For the ancient Greeks, Athena, one of the most important Olympian deities, was the goddess of wisdom and skill. This aspect of her character is clear in the descriptions of her birth. According to the tradition, during the Battle of the Giants Zeus lay with Metis, daughter of Oceanus and Tithys, who bore concealed within herself all the world's wisdom. When it became known that Metis was pregnant, a prophecy was uttered that the daughter she bore would in turn to give birth to a son who would be a threat to Zeus because he would deprive him of his power. Zeus, overcome with fear, swallowed Metis whole, and after nine months developed an unbearable pain in his head. He begged Hephaestus (or in some writers, Prometheus) to split his head with an axe, and Athena immediately sprang out fully-armed, uttering warlike cries. She threw herself straightaway into the battle with the giants and made a significant contribution to her father's victory by slaying the Giants Pallas and Enceladus.

The fact that Athena was born from the head of Zeus and never received a mother's care meant that her powers were more masculine than feminine. Above all, she was a martial goddess, one who had entered life dressed for war and uttering battle-cries. Her military accoutrements included a helmet, a spear and the aegis, a goat-skin shield which Amaltheia had given Zeus and which only Athena was entitled to use. To the shield was fastened the gorgoneum, the head of Gorgo the Medusa which turned to stone anyone who set eyes upon it. (Gorgo had been beheaded by Athena herself, or by Perseus with the goddess's assistance). Athena was also alone in being allowed to enter her father's armoury, and could even use his thunderbolt.

Athena's warlike nature, in which she was worshipped as Areia, differed from the character of Ares himself, the god of war. Ares represented disorderly conflict, the violence of war, while Athena was believed to have taught mankind the techniques and rules of war - that is, of pitched battle. As a result, the two half-siblings were often described by ancient writers in a state of conflict, and this was particularly true during the Trojan War. The fierce god Ares, who had taken the Trojan side, was frequently wounded by Athena as she strove to defend the Greeks. Athena and Hera brought boldness and courage to their protection of their favourites the Achaeans, and at crucial moments Athena is seen aiding Menelaus, Diomedes, Achilles, Agamemnon and Odysseus. It was she who gave Odysseus the idea of the Trojan Horse, and she had no hesitation in declaring him to be her equal in intelligence and ingenuity. On his difficult voyage back to Ithaca, Athena stood by Odysseus and served him loyally in every adversity. She was also particularly fond of the descendants of Agamemnon: when Agamemnon's son Orestes slew his mother so as to be avenged for the murder of his father, Athena defended him in court and saved him from the Furies who had been pursuing him for the crime of matricide. Many of the heroes, too, received her support, including Perseus, the Argonauts, Bellerophon, Tydeus and, of course, her absolute favourite, Heracles. Thanks to the assistance she generously granted to individual human beings and to entire cities, Athena was worshipped by the ancient Greeks as Soteira, 'saviour'.

Another of her cult epithets was Promachus, which derived from the protection she was believed to provide in battles. Indeed, the Athenians were convinced that during the Persian Wars of the early fifth century BC it was she who had given them the victory. They thus named her Athena Nike ('victory') and built a temple by that name on the Acropolis. They also set up an enormous statue of Athena Promachus - made by the great sculptor Phidias - on the sacred rock. A tradition tells us that the tip of her spear and the crest of her helmet could be seen from out at sea off Cape Sunium, and so the statue truly dominated the whole of Attica.

The frequently-used epithet Athena Hippia ('of the horses') is also associated with the military prowess of the goddess. According to the relevant myth, it was Athena who taught mankind how to tame the horse, and she gave Bellerophon a golden bridle to enable him to break in the winged horse Pegasus (for which she was known as Athena Chalinites, 'of the bridle'). There is a connection here between Athena and Poseidon, another important Olympian god, who was also called Hippius (see Poseidon).

When Athena Hippia tamed the wild horse, she acquired a fresh dimension in the minds of the Greeks: now she became the goddess of ingenuity and skill, representing the concept of the superiority of the mind over physical power and the violence of war. She was responsible for the development of all the crafts and techniques that made it easier for man to live in peace. For that reason, she acquired the cult epithet Ergane, 'the worker', and architects, sculptors and painters honoured her as their patron. Musicians credited her with the invention of the flute and believed that she was the first to perform the war-dance called the pyrrhiche, after the victory of the gods in the Battle of the Giants. It was Athena, too, who made man's first weapons and tools, and she who taught the arts of ship-building (to the Argonauts), ploughing the fields with oxen, making pottery on the wheel, working bronze, and creating objects in gold. Her involvement with the crafts of the fire brought her close to the god Hephaestus, with whom she was worshipped in the Hephaesteum in the Agora of Athens.

Her greatest invention of all, however, was the art of weaving. Throughout antiquity she was renowned as possessing the highest skills in this field, and it was she who wove and embroidered the superb garments worn by the gods and heroes. Her first pupil at the loom was Pandora, who passed on the knowledge to the other women. This attribute of Athena's was the source of the myth of Arachne, another skilful weaver who dared to compare herself to the goddess and challenge her to a competition. The goddess turned Arachne into a spider (still known by that name in Greek today) and condemned her to spin in perpetuity but to have all her works destroyed by man.

The peaceful side of Athena's character was symbolised by the olive, the tree which she gave the the Athenians and taught them how to cultivate. According to the myth, it came about that there was a contest between Athena and Poseidon over which of them should be the patron of the city of Athens. The other gods advised Athena and Poseidon to offer the city one gift each, and the winner of the contest would be he or she whose gift was the better. Both ascended to the Acropolis, and Poseidon struck the ground with his trident: a spring of salt water immediately welled up. Athena stamped her foot, and an olive, the first in the world, sprouted on the spot. In the end, the city was awarded to Athena, and took its name from her. The divine olive tree continued to adorn the sacred rock, and when the Persians burned the Acropolis in 480 BC it immediately put out fresh leaves. In commemoration of this, an olive tree has been planted on the Acropolis and can be seen today on the west side of the Erechtheum.

After the dispute with Poseidon, Athena was forever the patron goddess of the city. Indeed, it was said that Erechtheus, the legendary first king of Athens, was reared by Athena, which is why he was worshipped with her in the Erechtheum, one of the most important temples on the Acropolis. The temple was dedicated first and foremost to Athena Polias - that is, the patron of the city. In the temple was kept the famous wooden cult statue (xoanon) called the Palladium, which according to tradition had fallen from the sky. Athena also brought up another of the early kings of Athens, Erichthonius. Erichthonius was born out of the seed of Hephaestus, which spilled out to fertilise the soil of Attica when Athena refused his amorous advances and managed to escape from his embrace. Athena gave the king who was in a manner of speaking her son the blood of Gorgo, which he could use either to make medicaments to heal the sick or poisons to take life.

The cult of Athena was thus of the greatest importance in Athens. The citizens dedicated to her the most marvellous monument built before or since, the Parthenon, which still dominates the landscape of Athens even today. This magnificent temple, designed by the architects Ictinus and Callicrates and ornamented by the great sculptor Phidias, was dedicated to Athena Parthenos - 'the virgin'. This epithet was attacted to Athena because, as the Homeric Hymn tells us, she "avoided the marriage bed and was untouched by amorous desires". Since in effect she had no mother, there is no connection between Athena and the concepts of love, marriage and maternity, and she maintained her perpetual virginity. It was in this capacity that she acquired the epithet Pallas, which expresses her unchanging youthfulness and is derived from the word pallax, meaning a young girl or boy.

Another of the ways in which the Athenians honoured the patron goddess of their city was to hold its most splendid festival, the Panathenaea, in her honour. The festival was traditionally held to have been founded by Erichthonius, and in 566/5 BC the tyrant Pisistratus reorganised it and divided it into two feasts, the Greater and the Lesser Panathenaea. The Greater Panathenaea was held every four years in the month of Hecatombion (late July), and were of notable splendour. Athletic contests were held on the first days of the festival, with competitions for horse and chariot racing, wrestling, boxing, the pancratium, the high and long jump, throwing the javelin and the discus, foot races and torch races. Next came the contests for recitation, music - and dance, including the famous pyrrhiche which Athena herself had first performed. The winners received as prizes what were known as Panathenaic amphorae: these were large and highly-decorated vessels filled with a considerable quantity of olive oil which would mean a major financial gain for their holder.

The last day of the Panathenaea was the most splendid of all, as the entire population of Athens took part in the magnificent Panathenaic procession, which wound its way up to the Acropolis in order to present the cult statue of Athena with a fresh garment, called the peplos. The procession started out from the Keramaikos area, at the building called the Pompeum (the 'procession house'), in the courtyard of which a portable ship had been set up. Each time the Panathenaea came round, the new peplos for the statue - decorated with scenes from the Battle of the Giants - was hung on the mast of this ship. Then, accompanied by all the Athenians, it was carried through the Agora along the Panathenaic Way and then up to the Acropolis. At last, in the presence of all the city's officials and notables, the people of Athens would deliver the peplos to cover the statue of Athena in the Erechtheum. The ceremony ended with the sacrificing of numerous animals, while the Athenians celebrated with sumptous banquets as a way of conveying their gratitude to their beloved goddess. The Panathenaic procession was such an important event in the life of Athens that the sculptor Phidias chose to depict it, with unsurpassed skill, on the Ionicn frieze of the Parthenon. It was Phidias, too, who created the masterly gold and ivory statue of Athena Parthenos which adorned the interior of the temple and was among the greatest art-works of antiquity.