Athena, the virgin Goddess of wisdom, the arts and the special protectress of Athens. She was not born in the usual sense. Athena sprang to life fully formed and fully armed and uttering he war cry from the forehead of Zeus. She wore aegis and carried an invincible spear. Sacred to her were the owl and the oilve tree. Athena was a warrior Goddess, not the Goddess of war. The Greeks apparently conceived of wisdom as militant but not quarrelsome. Athena was always on the side of the victor, or rather her side always won because wisdom did not encourage rash engagments against hopeless odds. Athena was invulnerable and endured or encouraged strife only as a means to peace. Various legends attribute her parentage to a winged giant and Poseidon. The commonest legend is that Zeus got the Titaness Metis with child. An oracle told Zeus that this child would be female, but the next one she conceived would be a son who would overthrow him as he overthrown his father Cronus, who in turn overthrew his father Uranus. Zeus, alarmed, put an end to this possibility by swallowing Metis, pregnant as she was. Soon after, he developed a servere headache. Hermes persuaded Hephaestus to split Zeus' skull with an axe and out sprang Athena shouting. Athena is more than simply wisdom or cleverness. Metis, her mother, was cleverness, now forever embellied in Zeus. Athena is wisdom springing from power and deep experience, produced in love, fear and pain.