Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 2.djvu/904

830 friends but God and death the one a defender of his innocency, the other a finisher of all his troubles.&quot; If imperious in temper and inflexible in dogmatic determina tion, Athanasius had yet a great heart and intellect, enthusiastic in their devotion to Christ, and in work for the good of the church and of mankind. His chief distinction as a theologian was his zealous advocacy of the essential divinity of Christ as co-equal in substance with the Father. This was the doctrine of the Homoousion, proclaimed by the Nicene Creed, and elabo rately defended by his life and writings. Whether or not Athanasius first suggested the use of this expression, he was its greatest defender ; and the catholic doctrine of the Trinity has ever since been more identified with his &quot; immortal &quot; name than with any other in the history of the church and of Christian theology. (For an exposition of the Athanasian Creed, see the article .)  ATHELSTAN, or, son of King Edward the elder, and grandson of Alfred the Great, was born in 895. There has been much doubt with regard to his legi timacy, as his mother, Ecgwyn, is said to have been of humble origin ; but these suspicions appear to rest on slight foundations. On the death of Edward in 925, Athelstan, who had been named by him as his successor, was elected king by the Mercians and West Saxons, and crowned at Kingston in Surrey. Considerable opposition was made to his election, and several of the leading nobles entered into a conspiracy to put out his eyes and deprive him of the kingdom. Alfred the Atheling, who himself aimed at the royal power, was suspected of being concerned in this plot, and was obliged to proceed to Rome and there take an oath of innocence. While in the act of swearing at the altar, he is said to have dropped down in a fit, and to have died three days afterwards. In 925 Athelstan gave one of his sisters in marriage to Sihtric, the Danish ruler of Northumbria, on whose death, in the following year, he invaded the Danish dominions, drove out Sihtric s son, Guthfrith, and took possession of his territory. Guth- frith, after an unsuccessful attempt to stir up Constantine, king of Scotland, to whom he had fled, and after a fruitless invasion of England, made submission to Athelstan, and was kindly treated by him. During the next few years, the Welsh, both of Wales and of Cornwall, appear to have been subdued, and to have done homage to the king of England, who levied tribute on them, and fixed the Wye and the Tamar as the boundaries of Wales and Cornwall respectively. He was thus virtually king of all England. In 933 or 934 he also invaded Scotland, ravaged all the south country, and compelled Constantine to pay a yearly tribute. Four years later, in 937, a powerful combination was made against him. Anlaf, a Danish chief, or, accord ing to some accounts, a son of Sihtric, with the king of Scotland, the Welsh, and the Danes of the north, invaded England. Athelstan, with his half brother Edmund, met and signally defeated the invaders in the battle of Brunan- burh, celebrated in the &quot; Brunanburh War-Song.&quot; In 940 or 941 Athelstan died at Gloucester, and was buried at Malmesbury. England had prospered under his reign; for he devoted much attention to commerce, and exercised a fostering care over the civil and religious interests of his people. His power made him respected and esteemed on the Continent, and several foreign princes and nobles were sent to be educated at his court.  ATHENA (Ἀθηνᾶ, Ἀθήνη, Ἀθηναία), in ', a who, from being originally a of the clear, bright upper region of the, had, as early as the time of the, changed, or advanced, so as to embody  a conception of the clear in sight of the   in its various functions. This upper air or seemed to be a distinct  in the. From it came the of  before  and of  after, reminding us of the  which, in the  , existed before the  and  were placed in the. In the first stage of her character, in which, like the other deities of, she was directly identified with an of  and supposed to act as it acted, Athena bore the name of Pallas, and was thought of more in connection with the s than with the serenity or  of the. The obvious counterpart of a storm was a raging, and, accordingly, she became a goddess of , armed with and , and with the ', or -, of , resistless among men, hurling to the ground the  , and even superior in might to  himself, the  of. The sweeps sorest round high s, where also the storms of  rage fiercest; and on such places was her favourite abode. But a is followed by serenity brighter than before, more enjoyable, and more exciting to activity of every kind; and then the goddess lays aside her  to encourage and foster  and. Her title is then Ergane. To her was ascribed the of  and ; of taming s,  and  them to the ; of the, and in some way of the. This is the second stage of her character, which the, agreeably to its principle, explains in a different fashion, when it says that she sprang into existence from the of the all- ruler of the world, , and that he had before swallowed his wife,. She must therefore have been in a measure a complement of him, created for the purpose of carrying out among men what was in his mind, but what yet he could not himself, as the supreme and impartial ruler, execute. As his substitute, she lent her aid to in all his hardships and adventures; to  under similar circumstances; to the  in  against ; to  in slaying the , whose  she afterwards bore upon her ægis, from which she obtained the name of Gorgophone; and to the nauts on their expedition to. She maintained always her character of a, and, to express this, bore, at in particular, the name of Parthenos. Her took place in, in presence of the other deities,  aiding it, as it is coarsely said, by splitting open with his  the  of , a subject often represented on the ancient  s. This was also the subject of the s in the front  of her greatest , the  at. From the fact that in the other the s represented her contest with  for divine supremacy over, it might perhaps seem that the first act of her existence was to claim this sovereignty. Foremost in her character always is her protection of high, like that of. Yet it was not for this, but for her causing an to grow on the bare  of the, that she was chosen rather than , whose claim was that he had raised on the same rock a  of. The s of were a source of, and the  supplied by their  may have seemed not unlike the  of the. As the defender of citadels her title was Polias. There is, however, a different account of her origin hinging on her name of Tritogenea or Tritonis, and describing her as a daughter of and the   in. But this is obviously a late invention, founded, apparently, on traditions handed down in from the early , in whose original seat at  and  in  was a very early form of the  of Pallas as a  in some way connected with s and s. In this district, in , and in  also, were found rivers bearing the name of , and associated in very early traditions with the  of Athena. 