ATHELING. 



ATHE'NE. 



688 



ATHELING, or ATHELING. The indications, in the Saxon 

 period of our history, of anything like the hereditary nobility of the 

 timea after the conquest are exceedingly few : certainly, the system 

 which gives to particular families particular names of distinction and 

 particular social privileges, which are to descend in the families as long 

 as the families endure, we owe entirely to the Normans. The Saxons 

 had among them earls, but that word was used to designate, not as in 

 these times only a rank of nobility, to which certain privileges are 

 attached, but a substantial office bringing with it important duties ; 

 the superintendent indeed, under the king, of one of the counties or 

 shires, the sheriff, gerefa, in Latin vice-comes, being his inferior, his 

 delegate or deputy. These earls, who were nominated by the sovereign, 

 held their offices aa it seems for life, and were usually selected from 

 the most opulent families. Even the sovereignty among the successors 

 of Egbert seems not to have descended uniformly according to our 

 modern principles of hereditary succession. 



Yet there were persons in the Saxon times who are spoken of aa 

 jE)>el-bonen, Athel, or Ethel-boren, persons nobly bom. The term is 

 used in Luke (six. 12), in the Anglo-Saxon version of the New Testa- 

 ment, where, in the modern translation, we have the words ' a certain 

 nobleman.' jEthel, Athel, or Ethel, is frequently used by Saxon 

 writers in senses correspondent to those annexed to the Latin word 

 nobili, the English word noble, and the German add or edel. In the 

 earlier Saxon times there is little doubt the word denoted the free 

 possessor of lands (a member of the Mark or manorial division), in 

 opposition to the noble by service under the king, who were to that 

 extent no longer freemen ; " even the Comes," says Mr. Kemble, in his 

 excellent work, 'The Saxons in England,' 1849, "may indeed have 

 become the possessor of land, even of very large tracts, by gift from 

 his prince, but he could not be the possessor of a free hide, and conse- 

 quently bound to service in the general fyrd, or to suit in the folcmot. 

 He might have wealth, and rank, and honour, be powerful and splendid, 

 dignified and influential, but he could not be free; and if the free 

 man so far forgot the inherent dignity of his station as to carry 

 himself (for his ethd I think he could not carry) into the service of a 

 prince .... can it be doubted that the remunerative service of the 

 chief would outweigh the barren possession of the farmer ? . . . . Even 

 if the markmen razed him from their roll, and committed his ethel to 

 a worthier holder, what should he care whom the liberality of his 

 conquering leader could endow with fifty times its worth." As the 

 king's retainers, however, gradually acquired a supremacy over the land- 

 holding freemen, it is probable that the title of nobility which Atheling 

 implied was transferred by degrees from the one to the other. 



Polydore Vergil, an Italian, who in the middle of the 16th century 

 wrote a History of England in elegant Latin, falls into the error of 

 mistaking Atheling for a surname, for which he is rebuked by Selden, 

 the author of the admirable work on the various titles of honour which 

 have been in use in the countries of modern Europe. He shows that 

 Edgar Atheling is the same as Edgar the Atheling, or the noble, and 

 that while some of our earlier chroniclers, as Henry of Huntingdon 

 and Matthew Paris, so designate him, others, as Hoveden and Florence, 

 call him Edgarus Clyto. Clyto is the Greek term answering to eminent, 

 iltuttriout. It is rather a remarkable fact concerning the Saxon kings 

 of England and their families, that they affected titles and denomina- 

 tions of Greek origin, as Clyto, Basileus (king), and Adelphe (sister) ; 

 the last appears on the seal of the royal abbess of Wilton. 



There is no sufficient information to show when the word Atheling 

 first began to be used in the Saxon dynasty, but it has been supposed 

 that it was used from the earliest times by those who could boast 

 of being of the blood of Woden, who was regarded as the common 

 ancestor of all the races of Saxon sovereigns. Some have represented 

 the term aa confined to the eldest son of a reigning monarch, or at 

 least to one who was the heir-presumptive to the throne. Sir 

 Francis Palgrave (' Rise and Progress of the English Commonwealth 

 Anglo-Saxon Period ') considers that the heir of the throne received 

 the title of Atheliug, but adds, that the heir might be nominated by 

 the reigning king. The Atheling of the Saxons has been by some 

 regarded as equivalent to the term Dauphin in the line of the French 

 monarchy, and Prince of Wales in our own. But this restriction of it 

 seems not to be sanctioned by the passages in Saxon and other early 

 writers in whom it occurs. Cyneheard, an Atheling of Wessex, who 

 had pretensions to the crown, slew king Cynewulf in 786 (Kemble's 

 ' Saxons in England,' 1849). 



Nothing is known of any peculiar privileges belonging to the Athe- 

 lings, as sons of the kings, or members of the royal family. But those 

 who in modern timea have had occasion to speak of the term and the 

 circumstances under which it was used, such as Lingard and Turner hi 

 their' histories of the Saxon period, speak of lands being usually given 

 to the Atheling while still in his minority, probably bestowed to give 

 the ethel dignity. And hence it is that this word Atheling has de- 

 fended to our times in the local nomenclature of England. 



As we have numerous Kingstons, so have we Adlingtons ; and both 

 King and Atheling, with slight variations, have descended in union 

 with other local terminations. We have Kingsbury, Kingsley, and 

 Kingswood ; Conington, Coniston, Conysthorpe, and Cony-Weston; as 

 we have also Bert-Regis, as it is now called, but by the Saxons, Cony- 

 bere. So also have we Adling-flete, Edlingham ; and no doubt such 

 names of places as Addingham, Addingtou, and Edington, are of the 



same etymology. In one instance we have an Edlington at a very 

 short distance from the walls of a castle called Coningsborough the 

 one the seat of a Saxon Rex or Regulus the other, no doubt, one of 

 the portions of land which were settled on one of the Athelings 



ATHE'NE, or PALLAS ATHENE, or ATHENA, the Goddess 

 of Wisdom, of Arts, and of Sciences, among the Greeks ; known to the 

 Romans as Minerva. The Greeks seem to have included under this 

 name several divinities of a perfectly distinct origin a goddess of 

 Libya, the daughter of Neptune and of the nymph Tritonis (Herodot. 

 iv. 180), or of Terra, brought forth on the banks of the river Triton 

 in Libya (Diodor. iii. 69) ; but the one best known to us is the 

 divinity worshipped by the Athenians, and as it would appear, brought 

 from Egypt, at least if we may judge from some of the symbols with 

 which her statue was adorned : she had a sphinx on her helmet and 

 at her feet. Plato (' Timseus,' Opera, vol. iii. p. 21) tells us that she 

 was called Neith by the Egyptians ; and Eratosthenes, in his ' Cata- 

 logue of the Kings of Thebes' (Euseb. 'Chron.' p. 21), says, that 

 ' Nitocris' may be translated into Greek by ' Athene Nikephoros.' 



According to Homer she was the daughter of Zeus ; but there is no 

 allusion in either the Iliad or Odyssey to the fable of her having 

 sprung forth completely armed from the brain of that god : it appears, 

 however, in the ' Hymn to Athene,' usually ascribed to Homer. A 

 scholiast on Apollonius ('Argon.' iv. 1310) remarks, that this fable first 

 made its appearance in Stesichorus (who died B.C. 553), and the 

 ' Hymn ' therefore must be of a comparatively recent date. In the 

 legend of Hesiod (' Theogon.' 885-889), Jupiter is made to devour his 

 wife Metis, and in process of time Athene is the result of this strange 

 union. She seems to have participated in many of the attributes of 

 her father : she had the power of hurling the thunderbolts of Jupiter, 

 of prolonging the life of man, and of conferring the gift of prophecy. 

 She was a virgin exalted above all feminine weakness. She might be 

 regarded as the opposite in most respects of Aphrodite. In the battle 

 with the giants, she overwhelmed Enceladus with Sicily ; she assisted 

 at the building of the ship Argo, and a wooden figure of Athene graced 

 the prow of the vessel ; she assisted Hercules ; gave the art of pro- 

 phecy to Tiresias, and immortality to Tydeus, though she afterwards 

 deprived him of it. She was one of the three goddesses who submitted 

 their beauty to the decision of Paris, and she disputed with Neptune 

 the honour of giving name to the new city of Cecrops. The contest was 

 decided in her favour by the production of an olive tree, and the city 

 was hence called Athenso. (Apollodor. ' Biblioth.' iii. 14.) According 

 to Diodorus (i. 12), the Egyptians gave this name to the goddess of the 

 air, and she was thought to be the daughter of Zeus, because the air 

 is not naturally subject to corruption ; and was made to spring from his 

 brain, because air occupies the highest parts of the world. She was 

 called Glaucopis (blue-eyed), because the air is of a bluish colour. The 

 serpent, the owl, and the cock, were sacred to her ; and, among plants, 

 the olive. She was worshipped in all parts of Greece, but the most 

 celebrated temple was the Parthenon at Athens, in which there was 

 a chryselephantine statue of colossal size by Phidias. 



The statues of the goddess, called Palladia, exhibited her in very 

 ancient times with upraised shield and poised spear, ready to engage 



Archaic Ilcad of Athene from the British Museum. 



in battle ; sometimes, as symbols of her peaceful character, she had in 

 her left hand the spindle and distaff. A stiffly folded peplum was 

 thrown over her chiton (tunic), and she was armed with an immense 

 aegis, which sometimes served as a shield, and sometimes was so con- 



