The Daughter of the Dragon

Abstract

THE best key to the origin, aniconic or otherwise, of the goddess Athena lies in her attributes, a number of which were added to the Pheidian statue of the chryselephantine Parthenos; the best copy, for our purposes, is the Varvakeion version in the National Museum of Athens. First, the full panoply of armour spoke for her warlike character, her impregnable defence. On the helmet was a figure of the sphinx, two of the pegasos and, according to Pausanias,' it was also decorated with two griffons. On the shield was the head of the medusa which Buschor2 believes has survived in the Rondanini mask of Munich; the same figure has been worked into the aegis on her chest. Resting on the right hand of the Athens copy is a small image of the Victory goddess, an attribute Athena shared with Zeus as an emblem of invulnerability. The only outstanding attribute not in evidence on the original statue was the owl, the bird of darkness appearing most frequently on Athenian coins. Perhaps the most important vestige of her ancestry was the serpent couched inside the shield, the head raised to attack any aggressor. There are two versions of the birth of the goddess: one claims she issued forth from the head of Zeus, the other, somewhat vague, makes her the offspring of Poseidon (sometimes Zeus) and Triton. Hesiod,3 our best authority for the first version, asserts that, after swallowing Metis, his wife, he gave birth to Athena through his head, on the banks of the river Triton. On black figured ware and, supposedly, in the east pediment of the Parthenon, Hephaistos or Prometheus split open the head of Zeus with an axe, whereupon the goddess sprang forth, full-grown and fully armed and took her place at her father's side. Accordingto Aristokles4 she sprang from a