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Athena Goddess

The Goddess Athena was born out of Zeus' head. She was a warrior. She was wise and a protector of civilised life.

The popular belief is that the Roman gods were essentially copied the existing Greek gods. Whilst this may well be true in a number of cases or indeed be true of customs (the Greeks tended to be rather more licentious than the austere Romans of the Republican period) it is not quite so in the case of "major" gods such as Saturn, Zeus/Jupiter, the Dioscuri twins and others, possibly including Athena (some suggest that her Indo-European ancestor was actually some sort of a bird goddess).

In fact the Romans acquired their own pantheon from a number of sources, including the Etruscans who in themselves were of uncertain origins but certainly inherited part of their own pantheon from the indo-european/Greeks also.

The Latin version of Athena was Minerva, her Etruscan name was Menrva. In both cases she was regarded as part of a major triad of deities: Jupiter, Juno and Minerva (Etruscan Menrva, Tinia and Uni). Clearly each local population transformed the deities according to their own needs and experiences.

Excellent in-depth information about the Greek goddess Athena may be had from the following resources:

Goddess Athena. org

The Goddess Athena area of Sweet Briar college.

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"Athena Goddess" was written by Giovanni Milani-Santarpia for www.mariamilani.com - Rome apartments