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Athena: The Goddess Born From the Head of Zeus

Athena’s armed emergence from the head of Zeus is among the most recognizable scenes in Greek myth. Yet the spectacle begins with a prophecy, a pregnant goddess named Metis, and Zeus’s attempt to stop a future son from becoming ruler of gods and mortals.

This episode follows the surviving evidence behind Athena’s birth: Hesiod’s account of Metis and the succession prophecy, Pindar’s bronze axe and battle cry, the Homeric Hymn’s cosmic reaction, Apollodorus’s alternative axe-bearers and River Triton setting, archaic vase paintings, Aeschylus’s courtroom Athena, and the lost center of the…

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