granted to it. Was it Euripides who drew this
cruel picture, in whole or part? And if it was he, at what stage in his
career ? Probably, in default of fresh evidence, there will never be agreement. But this writer sees nothing to disprove the view that the exodos
at least could be the work of the poet of the Bacchai, disillusioned, an
exile in the north.
It is a pleasure to turn from that dark and unexplained tragedywithin-a-tragedy to the open cheerfulness of Old Comedy. Here, again,
we shall find little reference to the cult of the olive-wood image, no
doubt because no section of the audience would have been pleased: the
old-fashioned pious would have felt uncomfortable, the bright intellectuals would have been disconcerted by such out-of-date nonsense,
&pXcaiayE 8il

KCI AirroXAlcO6r Kai Ter-rTiyCOv avatEi'Cra,

KrKEi8OUKCaiBouqpovicov!
KOCi

What everyone liked, it seems, was a frequent flattering allusion to the

patriotic, 'Solonian' Athena. There are few plays of Aristophanes that
do not contain some passages of the sort,2 among them some of his most
charming lyrics, for example this:3
T-rivqpiO6XopovEpoi
nHarAXSca
KaXEiV
?EpoO
VOpOS
?SXop6v,
a3uyac
Trrapevov
Kovprlv,
ime'pEpavEXE ... (Thesm. II36ff.)
ii Tr6roAv
But audiences evidently would not tolerate the actual presence of
their Athena on the comic stage,4 nor, consequently, her subjection to
I Clouds, 984f. (Unjust Argument). Such references as there are in Old
Comedy are mostly to the peplos; see above, p. 67, n. i.
2 The exceptions are: Acharnians, Wasps, Frogs.
3 See also Knights, 58I-9; Clouds, 6oif.; Thesm. 317-19. Perhaps significantly, there are no references to Athena of more than a couple of words in
length in Aristophanic comedy after the last-named play (of 4I B.C.).
4 A conceivable
exception in Old Comedy is Hermippos' Arqv&s rFovaf,
though the few fragments do not in fact show that Athena appeared in person.

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any of the nastiness or indecency with which Comedy liberally bespattered other Olympians.
And yet ...

pXo-rraiaipovesKai oi esoi.I While Athena is certainly

never reviled in surviving comedy, there is one passage which indicates

a free-and-easy familiarity with the city-goddess such as might not be
suspected from our other sources. It is the scene in the Knights where
Cleon and the Sausage-Seller are outbidding each other with gifts for
Demos.
S.-S.: I bring you bread-in-the gravy, dipped by the Goddess with her
ivory hand.
DEM.: My Lady! Then what a monstrousfinger you have!2
S.-S.: Demos, in very presence our Goddess guards you, and now She
holds above you ... a pot of soup.
DEM.: Naturally! Do you think this city would still be a city, if She
didn't hold the pot over us for all to see? (1168-70, 173-6.)
The last four lines are, of course, a loving parody of Solon's lines on
Athena, which were quoted at the beginning of this account. Another
cycle is complete; or almost so.
It would be of little use to trace the history of Athena in Athenian
literature beyond the death of Aristophanes, except to confirm conclusions which will already have become apparent: that the 'Solonian'and Pheidian-concepts of the goddess were so intimately attached to
the fortunes of an expanding Athens that they could barely survive in
the imagination of the people at large beyond the end of the Peloponnesian War. Henceforth she could only live in the imaginations of the
few who-like Plato3-chose to look back and contemplate the city as it
had once been, or might have been. In that restricted sense she is living
still, having outlasted even the olive-wood image.
Plato,Kratylos,406 c; a truthoccasionallyoverlookedin the study of Greek
religion,and even of Old Comedy.
2
The only certainallusionin fifth-centuryAtheniandramato the statue by

Pheidias that we celebrate in the present volume. (A reference to her sandals

may have occurredin Kratinos,Nomoi,Fr. 132 Kock, but that is only an inference from the context in which the fragmentis quoted.)
3
See, for example, Kritias, o09 cff.-though the noble myth told there is
representedas havingbeen transmittedfrom . .. Solon.

3871 (a)