so fond of finding remote allusions 

 does not seem to find any indication 

 of a clash of the elements. The only 

 physical feature in his description is 

 the comparison of the panoply of 

 Athena to a rainbow. So Farnell says: 

 "It may be admitted, then, that these 

 poetical descriptions do not con- 

 sciously express the physical fact. To 

 make them serve the other theories we 

 must regard their highly wrought 

 phrases as mere survivals of an ancient 

 poetical symbolic diction which did 

 more clearly express this." If this 

 were true, would not the earlier ac- 

 counts preserve this diction for us? 

 But they do not, for this symbolic lan- 

 guage is not found in either Homer or 

 Hesiod. He says: "Is it not more 

 natural to say that as imagination 

 dwelt upon her birth the poets tended 

 to embellish it with the richest phrase- 

 ology, to represent it as a great cosmic 

 incident in which the powers of heaven 

 and earth were concerned?" 



His opponents seem to base all their 

 interpretations upon the later accounts, 

 beginning with the Homeric hymn, for 

 this story which Hesiod gives is in the 

 way as there is no phenomenon in the 

 world of nature corresponding to the 

 swallowing of Metis. Metis is Thought 

 or Counsel and is a personification of 

 this abstract idea as Hesiod shows by 

 calling her the most knowing of gods 

 and men. Preller objects to this, and 

 affirm: that this primitive language 

 does not deal with abstractions, and 

 that the adjective thus applied to her 

 by Hesiod simply connects her with 

 the water, as there is a sea nymph of 

 that name. But in all the myths which 

 mention Metis, she appears as Thought 

 or Counsel, and it is absurd in a lan- 

 guage which personifies grace, right- 

 eous indignation, and law not to allow 

 Metis (Thought) to be a similar per- 

 sonification. 



Of course the worship of Athena had 

 been long in vogue before a story of 

 her birth arose. So Farnell reasons 

 out the origin of the story thus: In 

 her worship Athena appeared to have 

 abundant thought and counsel, there- 

 fore she naturally became the daughter 

 of Thought or Counsel, the daughter of 

 Metis; she had all the powers of Zeus, 



therefore she became the daughter of 

 Zeus, and as she had no feminine weak- 

 ness and inclined to father more than 

 mother, she could not have been born 

 in the ordinary way, and this might 

 have been so if Zeus had followed a 

 fashion common in myth and had 

 swallowed her mother. Metis. The 

 prophecy given in Hesiod as the rea- 

 son for the swallowing probably arose 

 after the story, as the fulfillment of the 

 prophecy could ha\'e been hindered in 

 easier ways, and it is likely that this 

 reason was borrowed from other 

 myths, as, for example, the Cronos 

 story. 



The above explanation, Farnell says, 

 is, of course, only a hypothesis, but it 

 has the advantage over the others of 

 being suggested by the most ancient 

 form of the legend and the most an- 

 cient ideas concerning the goddess. 

 He adds that the appearance of Prom- 

 etheus and Hephaestus in later ac- 

 counts would only strengthen his in- 

 terpretation, the association of these 

 divine artists with the goddess of 

 wisdom and of the arts of life. 



This was a favorite subject with the 

 artists from the earliest times as old 

 vase paintings bear witness. But the 

 famous representation was that in the 

 east pediment of the Parthenon, the 

 work of Phidias. Only fragments of 

 this remain to-day. The central group 

 is entirely lost except for the torso 

 of one gcd, supposed by some to 

 be Hephaestus, but more probably it 

 is that of Prometheus. So the frag- 

 ments are of the side groups and not 

 so helpful in recalling the original, but 

 still conjectures and reproductions have 

 been innumerable. 



In Madrid a Roman puteal has been 

 found which is believed to present the 

 central group of the east pediment. 

 Upon this Zeus is seated, before him 

 Athenaflees away, Victory flies afterher 

 to place a crown upon her head and be- 

 hind Zeus Prometheus with the ax in his 

 hand draws back in fright and turns 

 away. This group of Phidias was, of 

 course, the culmination of this story in 

 art. The later representations are few 

 and supposed to be merely copies of 

 this. 



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