1140: 2P
Notes on Athena
I. The mythic power of the warrior virgin
A. The riddle of Athena is how the goddess of the ultimate masculine
activity, war, comes to be a young woman
B. There is a fascinating parallel in the figure of the valkyrie in Norse myth,
and in particular in the figure of Bruennhilde, Richard Wagner’s version of the
most famous valkyrie, in his famous cycle of operas, The Ring of the Nibelung.
1. Like Athena, the valkyries are young women in armor
2. Like Athena, they are virgins
3. Like Athena, they have influence over the outcome of battles
a) Athena carries Zeus’ aegis, some sort of goatskin that makes
the losing army afraid
b) The valkyries choose who will die in battle
4. Like Athena, they have an overlapping sphere of influence with
the sky-father
a) Particularly true of Wagner’s Bruennhilde, partly because
Wagner must have based her in part on Athena and partly because of
material that’s already there in the existing myth
5. The famous farewell of Wotan (Wagner’s Odin, the Norse sky-
father) to Bruennhilde at the end of Die Walkuere tells us a great deal
about the important features of the warrior virgin
a) she is the extension of the father’s influence into the heroic
world
b) her virginity is of great importance (Wotan puts magic fire
around Bruennhilde to protect it from anyone but the bravest hero)
II. The meaning of Pallas
A. Your text gives you some different versions to explain the strange
“second” name of Athena, Pallas. They’re all ways people found to explain a
word whose meaning had been forgotten; they’re all wrong.
B. pallas is just a very old word for “virgin”
1. the name of Athena is actually “the virgin of Athens”
a) yes, this means she was named after the city, not the other way
around
2. we see proof of this fact above all in the story of the palladium,
the famous statue of Athena which we here is a xoanon, a primitive
wooden figure of a standing goddess
a) the palladium is supposed to be Troy’s protection; it’s one of
the many, many things that signifies Troy’s doom when Odysseus and
Diomedes steal it
b) Myth disagrees on whether Athens or Argos has it after the end
of the Trojan saga
c) with a knowledge of Greek religion, it’s clear that several cities
had a palladium—that is, a primitive statue of a virgin—that was
believed to protect their citadels
III. Clothes make the warrior virgin
A. Clue: the pallas protects the citadel in the palladium
B. Clue: Athena’s armor is of such special importance that she’s always born
in it
C. Clue: Athena is also goddess of weaving
1. and the Athenians present a gown to her every year on the
Acropolis, the archaic citadel
D. Clue: there are several myths, especially in Athens, of the sacrifice of
young women on the citadel to save the city
1. See the Athenian myth chapter for details on the daughters of
Erectheus
E. Clue: in the Ancient Greek wedding ceremony, there was a very important
moment when the relatives of the bride removed the bride’s zone—an
undergarment that was worn on the hips
1. It’s important to realize that Greek women were married at a
very early age (early teens) to older men (20’s) whom they did not know
2. It is not wrong, therefore, to say that Ancient Greek marriage
involved a form of what we would call rape
F. Clue: Mediterranean culture views young women’s virginity as an
extension of the honor of the family, and in particular the father
1. This is unfortunately true even today; honor-killings, where
young women are killed by their father or brothers for having
premarital sex, are sadly common
G. Clue: there’s an old and prevalent metaphor that says that the sacking of
a citadel is like the rape of a young women, which also frequently compares the
walls of the citadel to a young woman’s clothing
H. Solution: Pallas Athena is the virgin of the citadel, whose armor and
whose weaving represents at one and the same time the honor of the family and
the integrity of the citadel in war