Athena

Pallas Athena, or simply referred to as Athena was the Olympian goddess of wisdom, war, and battle strategy.

Birth and Accession to the Olympians
Athena was born to Zeus and his first wife, the Titaness Metis. A prophecy had once foretold that Metis would give birth to a daughter and then a son who would be more powerful than his father, which posed a problem as Metis was already pregnant with their first child. To prevent the prophecy from taking place, Zeus tricked Metis into taking the form of a fly and swallowed her whole.

However, Metis took the form of intelligence and gave birth to a daughter, who grew inside her father's head. Over time, Zeus began experiencing a terrible headache, so Hephaestus offered to put Zeus out of his misery by splitting open his head with an awl and hammer. While most of the other Olympians held Zeus down on his throne, Hephaestus created a fissure, thick enough for Athena to squeeze her way out, after which she grew into a full-size goddess wearing battle armor and holding a spear, much to the astonishment of the other gods. In some sources, it is said that Helios himself stopped in the sky in astonishment.

Despite the misgivings of the other gods, Zeus insisted that they welcome Athena into their ranks. She officially became one of the Olympians as the Goddess of Wisdom and Warfare and Queen Hera's greatest enemy. She taught the Greeks numerous skills essential for their evolution, such as mathematics, utilizing the oxen to plow their fields, and artisan activities such as weaving.

Despite her being the goddess of warfare, Athena didn't actually enjoy combat, but accepted it as an inevitable necessity at times. She was more focused on minimizing casualties and achieving victory through wise strategies. Through her actions, Athena quickly became Zeus's favorite daughter and constantly consults her for advice. In The Iliad, Ares in fact accuses Zeus of favoring Athena above the others.

Creation of Pandora
When her father, Zeus, decided to create the irresistible Pandora in order to punish Epimetheus for his brother, Prometheus', actions, Athena helped the girl by gifting her with wit and curiosity. In addition to that, she taught Pandora how to weave and make crafts of various types. This generous act helped Pandora utilize her time and get rid of boredom.

Rivalry with Poseidon
For many eons, Athena and Poseidon had a rivalry between them, which can be traced to the time when they competed for the position of patron of the city of Athens, called Attica at that time. The leader of the city asked the two gods to bestow a gift for the newly constructed city. Poseidon created a salt-water spring, and in another version, and horses, while Athena gave them the olive tree. Seeing that the olive tree was more useful than the salt-water spring and horse for the city, its leader Kekrops made Athena their patron goddess. A temple known as the Parthenon was dedicated to her and the new city took the name of Athens in her honor.

The next time which marked a conflict between the two Olympians was when Athena responded to the prayers of Coronis, whom Poseidon was trying to seduce. She saved the woman by transforming her into a raven. As a result, a furious Poseidon longed for revenge. Hence, he took his new lover, the priestess Medusa, into a temple of Athena. Furious with Poseidon and Medusa for doing disgusting acts in her temple, Athena turned Medusa into a hideous creature who had the additional curse of turning anyone who looked into her irresistible eyes into stone. As Medusa's sisters had helped her get inside the temple, they too were transformed. Collectively, the three sisters became known as the "Three Gorgons." After receiving Medusa's head as a sacrifice from her half-brother Perseus, Athena gave the head as a gift to her father Zeus, who sent it to Hephaestus in order to create the Aegis. Zeus would trust the shield to his daughter from time to time. However, many sources also claim that the creation of Medusa was a blessing to her, as she had been Athena's favored priestess, and Poseidon had taken advantage of her within Athena's temple. Unable to punish Poseidon, Athena instead gave Medusa the ability to turn any man who tried to hurt her again into stone.

Another time both Athena and Poseidon were at odds was about the matter of the hero Odysseus. While Poseidon was furious with him for blinding his son Polyphemus, Athena favored Odysseus above all other mortals due to his always using cleverness instead of strength and was always willing to aid him when he needed it most. Though it seemed unlikely that Athena and Poseidon would ever cooperate, this did happen when the chariot was invented, as she had built the chariot itself and Poseidon had created the horses needed to pull it.

Life with Pallas
Shortly after her emergence from her father's head, Zeus sent Athena to live with the nymphs of Lake Tritonis since their warlike nature appealed to her. She would get along famously with them. Under their tutelage, Athena would come to become a master of both armed and hand-to-hand combat. Her girlfriend (though without any sexual activities), however, was Pallas, the only nymph who could sometimes match her in combat.

One day, the two engaged in a sparring match with such speed and intensity that Zeus, who happened to be watching them at the time, mistook it for a genuine mortal duel. Worried for his daughter's safety, he appeared in the sky right behind Athena and held up his fearsome Aegis shield, which greatly unnerved and startled Pallas due to the Head of Medusa on it. Without noticing her father's presence at first, Athena proceeded to disarm her friend of her javelin and counterattacked, stabbing at Pallas's gut. However, Pallas was too slow because she was still going over her shock, so Athena ended up accidentally fatally piercing her with her sword.

A devastated Athena honored her best friend with a sacred monument, building a wooden replica of Pallas and draping a small section of her Aegis cloak over its shoulders. This statue would eventually end up in the city of Troy, becoming known as the Palladium (meaning "Place of Pallas"), where women were allowed to claim sanctuary while men were forbidden from even looking at the statue. Since Pallas's statue greatly resembled Athena herself, people would eventually begin referring to the goddess herself as "Pallas Athena," which the goddess encouraged as it helped her keep Pallas's memory alive.

Lives of Erikthonius and Daedalus
Hephaestus developed strong romantic feelings for Athena because of their similar interests in tools and penchant for solving mechanical problems. Unfortunately for him, Athena became one of the Virgin Goddesses and didn't want to marry anyone. However, Hephaestus persistently followed and flirted with Athena until he finally flung himself at her, wrapping his arms around her waist and tearfully burying his face in her skirt. In the process, some of his divine sweat and tears rubbed off on her bare leg, much to her chagrin. She kicked Hephaestus away, snatched up a piece of cloth to wipe the godly moisture off of her, hurled the cloth off Olympus, and ran away from her persistent admirer.

Containing the essence of both gods, the cloth would subsequently transform into a mortal baby boy, who Athena found and named Erikthonius. She placed her "son" into a wooden chest, along with a magically conjured serpent, with the intention of his godly qualities eventually being enhanced by the serpent and making him immortal. The snake soon turned into one of Athena’s sacred animals, along with the owl and cat. Athena took the chest to the Athenian Acropolis (her most sacred place) and gave it to the daughters of Kekrops while warning them not to open it. While the princesses agreed, they would be overcome with curiosity after only one night and opened the chest. After seeing Erikthonius and the serpent, the princesses became insane and promptly jumped off the side of the Acropolis' cliffs to their deaths. As the chest was opened, the spell was broken before Erikthonius could become immortal and the serpent slithered away. However, Athena would eventually take out her vengeance on Kekrops, whom a grown-up Erikthonius would banish and usurp his Athenian throne.

While she remained a virgin goddess, Athena had quite a few demigod children conceived when her divine thoughts met the mortal ingenuity of the men she favored, a love which she believed to be of the purest kind. Her children are then born in the same way she was, quite literally making them brainchildren. One of Athena's most famous demigod children would be Daedalus. She blessed both her son and her grandson Perdix. She later punished the jealous Daedalus for killing Perdix by branding him with a partridge, the mark of a murderer. By doing this, Athena cursed her son to live a long and tortured life.

Inventing the Flute
One day while walking in the woods near Athens, Athena discovered a nest of hissing snakes, which gave her a sudden idea for a musical instrument because of its hissing. She would fashion it from a hollowed out reed with holes, thereby creating the first flute. Proud of her achievement, Athena took the flute up to Mount Olympus, eager to perform in front of the other gods. As soon as she started playing, however, Aphrodite, Hera, and Demeter began giggling and whispering to each other. Athena was enraged, and yelled at the goddesses. Demeter and Aphrodite eventually pointed out that Athena's facial features comically contorted while she played.

An embarrassed Athena fled in humiliation and hurled the flute off of Olympus, cursing it to give the worst fortune to the next person to play it. Since the flute landed in Asia Minor, that person would end up being the satyr Marsyas, who was so stunned by the beautiful music that it created, since it had been filled with Athena's divine breath, that he actually challenged Apollo to a music competition. Due to her curse, Marsyas lost and was subsequently flayed alive by a victorious Apollo.

Meeting Teiresias
One night, Athena went to a swimming hole in central Greece for relaxation purposes. However, while the naked goddess stood bathing under a waterfall, she heard the cry of a mortal man named Teiresias, who had accidentally come across her. The startled and embarrassed Athena promptly blinded Teiresias. Since he was very apologetic, the goddess sent birds and snakes to lead and protect him (granting him the ability to understand their language) and gave him supernatural powers of precognition, which lead to Teiresias becoming a great prophet shortly thereafter.

Rivalry with Arachne
A long time ago, the mortal weaver Arachne challenged Athena to see who could create the best tapestry. Athena disguised herself as an old woman and tried to warn Arachne that it would be foolishness to challenge a goddess, but Arachne persisted and stated that if she lost, she would accept any punishment. Enraged, Athena revealed herself and accepted the challenge as she herself had invented weaving. Each of them then made a tapestry: Athena's tapestry was of the gods together in glory and joy while Arachne's showed the gods making fools of themselves, though it was still beautiful. While Athena reluctantly admitted the contest was a tie, she was so infuriated by this deliberate insult to the gods that she destroyed the tapestry in rage and mercilessly beat on Arachne.

However, Athena became furious when the citizens laughed at her beating up Arachne and turned her wrath against them. Meanwhile, Arachne was filled with guilt and hung herself. After seeing Arachne's body, Athena felt responsible for her death and decided to do her a favor. She turned Arachne into a spider so that she and all her children would be expert weavers forever. In other versions of the myth, Athena transformed Arachne into a spider directly after the contest as part of Arachne's punishment.

In another version, Athena was chatting with some Ethiopian women, including Arachne, what life was on Mount Olympus, and the women were letting it just pass through their heads and forgetting it a minute later. But Arachne was the one who sucked it all in. Soon, Arachne boasted about her great weaving. Athena, filled with rage, came down from Olympus and challenged her to a weaving competition. In the end, both were equally good, and Athena ripped Arachne's (which was a weaving about how bad the gods were) weaving to shreds, and Arachne, recognizing her wrongs, hung herself from the ceiling, ready to drop to her death. Athena was a goddess that gave second chances, and she pitied Arachne, so consequently, she became the world’s first spider.

Be it whatever reason, ever since then, every child Athena has suffered a deep fear of spiders. They are very paranoid that every spider they see is out to get them and avenge Arachne. Most of the time, this is true as spiders are shown to be hostile to them. Arachne’s name was borrowed into the English language, and “fear of spiders” became arachnophobia.

Olympian Riot
Enraged at her husband's infidelities and dictatorial ways, Hera decided to start a coup d'etat and gained support from other gods, including Poseidon, Apollo, and Athena herself. She provided unbreakable, tightening ropes to assist Hera in her plan. That evening, Apollo, Athena and Poseidon hid in the hall adjacent to the royal chambers, awaiting Hera's signal. As soon as Zeus had fallen asleep, all four of them quickly bound the King of Olympus with the magical ropes. Even chained up and completely immobilized, an infuriated Zeus looked very intimidating. Poseidon attempted to reason with his brother and demanded that Zeus be a better ruler, but Zeus refused, which prompted Hera to advocate leaving him chained up in his chambers until he agrees.

Shortly thereafter, the four Olympians departed for the Hall of the Gods for the first (and last) democratic meeting of the Olympian Council, which proved to be a very cumbersome task. The violently thrashing and bellowing King of Olympus was found by the Nereid Thetis. After convincing Zeus to not throw the rioters into Tartarus, Thetis then sought out the help of the Hekatonkheire Briares, who freed Zeus from Athena's magical ropes.

Subsequently, Zeus grabbed his Master Bolt and stormed into the throne room. After unleashing his divine wrath upon them, he punished almost all the rebels for their treason. Apollo and Poseidon were temporarily stripped of their godly powers and forced to work as laborers on Earth for years, while Hera was tied up and suspended on a rope across the Void of Chaos. Soon, Hera was freed by Hephaestus. Fortunately for her, Athena managed to completely evade Zeus's punishment by talking herself out of it, as well as due to their extremely close relationship as father and daughter (although it's quite possible Zeus didn't trust Athena as much as he used to since he gained a long-lasting distrust for Poseidon and Apollo from the riot and she was the one who wove the net the rioters used to capture Zeus, but eventually he got over it).

Trojan War
When Eris hurled the Apple of Discord into the wedding of Peleus and Thetis, bearing the inscription "For the fairest", Athena was one of the candidates who competed for it. The Trojan prince Paris was chosen to judge who was the most beautiful of the three goddesses: Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite. Athena offered to make Paris wiser in battle if he chose her. However, she lost to Aphrodite, for Paris preferred the offer of the love goddess.

Furious, Athena took the side of the Greeks in the 10-year long Trojan War along with Hera and Poseidon. She mostly helped Odysseus, whom she finally gave the idea of the Trojan Horse. She also helped the hero Diomedes defeat Ares in a duel. In the course of the war, she cursed Ajax the Lesser with madness.

After Zeus allowed the Olympians to directly participate in the war, Athena and Ares engaged in single combat, in which she emerged as the victor and forced her half-brother to flee the battlefield. When Aphrodite attempted to help her, Athena also defeated her. Athena would later assist Odysseus again multiple times during his long journey back home to Ithaca.