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Athena: Goddess
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Athena's birth "is a desperate theological expedient to rid her of matriarchal conditions" says J. E. Harrison. She was the Goddess of Wisdom, and the daughter of the Titaness who basically personified it. By having her born only from Zeus, it gave males authority and power over something that had previously only been a female realm. Zeus swallowed Metis, and so was able to assimilate her crafty wisdom. Athena did not have any loyalty to a mother figure, which probably played a major role in her self-description as misogynist.
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Athena is one of the younger goddesses; she is the child of Zeus. She has no mother. The story is that Athena was born, fully grown and armed, out of the head of Zeus. One day Zeus complained that he had a headache, and Hephaistos came and banged him on the head with an axe and out popped Athena!
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In Greek mythology, Athena, the shrewd companion of heroes, became the goddess of wisdom, as philosophy became applied to cult in the later fifth century. She remained the patroness of weaving, crafts and the more disciplined side of war. Athena's wisdom ... includes the cunning intelligence (metis) of such figures as Odysseus. She is attended by an owl, and is often accompanied by the goddess of victory, Nike. Wearing a goatskin breastplate called the Aegis given to her by her father, Zeus, she is often shown helmeted and with a shield bearing the Gorgon Medusa's head, a votive gift of Perseus.
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Even though she was as modest as Artemis and Hestia, the other virgin goddesses, Athena was far more generous. A man called Teiresias chanced upon Athena while she was taking a bath and she was startled to realize that he had entered the room and seen her. Not wanting to kill Teiresias for his folly, she laid her hands over his eyes and blinded him, but gave him inward sight so that Teiresias became one of the most well-known oracles in Greece.
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In the Iliad (4.514), the Homeric Hymns, and in Hesiod's Theogony, Athena is given the curious epithet Tritogeneia. The meaning of this term is unclear. It seems to mean "Triton-born," perhaps indicating that the sea-deity was her parent according to some early myths,[24] or, less likely, that she was born near Lake Triton in Africa. This is the same location noted in The Greek Myths (8.a ff.), by Robert Graves as the possible location from which the worship of Neith was imported into Crete and then into Greece as the warrior goddess Athena at a very early date, perhaps as early as 3,500 BC.
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A woman named Αράχνη (Arachne) once boasted that she was a superior weaver to Athena, the goddess of weaving. Athena appeared to her disguised as an old woman and told Arachne to repent for her hubris but Arachne instead challenged Athena to a contest. The old woman threw off her disguise and the contest began. Athena wove a depiction of the conflict with Poseidon over Athens, while Arachne wove a depiction of Zeus' many romantic exploits. Athena was furious at her skill (the contest was never decided), and her choice of subject, and, with a touch, struck Arachne with terrific guilt. Arachne tried to kill herself, but Athena didn't let her die.
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