In Hesiod, as has already been shown, the myth of the birth of Athene retains the old barbaric stamp. It is the peculiarity of the Hesiodic poems to preserve the very features of religious narrative which Homer disregards. According to Hesiod, Zeus, the youngest child of child-swallowing Cronus, married Metis after he had conquered and expelled his father. Now Metis, like other gods and goddesses, had the power of transforming herself into any shape she pleased. Her husband learned that her child—for she was pregnant—would be greater than its father, as in the case of the child of Thetis. Zeus, therefore, persuaded Metis to transform herself into a fly. No sooner was the metamorphosis complete than he swallowed the fly, and himself produced the child of Metis out of his head.* The later philosophers explained this myth** by a variety of metaphysical interpretations, in which the god is said to contain the all in himself, and again to reproduce it. Any such ideas must have been alien to the inventors of a tale which, as we have shown, possesses many counterparts among the lowest and least Platonic races.*** C. O. Müller remarks plausibly that "the figure of the swallowing is employed in imitation of still older legends," such as those of Africa and Australia. This leaves him free to imagine a philosophic explanation of the myth based on the word Metis.**** We may agree with Müller that the "swallow-myth" is extremely archaic in character, as it is so common among the backward races. As to the precise amount, however, of philosophic reflection and allegory which was present to the cosmogonic poet's mind when he used Metis as the name of the being who could become a fly, and so be swallowed by her husband, it is impossible to speak with confidence. Very probably the poet meant to read a moral and speculative meaning into a barbaric märchen surviving in religious tradition.
To the birth of Athene from her father's head savage parallels are not lacking. In the legends of the South Pacific, especially of Mangaia, Tangaroa is fabled to have been born from the head of Papa.(v)
* Hesiod, Theog., 886, and the Scholiast
** Lobeck, i. 613, note 2.
*** See the Cronus myth.
**** Proleg. Engl. transl., p. 308.
(v) Gill, Myths and Songs, p. 10.
In the Vafthrudismal (31) a maid and a man-child are born from under the armpits of a primeval gigantic being. The remarks of Lucian on miraculous birth have already been quoted.*
With this mythical birth for a starting-point, and relying on their private interpretations of the cognomina of the goddess, of her sacra, and of her actions in other parts of her legend, the modern mythologists have built up their various theories. Athene is now the personification of wisdom, now the dawn, now the air or aether, now the lightning as it leaps from the thunder-cloud; and if she has not been recognised as the moon, it is not for lack of opportunity.** These explanations rest on the habit of twisting each detail of a divine legend into conformity with aspects of certain natural and elemental forces, or they rely on etymological conjecture. For example, Welcker*** maintains that Athene is "a feminine personification of the upper air, daughter of Zeus, the dweller in æther". Her name Tritogenia is derived**** from an ancient word for water, which, like fire, has its source in æther.(v) Welcker presses the title of the goddess, "Glaucopis," the "grey-green-eyed," into the service. The heaven in Attica oft ebenfalls wunderbar grun ist.(v)*
* Cf. Dionysus.
** Welcker, i. 305.
*** Griechische Gotterlehre, Gottingen, 1857, i. 303.
**** Op. cit., 311.
(v) The ancients themselves were in doubt whether Trito
were the name of a river or mere, or whether the Cretan for
the head was intended. See Odyssey, Butcher and Lang, note
10, p. 415.
(v)* Op. cit., i. 303.
Moreover, there was a temple at Methone of Athene of the Winds (Anemotis), which would be a better argument had there not been also temples of Athene of the Pathway, Athene of the Ivy, Athene of the Crag, Athene of the Market-place, Athene of the Trumpet, and so forth. Moreover, the olive tree is one of the sacred plants of Athene. Now why should this be? Clearly, thinks Welcker, because olive-oil gives light from a lamp, and light also comes from æther.* Athene also gives Telemachus a fair wind in the Odyssey, and though any Lapland witch could do as much, this goes down to her account as a goddess of the air.**
* Op. cit. i. 318.
** Mr. Ruskin's Queen qf the Air is full of similar
ingenuities.
Leaving Welcker, who has many equally plausible proofs to give, and turning to Mr. Max Müller, we learn that Athene was the dawn. This theory is founded on the belief that Athene = Ahana, which Mr. Max Müller regards as a Sanskrit word for dawn. "Phonetically there is not one word to be said against, Ahana = Athene, and that the morning light offers the best starting-point for the later growth of Athene has been proved, I believe, beyond the reach of doubt, or even of cavil." Mr. Müller adds that "nothing really important could be brought forward against my equation Ahana = Athene".
It is no part of our province here to decide between the conjectures of rival etymologists, nor to pronounce on their relative merits. But the world cannot be expected to be convinced by philological scholars before they have convinced each other. Mr. Max Müller had not convinced Benfey, who offered another etymology of Athene, as the feminine of the Zend Thrætana athwyana, an etymology of which Mr. Müller remarks that "whoever will take the trouble to examine its phonetic foundation will be obliged in common honesty to confess that it is untenable".* Meanwhile Curtius** is neither for Ahana and Sanskrit and Mr. Max Müller, nor for Benfey and Zend. He derives Athene from the root aio, whence perhaps comes Athene, the blooming one" = the maiden. Preller, again,*** finds the source of the name Athene in aio, whence aion, "the air," or a flower". He does not regard these etymologies as certain, though he agrees with Welcker that Athene is the clear height of æther.