Talk:Athena/Archive 4

New genealogy chart by Paul August
has replaced an existing template with a new genealogy chart, which may be better than the old one. Unfortunately it's being directly coded in each article, and it should really be a template that can be included in multiple places. Paul: please let's make this a template, rather than including the whole source in dozens of different articles, which will lead to a maintenance nightmare. Rwessel (talk) 17:07, 11 April 2016 (UTC)
 * I don't think a template is necessarily a good thing, as it allows each chart to be different. Paul August &#9742; 17:18, 11 April 2016 (UTC)
 * The genealogical charts of the Greek pantheon will all be quite similar, and all (hopefully!) a subset of one chart. Would it not be best to just have one chart with appropriate highlighting, for consistency?  Rwessel (talk) 17:26, 11 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Similar but not identical, for example each chart my have different titles, and different notes. Paul August &#9742; 18:16, 11 April 2016 (UTC)

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Linear A
There is a peculiar statement in this article in the "Etymology and origins of her cult" section that claims that Athena's name is attested in Linear A. This is a very bizarre claim indeed, considering that I know for certain Linear A has not yet been deciphered. Furthermore, there was a sentence immediately after it (which I have now slightly reworded, but which preserves the same general meaning) saying that, "Whether her name is attested in Eteocretan or not will have to wait for decipherment of Linear A." The statement that I am confused by claims, "A-ta-no-dju-wa-ja (KO Za 1 inscription, line 1) is also found in Linear A Minoan; the final part being regarded as the Linear A Minoan equivalent of the Linear B Mycenaean di-u-ja or di-wi-ja (Diwia, "divine"). Divine Athena also was a weaver and the deity of crafts (see dyeus)." The statement is attributed to Ventris and Chadwick, whose scholarly reputations are certainly impeccable, but the citation does not define which page the information was found on. This, combined with the dubiousness of the statement itself, seems to suggest that the statement is probably confused. Is there anyone here who can explain what the statement is talking about? --Katolophyromai (talk) 21:58, 19 April 2017 (UTC)


 * Athena's name is not attested in Linear A. Tablet KO Za 1 runs A-TA-I-*301-WA-JA in which *301 is a sign of uncertain value. A-TA-I-*301-WA-JA is found in a number of other inscriptions - SY Za 1, SY Za 2, SY Za 4 - all of which appear on libation tables. You can check this out at: http://www.people.ku.edu/~jyounger/LinearA/misctexts.html.Now A-TA-I-*301-WA-JA is often represented as a-ta-nu-ti and most likely means "I have given", which is an appropriate way to begin a libation prayer or chant. This part of the article needs to be removed: none of these tablets contains the name Athena. A good discussion of some of these tablets can be found in Jan Best's "Lost Languages from the Mediterranean" (edited with Fred Woodhuizen) pp. 30 ff. You can read it at: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=resUAAAAIAAJ&lpg=PP1&pg=PA30&redir_esc=y&hl=en#v=onepage&q&f=false. The Linear B tablet KN V 52 may refer to Athena, as the article states. But, to repeat, the Linear A tablets do not. Lloyd Bye — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lloyd Bye (talk • contribs) 17:32, 17 May 2019 (UTC)

Questions and comments
This is definitely not one of the best articles about Greek mythology on Wikipedia in English. After reading it I feel it needs to be improved. I have a few questions and comments.

1. "Cronus, a king of Byblos". What does it mean? Cronus was the father of Zeus and a titan, not a king of Byblos. I do not understand the above. Can anybody explain?

2. In the section "Pallas Athena" the third paragraph starts with "When Pallas is Athena's father". Would that Pallas be the titan Pallas, son of son of Crius and Eurybia? If it is, it should be explicitly stated and a link to the article Pallas (Titan) should be added.

3. "Roman fable of Arachne" appears to be a Roman addition to Greek mithology. The section shows an image of Minerva. Therefore, I'm not sure if the section should even be in this article. I think it should be part of the article about Minerva.

4. The section entitled "Mythology" needs to be reorganized in a better way. It looks rather scattered with episodes and epithets.

5. The Talk page has a good amount of nonsense comments. Please help to remove them.

ICE77 (talk) 07:19, 22 April 2017 (UTC)


 * 1. The "Cronus, a king of Byblos" comment is probably referring to Philo of Byblos's Sanchuniathon, which syncretizes the Greek Titan Cronus with the Phoenician god El and euhemerizes him as historical king of Byblos. It is a rather obscure reference and it is strange that the article would refer to Cronus in this way without previously mentioning Philo.


 * 2. As I understand it, the remark about Pallas being Athena's father probably does indeed refer to Pallas the Titan, although the wording used here is highly ambiguous and misleading, as the preceding paragraph makes it sound as though the "Pallas" being referred to is the (female) Pallas, daughter of Triton.


 * 3. The section on the "Roman fable of Arachne" should definitely be included in this article because, although the story of Arachne was indeed originally a Roman story involving the goddess Minerva, it was later adopted by the Greeks as a story about Athena due to the mutual syncretism of the two goddesses. Nonetheless, it may be worthwhile to also include it in the article on Minerva, where the subject can be treated in greater depth.


 * 4. and 5. Regarding your two other concerns, I agree with both of them. The "Mythology" section definitely needs to be better organized and there are indeed quite few peculiar, unrelated comments here on the talk page that probably ought to be removed. --Katolophyromai (talk) 18:58, 23 April 2017 (UTC)


 * 1. Correction: I went back and read the original passage from the article where "Cronus, king of Byblos" is mentioned. It actually does mention Philo, though some further explanation should probably be provided. --Katolophyromai (talk) 20:36, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

Katolophyromai, thank you for the feedback. ICE77 (talk) 00:49, 25 June 2017 (UTC)

Great article! I just a few suggestions and questions.
In the origins section of the article it mentions a composition of two women extending their hands to a central figure that is believed to be Athena, however I do not see a source directing me to where I can see an image of this fresco. Maybe you did cite it but it is unclear where the citation or footnote is. Additionally, in the section about cults and patronage, it talks about how Athena was a protector of heroes and warriors and you give a citation. I do feel like it is repetitive with the added sentence under the paragraph, I believe it would sound better if you included it in a previous sentence and had multiple citations at the end.

However, overall, very good job at capturing all the parts of Athena in one article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jafleury (talk • contribs) 15:30, 15 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Thank you very much for your comments and feedback! I have been working hard trying to improve this article and hopefully eventually bring it up to GA status. I have been searching for an image of the "Procession Fresco" to put in the article. Unfortunately, although there are a few pictures of it on Wikimedia Commons, none of those images contain the center part of the fresco with the female figure in it and I have yet to find an image of the full fresco that has the appropriate licensing. --Katolophyromai (talk) 19:51, 15 September 2017 (UTC)

Goddess of "strategic war"?
The cited source, in its lead sentence, calls Athena "goddess of war". I think we should stick to that exact formulation in our lead. The cited source does go on to further clarify what this meant in more detail, but it is not clear to me that what is meant is stategic war. Paul August &#9742; 17:56, 23 December 2017 (UTC)
 * I suppose it was an attempt to distinguish her province from that of Ares—the experiences of battle itself—but it’s something of an oversimplification, considering her occasional participation in combat and her frequent depiction as armed. (FWIW I thought the previous strategic side of war was better phrased but likewise a little too specific.) In the lead sentence—and infobox—simply war should do fine, being suitably broad; the nuances are discussed in the body.—Odysseus 1 4 7  9  19:44, 23 December 2017 (UTC)

Parentage and layout
I just noticed that a considerable amount of changes has been made to the article over the past months. I want to make a few comments on her parentage and about the layout of this article.

Last time I wrote notes on the parentage of Athena I had this information which I recall reading here. She was a 330 pound lady with long hair and she was a Goddess so she was different.

1a. Athena may be called the daughter of Poseidon and a nymph named Tritonis. When Pallas is Athena's sister or foster-sister, Athena's father or foster-father is the sea-god Triton, the son and herald of Poseidon.

1b. ''Athena was given the epithet Hippia ("of the horses", "equestrian") as the inventor of the chariot and was worshiped under this title at Athens, Tegea and Olympia. As Athena Hippia she was given an alternative parentage, daughter of Poseidon and Polyphe, a daughter of Oceanus. In each of these cities her temple was frequently the major temple on the acropolis.''

Most of the above appears to have vanished.

2. The layout of the article is rather unattractive. Some images span sections. There are also a huge amount of images between sections that should probably be in a gallery at the end of the page.

ICE77 (talk) 19:02, 19 February 2018 (UTC)
 * The changes you have noticed are mostly ones that I made when I significantly rewrote most of the article in order to bring it up to GA status, which it currently is. I have removed the image of the dedication from the temple of Athena Polias at Priene, which straddled the line between the "Cult and patronages" and "Epithets and attributes" sections; that image was added by another user and I only kept it because I figured it did not do any harm and I did not want to upset him by reverting his edit. I have also moved the image of the Athena Farnese to the gallery at the end of the "Classical art" section. I also added "clear" templates at the bottoms of some of the sections to keep image that touch the bottoms of the sections from overlapping with the sections beneath. Unless I am mistaken, there are no longer any images in the article that span sections.
 * I removed the parts about Athena having allegedly been the daughter of Poseidon and a nymph or the daughter of Triton because they were uncited and I could not find any sources to support them. I checked again today after reading your comment, but I still cannot find any sources that mention anything about Athena having been the daughter of Poseidon or the daughter of Triton. The part about Hippias being one of Athena's epithets and the part about Pallas are both still in the article. --Katolophyromai (talk) 20:45, 19 February 2018 (UTC)

Katolophyromai, thank you for the update on the changes. I did not have time to read the article but I like the way it's organized. I made some further improvements to the layout. I feel that the "Epithets and attributes" section has a big hole next to the text below the two images. I really like the images in the "Classical art" section, particularly the ones of the paintings. I just think the images should be consolidated into something that looks like this (more compact and more pleasing to the eye of the reader in my opinion):

ICE77 (talk) 07:09, 2 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I really do not like the small cells gallery style. I think it wastes space and compresses the images so small that it is hard to see what they represent. I much prefer the current style, which makes images big enough to be seen clearly.
 * The organziation problem with the "Epithets and attributes" section is one I have been trying resolve since the beginning, but I think the only way to solve it would be to remove the quote, which I think is necessary. --Katolophyromai (talk) 12:50, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

I learned that Athena was the goddess of WISDOM and BATTLE STRATEGY. Dragonlover21 (talk) 17:10, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

Comment on recent edit
We have no evidence that "the myth about Athena is... much older than Athens." Athena's name is first attested in Linear B from the Mycenaean Period (c. 1600 – c. 1100 BC), by which point Athens was already long established, since the site of the city has been continuously inhabited for roughly 7,000 years at least. Walter Burkert is one of the most widely respected authorities on ancient Greek religion. His book Greek Religion (published by Harvard University Press in English translation in 1985) is considered the classic scholarly work on the subject. If you want to challenge his word on this, you are going to need a more recent scholarly source saying he is wrong; you cannot just say "Well, I think the city was named after the goddess." Also, there are, in fact, multiple temples to Athena on the Athenian Acropolis. For instance, in addition to the Parthenon, off the top of my head I can also name the Temple of Athena Nike, which is on the Acropolis and dedicated solely to Athena, and the Erechtheion, which is right next to the Parthenon and dedicated to both Athena and Poseidon. –Katolophyromai (talk) 09:32, 27 February 2019 (UTC)

New Articles Needed for 3 (Pages do not exist)
To last editor Just wanted to note that there are three page links in this article that do not have existing pages.
 * Thargelion
 * plyntrídes
 * Arrhephoroi

Putting this info here just in case anyone is able to create the articles.

Semi-protected edit request on 18 July 2020
Socrates considered the meaning of "Pallas" as "armed dances" in Cratylus ElleShd (talk) 01:05, 18 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Red question icon with gradient background.svg Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. Interstellarity (talk) 13:10, 18 July 2020 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 24 April 2021
Dwonderwoman2034 (talk) 22:40, 24 April 2021 (UTC) 1) PROZ=Site of Athena Rae Pendleton was actually Rome in the year -6090circa
 * Red question icon with gradient background.svg Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. Egsan Bacon (talk) 23:00, 24 April 2021 (UTC)

Should add that she did have legitimate offspring with Hephaestus by accident, and the result ended up being an ancestor of the well known inventor, Dedaleus. 24.104.65.70 (talk) 02:03, 10 May 2021 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 23 August 2021
I noticed a flaw in "siblings" of Athena. Athena is daughter of Zeus, and Aphrodite is not. In fact, she was actually the final daughter of Ouranos (Uranus) after Kronos cut him to bits. His genitals were thrown into the ocean and mixed with sea foam, which formed the goddess of love and beauty, Aphrodite. 2600:1702:27A0:3F60:E972:349E:82:F39C (talk) 23:22, 23 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done: Depending on the source material there are different stories for her creation. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 10:58, 24 August 2021 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 23 August 2021 (2)
Hephaestus also was not a son of Zeus, but a son of only Hera. After Athena was born from Zeus' split skull (after drinking his first wife, Metis, to prevent her giving a son that would destroy him, as he did his father, and as his father did to his own before Zeus), he claimed that he was superior and formed life on his own, which was false. Hera called upon her grandmother, Gaia, and gave birth on her own, without the help of a man. When the son was born, he was disfigured and unattractive, so she threw him from Mount Olympus and he raised himself. Hephaestus rejoined the gods in his adulthood and made his mother pay for her betrayal by binding her to a throne with invisible and unbreakable chains. 2600:1702:27A0:3F60:E972:349E:82:F39C (talk) 23:27, 23 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done: Depending on the source material there are different stories for his creation. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 10:59, 24 August 2021 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 10 August 2022
I would like to add an image of the Greek Goddess Athena, in contemporary fine art. Randomactofflower (talk) 05:47, 10 August 2022 (UTC)
 * I don't think this image is particularly useful. Paul August &#9742; 11:26, 10 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done for now: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the template. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 16:30, 10 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Agreed with Paul August. No particular notability for this image. --Macrakis (talk) 17:40, 10 August 2022 (UTC)