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Essay on Greek Goddess Athena
Athena belongs to any person interested in the meaning of history and the nature of humankind. Athena's story, like our own, is shaped by human episodes of savagery and civility, war and peace; she was present in power struggles between the sexes; she employed her celebrated wisdom and skill as a strategist against the fumbling attempts of mortals and immortals to obfuscate the relationship between might and right in order to get their own way; and she helped humankind understand laws and customs needed to form communities, build and live in cities, and honor beauty and wisdom.
It is unarguably true that Athenian civilization, the presumed root of our own culture, was misogynistic in the extreme, that it limited citizenship and participation in "democracy" to a group of men, and condoned slavery. Over the centuries the flaws of Athenian high culture receded in the imaginations and data bases of scholars and laypeople alike. A romanticized version of ancient Greece took hold in textbooks and political rhetoric; that canonization of Greek civilization was as sterile as nineteenth-century white plaster copies of Parthenon sculpture intended to instill in viewers reverence for "our" culture. But Athena, despite the failures and perversions that are cited in indictments against Western civilization, remains a symbol-sometimes charming, sometimes savage and corrupt, always powerful. Her precinct is the human consciousness; she represents the potential our species has to create an ideal state, to banish barbarism, and to ensure that the physical and spiritual resources of humans have optimum encouragement for development and expression (Farnell, Richard Lewis., 1977. 345-373).
Athena also symbolizes the obstacles that stand between us and a civilized state, and reassures us that they are as old as humankind's aspiration to be superior to other animals. While barbarity may wear new masks or answer to new names, it is still a demon in the human heart as old as mythology......
