Bird Gods in Ancient Europe 



was the bride of Vulcan and did many things 

 her worshippers afterwards suppressed. Much 

 later must have been the epoch when the 

 classical Greeks, who hated ugly things more 

 than bad logic and inconsistency, raised her to 

 the severe beauty and serenity of the chaste, 

 warlike goddess, the Brunhild of Greece and 

 at the same time the goddess of the spindle 

 and of wisdom. 



Pallas of Athens had other symbols among 

 living things, notably the serpent, which coils 

 about her altar in Attika as it does in an 

 Etruscan tomb-painting about the altar of 

 Minerva. Pausanias suggests that this ser- 

 pent is the symbol of the old King Erich- 

 thonius of the aborigines. But she had the 

 cock also, as one perceives from many a 

 beautiful old Greek vase whereon she is de- 

 picted standing in her stiffest hieratic attitude 

 between two columns, on each of which is a 

 game-cock. This is pre-eminently the bird 

 of the dawn and must have been assigned 



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