Talk:Athena

Semi-protected edit request on 25 October 2025

Goddess of love Titanna20920114141 (talk) 16:30, 25 October 2025 (UTC)

 Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. jolielover♥talk 17:22, 25 October 2025 (UTC)

Parthogenesis

How about "likened by Park to parthogenesis"? --Uncle Ed (talk) 13:45, 11 December 2025 (UTC)

That might rather beg the question of who Park is, that we should foreground her view, implicitly conforming to WP:DUE as to significant viewpoints. All I've found is the description in that article in Preternature, Visiting Assistant Professor of Classics at Brigham Young University. I don't know if her article, Parthenogenesis in Hesiod’s Theogony, has been influential. It is the third result in a DuckDuckGo search for "Athena parthenogenesis"[1], but that might tell us as much about how it came to be cited here as about its standing.

As to "likened", well, if anything it's stronger. True, regarding the Theogony she says "The ability for parthenogenesis is a fundamental difference between Hesiod’s female gods and their male counterparts. Although both are seemingly capable of reproducing asexually, male deities are incapable of completely self-sufficient asexual reproduction requiring no participation from a second party." "Likewise, the birth of Athena from Zeus’s head (886–99) or Chrysaor and Pegasus’s emergence from the severed head of Medusa (278–86) are unusual, but they are not asexual or parthenogenetic as each of their conceptions involves both a male and female entity."

However, she does extend the term in her section on other Greek cosmogonies: "Where a Homeric theogonic tradition can be constructed, parthenogenesis does not figure as a uniquely female ability as Zeus seems equally capable of parthenogenesis". She finds in Aeschylus a "privileging of male over female creation in non-Hesiodic Greek cosmogonies" and likewise calls the version Aeschylus's Apollo argues "parthenogenetic". So she doesn't merely liken some versions of Athena's birth to parthenogenesis, she uses the term in a way that runs counter to modern usage and Greek etymology too ("parthenos" is only used of females and has no male form). However, she does that only in contextualising her exploration of parthenogenesis (in the conventional sense) in Hesiod.

I'm inclined to think we shouldn't give that weight in this article. NebY (talk) 14:38, 11 December 2025 (UTC)

To the degree that I'm involved in this "edit war", I'll just say that I largely agree with what NebY has written above. She is not produced parthenogenetically in Hesiod's version – at least not by the regular, scientific definition of that word – and I don't think the lack of mention of a mother in later descriptions of her birth necessarily precludes the existence of a mother altogether. This is all aside from the potential mythological significance of Zeus "birthing" Athena on his own; consider, for example, the version (from a Hesiodic fragment) in which Zeus swallows Metis because (or partly because) of his anger at Hera's creation of Hephaestus on her own. – Michael Aurel (talk) 02:34, 12 December 2025 (UTC)

I don't want to turn this into an edit war, but it's interesting to me if "from the forehead" is like parthenogenesis.

• There is an article by Arum Park which 'examines female asexual reproduction, or parthenogenesis, in Hesiod’s Theogony.' [2]

If this viewpoint is prominent enough, or the proponent is a significant source, would it be okay to put this idea somewhere in the body of the article? Then, we can debate whether it's significant enough to mention in the lede, too. How about it, gents? --Uncle Ed (talk) 18:40, 15 December 2025 (UTC)

If you've registered with the Wikipedia Library, you can access Park's article here. First, Park's clear that "the birth of Athena from Zeus’s head ... [is] not asexual or parthenogenetic". Park's concerned with parthenogenetic reproduction in the Theogony ("Five of Hesiod’s deities reproduce parthenogenetically: Chaos, Gaea, Night, Strife, and Hera" - not Metis or Zeus) and she's interested in the implications of this - e.g. from her conclusion "The mere possibility of parthenogenesis in the cosmos empowers female deities to shape the cosmos, an ability that dovetails with their influential participation in the succession myth". Second, the text you're suggesting isn't related to our article's subject, Athena. Third, I'm not sure what you're putting forward as "this viewpoint", but so far no-one has provided anything to indicate that Park is a significant source. NebY (talk) 19:12, 15 December 2025 (UTC)

Okay, so my original edit (removing the term parthogenesis) isn't controversial and didn't start an edit war. Phew! --Uncle Ed (talk) 19:28, 15 December 2025 (UTC)

Parentage

I saw this in the edit log from a few months ago “citation needed for introductory claim that usually Athena had no mother - we give various sourced instances from classical Greek mythology in which Metis is her mother, and just one anti-pagan Christian scornful claim that she was the child of Zeus alone”

Though the offending part they were referring to has since been removed. I think Aeschylus’ (Eumenides) and Callimachus’ (Bath of Pallas) treatment of Athena as explicitly motherless is worthy of note in the article beyond just the anti-pagan mention. But even without them, I think Metis’ lack of mention in most sources depicting the birth of Athena is notable as well (since she can’t very well be assumed to exist in sources that don’t mention her).

Though admittedly the latter point would probably require a secondary source or it’d be considered original research. I just felt that the current article gave the impression that Metis was mentioned/involved more often than she was

Edit: i did not realize how recent a debate about this (and parthenogenesis) already was, sorry for adding to it

Floreditor (talk) 01:31, 23 January 2026 (UTC)

Hi Floreditor. Sorry for the slow response. Adding Aeschylus's version to the article seems quite alright to me; feel free to do so. I'm not sure Callimachus's version is all that essential, though I suppose it's hardly less important than some of the accounts currently included.

Regarding the page's approach to her birth generally, my impression is that sources tend to treat Metis as part of the standard version of the myth. The entries on Athena in the OCD and Brill's New Pauly only describe the version with Metis. Cassimatis's article in the LIMC and Neils' article in Athena in the Classical World include her as part of their summaries of the myth, and don't note motherless versions. That said, Burkert does mention both the version with Metis and a version in which "Zeus produced Athena entirely on his own, without any mother". Deacy includes Metis's involvement in her general summary of the myth (pp. 18–19), and discusses the importance of the concept of metis to the goddess's personality. She also discusses Aeschylus's version in her paragraph on gender roles in the myth. Honestly, quite how those passages of Aeschylus's play should be interpreted isn't clear to me; Sommerstein's commentary on them (pp. 207, 231) is probably worth reading.

As to the accounts that don't explicitly mention a mother: yes, we'd need a source to make general statements about those. Taking the Homeric Hymn as an example, this commentary says that Zeus's epithet πολύμητιν "recalls the name of her mother Metis", suggesting interaction with the version in which Metis is her mother. But I don't think we'll find similar sources for most post-Hesiodic accounts. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on all of this. – Michael Aurel (talk) 02:22, 31 January 2026 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 8 March 2026

Change the line:

Some have described Athena, along with the goddesses Hestia and Artemis as being asexual, this is mainly supported by the fact that in the Homeric Hymns, 5, To Aphrodite, where Aphrodite is described as having "no power" over the three goddesses.

to:

Some have described Athena, along with the goddesses Hestia and Artemis, as being asexual. This is mainly supported by the fact that in the Homeric Hymns, 5, To Aphrodite, Aphrodite is described as having "no power" over the three goddesses. Gamayuna (talk) 02:57, 8 March 2026 (UTC)

 Moot. You're right of course, but the "Some have described..." claim was sourced only to a translation of ancient Homeric poems, so I've removed the sentence instead. –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 04:18, 8 March 2026 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 19 May 2026

PLEASE PUT ANNABETH CHASE AS A CHILD PLEASEEE FOR ATHENAAA PLEASEEE. Thank you I hope you understand why I want this request and it is fine if you don't understand at all. But if you don't understand its like being well a muggle... ~2026-29934-01 (talk) 19:43, 19 May 2026 (UTC)

 Not done - This article is strictly about classical mythology, not Camp Half-Blood Chronicles and the rest of Riordan's mythology cycle. —Jéské Couriano v^_^v ^MUSHROOM 20:31, 19 May 2026 (UTC)