Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/284

252 BOOK emblem of peace, was better than the horse, whose chief use was for war. But the city so named after her was emphatically the glistening city (LTrapal 'A6-r]vat), although the epithet, it seems, was so little applicable to it in its outward aspect that the Athenians of the historical ages prized it with a jealous earnestness, and were ready to grant any prayer made by people who addressed them as citizens of brilliant Athens.

Athene the She is, however, the guardian not of Athenians only but of all of heroes. solar heroes; in her Bellerophontes, Achilleus, Herakles and Perseus, Odysseus and Diomedes, find their unfailing friend and comforter. From her come all wealth and prosperity, and accord- ingly we find the special emblems of wealth and fertility intimately associated with her worship. Her sacred serpent was fed on the Akropolis, and yearly in her great procession the sacred ship, covered with the peplos woven by Athenian maidens, was carried to her shrine.^ In one of the so-called Orphic hymns,^ she is said to be both male and female, and thus to remain unwedded. Doubtless the dawn may be regarded as of spotless purity and unfading loveli- ness, and this idea might give rise to images of transcendent holiness and majesty ; but she may be thought of also not only as giving birth to children, but as being sensible to passion, and we are not justified in leaving out of sight those myths which present Athene in this light On the one hand, according to one story, she bhnds Teiresias because he had looked upon her unclothed form (a myth closely akin to that of the dazzling treasures of Ixion, which no man might look upon and live), and shrinks with loathing from Hephaistos when he seeks to lay hands upon her. On the other, the myth of Prometheus exhibits her as aiding him in his theft of fire against the will of Zeus, while one version represents her as so acting from feelings not of friendship but of love. In general, however, the harmony between the dawn and the sky from which it springs, in other words, between Zeus and Athene, is undisturbed; and thus when Zeus is determined to take vengeance for the deceit put upon him by Prometheus, Athene lends herself as a willing accomplice in his scheme. She is to teach Pandora the skilful use of the loom, while Aphrodite is to adorn her with all the enticements of physical beauty, and Hermes is to give her a crafty and thievish mind and temper.^ But even in the Iliad where she is generally represented ' I les. 0/>. et Dies. 60, et seq. The version of the myth. It is certainly not statement in line 72 that Athene placed in accordance with line 65.
 * See section xii. of this chapter. the girrlle on Pandora and made her
 * xxxii. beauiiful may be regarded as another