Quotes about Athena

They named supernatural culprits, and traced their actions to enmities in heaven. Artemis was hostile to Pan, Earth to Apollo, virgin Athena to loving Aphrodite.... Because the gods were `present' and manifest, it was necessary to ask them about [things] which might concern them. Otherwise, they might be `unpropitious'.... The old compound of awe and intimacy was still alive. (Pagans and Christians, Penguin, 1988, pp. 236-37)

In Western mythology, she might be compared to Medusa, the serpent-haired Greek goddess whose name means Knowing Woman or Protectress. She once was all-powerful—until patriarchy came along in the form of a mythic young man who chopped off her head. He was told to do this by Athena, who sprang full-blown from the mind of her father, Zeus—a goddess thought up by patriarchy and therefore motherless. There is history in what is dismissed as prehistory In