The Birth of Athena
From the very first the mythology of Athena seems to contradict every human analogy. In what sort of family is it conceivable that a daughter be born without a mother? That she sprang forth from the head of her father? [Image: Birth of Athena by Group E Painter] Such a miraculous birth is presented already by Homer and told by Hesiod, and from a purely theoretical standpoint it suits an absolutely patriarchal order better than would a natural birth. But only theoretically, since the mythologem assumes no human proportionality whatsoever. Considered from the viewpoint of that beautiful anthropomorphism, the epiphany in human form, which the Greeks preferred in every other appearance of the Divine, this one contains such a grotesque conception that one must wonder how it could have held its ground despite the prevailing views of Homer and of those after him. The closest analogy to this conception stems from the archaic mythology of the Polynesians. There a similar story is told, not about a God but about a primal Goddess. The Earth Mother, having been impregnated by the Sky Father, gave birth to the God of fishes and reptiles through her arm, or "directly through the head." Archaic mythologies do also show, then, a kind of anthropomorphism in which prior events that are not thought of in anthropomorphic terms, such as here the origin of fishes and reptiles, are presented in the form of human, though not humanly normal, events.
The mother is not completely missing from the mythologem of the miraculous birth of Pallas Athena. According to Hesiod's account of the weddings of Zeus, whose sequential ordering is most likely the invention of the poet of the Theogony, the King of the Gods chose Metis as his first wife. She was of all beings "the most knowing" (as the word metis is interpreted), or "of many counsels" as translated in the sense of the Homeric epithet polymetis. As she was about to give birth to the Goddess Athena, Zeus deceived his pregnant wife with cunning words and assimilated her into his own body. Mother Earth and Father Sky had advised him to do this so as to prevent any of his descendants from robbing him of his kingly rank. For it was destined that the most brilliant children were to be born to the Goddess Metis: first, the daughter Athena, and later a son, the future King of Gods and men. Hesiod, following the patriarchal line of thought, bases this inhuman, non-anthropomorphic deed of Zeus -- swallowing his wife -- upon the fear for the son, heir to the throne. Yet even here the viewpoint of mother-right retains some of its force. The feared heir to the throne is to be born from a particular mother. This motif, wherever it appears in mythology or heroic saga, betrays matriarchal thinking. Not even the extremely unfeminine father's daughter, Pallas Athena, is born to the father alone. Even she has a mother who carries her to term within the body of Zeus and enables and forces the devouring husband to deliver the child.
Excepts from
Athena, Virgin and Mother in Greek Religion (1952)
Karl Kerenyi