Cook, Arthur B.: Zeus: a study in ancient religion (Band 3,1): Zeus god of the dark sky (earthquake, clouds, wind, dew, rain, meteorits): Text and notes (Cambridge, 1940)

748 The attributes of Athena

belonged partly to the old order, partly to the new, but contrived
to reconcile both in the brilliance of a fresh and vivid personality.

The said attributes can best be understood as the direct out-
come of certain conclusions already reached. The Akropolis, I have
said1, was originally called Athene, a place-name whose locative
*Athenai occasioned the plural Athinai habitual in later Greeka-
Homer3—be it observed—in the Odyssey, when speaking of Athens,
can still use the singular form:

'She came to Marathon and wide-wayed Athene.'

I further insisted4 that the goddess was named Athene, like the
rock, simply because at the outset she was- the rock5, a mountain'
mother of the Anatolian kind.

No doubt objections will be brought against both these points
of view. I shall be told that to use the same word Athene at one
moment of the goddess, at the next of her rocky abode, would have
been intolerably confusing. Homer thought otherwise. The in1'
mediate context6 of the line quoted above tells how ' Athene.--le"j
lovely Scherie, and came to Marathon and wide-wayed Athene-
So Athene came to Athene! The poet is serenely unconscious 0
anything amiss.

Others may demur to Athena being treated as a mountain-
mother. She was so notoriously a Virgin that to call her a Mother
at all borders on the blasphemous. But we are apt to forget that 1°
early illogical days the status lost might by appropriate means be
regained. Pausanias7, for instance, informs us that Hera recover^
her virginity every year by bathing in the spring Kanathos nea
Nauplia. And it is not unreasonable to suppose that the s

1 Supra p...224. rnslU"ts

2 F. Matz in A. Mau Katalog der Bibliothek ass deutsckcn archaologischen

in Rovfi Berlin—Leipzig 1932 ii. 2. 1026 cites R. Nadrowski 'Der Stadtename"^ v
in seinem Verhiiltnis zum Gotternamen 'Aff^va in "&Tnarrip.. "EireT-qpis 19°^

199-203. , - n II. *• 54<5'

3 Od. 7. 80 iKero 8' is iiapa8wi>a teal evpvdyviav 'Adfyriv. But ' A9~qvai l
549, Od. 3. 278, 307, rr. 323.

4 Supra p. 224. . be found

5 Dr B. F. C. Atkinson has suggested to me that a masculine parallel ^

in "A0ws, a mountain which bore a name of Anatolian type (cp. K^ws, Kws> ^ aS n
addressed by Xerxes as "A6u 5ai/i6vie (Plout. dc cohib. ira 5), was later P^fJJ^ gef1'

giant (H. W. Stoll in Roscher Lex. Myth. i. 704, K. Turn pel in Pauly— Wi» . cp,
E11C. ii. 2065 and 2069), supported a population of Macrobii (Plin. nat. ^"f^4^" 0f tfl£
supra ii. 500 n. 4), and down to the present day is reg arded as a "Ayiov VP

utmost sanctity (supra ii. 906 n. 1). jjg j;ne 8°

6 Od. 7. 78 y\avKuwis 'Adfyr], 80 ebpvayviav 'AB-qvrjv—both at the end o
all the more likely to catch the eye.

7 Supra p. 224 n. 3.