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 
affirms 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 have 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 god, 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 pufeal has been 
found which is believed to present the 
central group of the east pediment. 
Upon this Zeus is seated, before him 
Athena flees away, Victory flies after her 
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. 
32 
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