Salvete omnes!

[Phaichtos]

Statue-groping aside, both are really interesting goddesses once you delve into their respective mythologies a little bit. I've always thought Athena was particularly fascinating, being almost an intrinsically Greek (or perhaps, appropriately Athenian) combination of wisdom and martial prowess. She was a virgin warrior goddess, the goddess typically present at the Golden Age Greek hero's moment of glory, but she was also the patron of the arts, whose symbol was the wise owl! It seems likely that she (and Artemis too) were likely native "mother goddesses" whose roles changed after the turnover in Greek society (I pause at suggesting any classical notions of an "invasion" of Indo-Europeans, but something definitely changed), their mother goddess characteristics replaced with the banner of "noble chastity". So Athena especially was probably present from an early time, although it is interesting to me that the later Athenians needed to develop a whole new mythology around her when people started noticing that their city was allegedly founded by some shady guy from the mists of time called "Cecrops" (??????), and yet it was named "??????" (Ath-AY-nai). So perhaps she wasn't even the original local deity, even though the city is named after her (another hypothesis is that Athens wasn't actually named after her in the first place, but rather a folk-etymological connection was made at some point in the distant past between the two words ("??????" and "?????/???????/?????") because they looked so similar. Personally I don't buy this at all, but I guess I can't go back in time and "prove" it, either 8) )


Wooo! Talk about going off on a tangent. Anyway yeah Josh is my name, classics is my game. haha