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Athene

noun
1.
(Greek mythology) goddess of wisdom and useful arts and prudent warfare; guardian of Athens; identified with Roman Minerva.  Synonyms: Athena, Pallas, Pallas Athena, Pallas Athene.
2.
A genus of Strigidae.  Synonym: genus Athene.



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"Athene" Quotes from Famous Books



... supreme, all-sufficing, all-embracing, absolutely jealous. Her priests may serve none and nothing but her; and she is worthy of such worship.—Beauty of Aphrodite of old—chastity of Artemis of the crescent moon—wisdom of high Athene, of the silver spear—integrity of Hera the quiet-browed, giver of laws—these she combines in her perfect whole; these are the virtues we are bound to emulate who serve her. Let them that are weak, that understand not, complain of constraint under these rules. Such are unworthy of the ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter

... folded across her well-developed breast, a conical hat above her light brown hair. She was of a good height and finely proportioned, and her carriage as full of dignity as of grace. Her skin was of such white loveliness that a contemporary compares it with the lily. Like Athene, she was gray-eyed, and, like Athene, noble-featured, the oval of her face squaring a little at the chin, in which there was a cleft. Calm was her habit, calm her slow-moving eyes, calm and deliberate her movements, and calm the ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini

... THOUGHT will maintain the high level attained in Volume I. The same contributors. Dr. Brinkley, Ella Wheeler Wilcox, William Walker Atkinson, Anne Beauford Houseman, Alberta Jean Rowell, Nate Collier, Charles H. Ingersoll, Athene Rondell, Charles Edmund DeLand and others will continue their valuable series throughout ...
— The Goat-gland Transplantation • Sydney B. Flower

... but to the artist form and meaning are one. It is not a sentiment that he puts into this shape, but it is the shape itself that inspires him. The symbolism of Greek Art was the discovery of a later age. We know what is meant by Circe and Athene, but Homer did not. It was thus only that the Greek mind could grasp ideas,—this is the thoroughly artistic character of that people. Their philosophers were always outlaws. What excited the rage of the Athenians against ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various

... I go to my dread grave seeing Odysseus still, and never gladden heart of meaner husband." But they are mere phrases. The truth about her attitude and her-feelings is told frankly in several places by three different persons—the goddess of wisdom, Telemachus, and Penelope herself. Athene urges Telemachus to make haste that he may find his blameless mother still at home instead of the bride of one of ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... on the azure main, Tritons in her train and Nereids, under the flush of dawn. Apollo, radiant in hoary dew, leapt from the eastern wave, flamed through the heaven, and cooled his hissing wheels in the vaporous west. Athene, sprung from the brain of God, armed with the spear of truth, moved grey-eyed over the earth probing the minds of men. Love, Beauty, Wisdom, behold the Pagan Trinity! Through whose grace only men ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson

... sister of the sculptor, felt the blow as keenly as her brother, to whom she was utterly devoted. "O immortal Athene! my goddess, my patron, at whose shrine I have daily laid my offerings, be now my friend, the friend ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden

... to Athene, and being respected at Athens, it had greatly multiplied. Hence the proverb, 'taking owls to Athens,' similar to our English ...
— The Birds • Aristophanes

... a grove or a temple, No man's heavy hand on our shoulder: Had in Pallas Athene example To make womanhood stronger and bolder. But the temples are broken and plundered, Sacred altars profanely o'erthrown; Where the oracle trembled and thundered, Are a cavern, a ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor

... had been chosen for this tableau. Mlle. de Berneuve, a beautiful brunette (Hera); Mlle. Lebrun, with flaming hair (Athene); and Esperance, delicately blonde, was to represent Aphrodite, to whom the shepherd Paris would award the prize ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt

... familiar with all these things, but I never tired of looking at them, especially at the albatross and the owl—the former so suggestive of Coleridge and the unfathomable depths of the far-away Indian Ocean, and the latter always leading my thoughts away back to the fierce-eyed Athene ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various

... great: plus only is plus, and the sum is minus something and plus in nothing if the most unimaginable particle only be absent. The fine arts, poetry, painting, sculpture, music, and architecture, as thought, or idea, Athene-like, are complete, finished, revelations of wisdom at once. Not so the mechanical arts and sciences: they are arts of growth; they are shaped and formed gradually, (and that, more by a blind sort of guessing than by intuition,) and take many men's lives to win even to one true principle. On all ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various

... BATEMAN as Mrs. James Smith had no chance till just at the end with the turning of the worm. To the part of Lucille Early—the Earlys, as a couple, were designed to contrast with the Smiths, the wife in this case spending the money which the husband hadn't got—Miss ATHENE SEYLER, who was meant for better things, gave a certain distinction, but perhaps "pressed" a little too much. Mr. JAMES CAREW, who played Edward Early, was conspicuous as the sole male representative of the American language ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 25th, 1920 • Various

... persons, and still nearer were the theater of Bacchus and the Odeon, capable of accommodating about thirty and six thousand people respectively. On the Acropolis, probably within shouting distance, stood some heathen temples, one of them anciently containing a colossal statue of Athene Parthenos, said to have been not less than thirty-nine feet high and covered with ivory and gold. In another direction and in plain sight stood, and still stands, the Theseum, a heathen temple at that time. Take ...
— A Trip Abroad • Don Carlos Janes

... am your servitor. I am ready to wait for you, to wait your pleasure, to give all my life to winning it. Let me only wear your livery. Give me but leave to try. You want to think for a time, to be free for a time. That is so like you, Diana—Pallas Athene! (Pallas Athene is better.) You are all the slender goddesses. I understand. Let me engage myself. ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells

... it is easy to see which must conquer. The gifts of the spirit are more truly honored as the birthright of humanity than as the property of this or that saint. The worship of the Madonna is better than the worship of Athene just so far as the homage is paid to a sentiment and not to a person. Now the Madonna, too, must come down from her throne. The painters grew tired of painting saints and angels. Giotto already had diverged from the traditional heads and draperies, and begun ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various

... of this light there stood before him the three fairest of the godesses—queenly Hera, wise Athene, and lovely Aphrodite. ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various

... columns, the sunken treasures, the creeping mosses and the rank ooze of fretted waters that have undermined cities and turned kingdoms into desert seas? The galleys of Pagan Greece have swung wide for her on the unforgetting tide, for her soul dwelt in the body of Helen of Troy, and Pallas Athene has followed her ways and whispered to her the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard

... supersensual and life beyond the grave. Far down below the feet of those who worship God through him, S. Francis sleeps; but his soul, the incorruptible part of him, the message he gave the world, is in the spaces round us. This is his temple. He fills it like an unseen god. Not as Phoebus or Athene, from their marble pedestals; but as an abiding spirit, felt everywhere, nowhere seized, absorbing in itself all mysteries, all myths, all burning exaltations, all abasements, all love, self-sacrifice, pain, yearning, which the thought ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... acquiring and communicating knowledge to each other) which are mysteries to us. The terror of dogs in 'haunted houses' and of horses in passing 'haunted' scenes has often been reported, and is alluded to briefly by Mr. Tylor. Balaam's ass, and the dogs which crouched and whined before Athene, whom Eumaeus could not see, are ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang

... not a thing of yesterday, for it is the slow growth of two centuries; neither did it burst upon the world armed at all points, like the fabled Athene. Yet in other respects the comparison holds good, for the press, like Athene, unites in itself the attributes of power and wisdom combined; it fosters and protects science, industry, and art; it is the patron ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various

... things to do—not always very easy things,—much of my work in Algebra and Geometry is hard: but I love it all, especially Greek. Just think, I shall soon finish my grammar! Then comes the "Iliad." What an inexpressible joy it will be to read about Achilles, and Ulysses, and Andromache and Athene, and the rest of my old friends in their own glorious language! I think Greek is the loveliest language that I know anything about. If it is true that the violin is the most perfect of musical instruments, then Greek is ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller

... and sustained me! Believe me, when I say, that had Catharine befriended me there, she would have won the truest knight that ever broke a lance in defence of fair ladye. But, for the sake of a dotard, who is forever trembling lest I rob him of some of his withered bays, the bold Athene of the age forgot her godlike origin and mission, and turned away from him whom she should have countenanced and conciliated. Well! It was the error of a noble heart, unsuspicious of fair words. And fair words enough had Frederick for the occasion. ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... have selected the white flowers To please the nymphs, and to have asked of each By name, and with no sorrowful regret, Whether, since both my parents willed the change I might at Hymen's feet bend my clipt brow; And (after these who mind us girls the most) Adore our own Athene, that she would Regard me mildly with her azure eyes,— But, father, to see you no more, and see Your love, O father! go ere I am gone!" Gently he moved her off, and drew her back, Bending his lofty head far over hers; And the dark depths ...
— Practical English Composition: Book II. - For the Second Year of the High School • Edwin L. Miller

... said, is not to be found among the Ionians, whether colonists or citizens of Athens; an ancestral Apollo there is, who is the father of Ion, and a family Zeus, and a Zeus guardian of the phratry, and an Athene guardian of the phratry. But the name of ancestral Zeus ...
— Euthydemus • Plato

... career, chief of what was then taken for a growing party and is not yet a collapsed, nor will be, though the foot on it is iron, his youth had flown under the tutelage of an extraordinary Mentor, whom to call Athene robs the goddess of her personal repute for wisdom in conduct, but whose head was wise, wise as it was now grey. Verily she was original; and a grey original should seem remarkable above a blooming blonde. If originality in woman were ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... the solution, on the theatre of history, of the problem—What degree of perfection can humanity, under the most favorable conditions, attain, without the supernatural light, and guidance, and grace of Christianity?[38] "Like their own goddess Athene the people of Athens seem to spring full-armed into the arena of history, and we look in vain to Egypt, Syria, and India, for more than a few seeds that burst into such marvellous growth on the ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker

... year of the war, when standing corn was being burnt by the army of the Lydians, it happened as follows:—as soon as the corn was kindled, it was driven by a violent wind and set fire to the temple of Athene surnamed of Assessos; and the temple being set on fire was burnt down to the ground. Of this no account was made then; but afterwards when the army had ed to Sardis, Alyattes fell sick, and as his sickness lasted long, he sent messengers to inquire of the Oracle at Delphi, ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus

... the vulgar saying, "It is just like a woman," implying that there are no differences among women, makes one indignant. Have we not seen women to whom death seems an indignity—looking, in every feature and glance, as immortal as Pallas Athene? And have we not seen women whose hideous shape and fiendish spirit suggested an alliance with antediluvian monsters? Is there not a Volumnia, as chaste as that star seen in winter dawns shivering on the cold forehead of the morning? And is there not a Messalina, who would receive ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger

... the king made haste and sent messengers mounted upon horses, to call the men of the land that they might do battle with Orestes and his comrade. But while he was yet sending them, there appeared in the air above his head the goddess Athene, who spake, saying, "Cease, King Thoas, from pursuing this man and his companions; for he hath come hither on this errand by the command of Apollo; and I have persuaded Poseidon that he make the sea ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various

... epics, as in Homer, this claim of divine right is granted, even in the case of an insolent and cowardly Over-Lord. Achilles half draws "his great sword," one of the long, ponderous cut-and-thrust bronze swords of which we have actual examples from Mycenae and elsewhere. He is restrained by Athene, visible only to him. "With words, indeed," she says, "revile him .... hereafter shall goodly gifts come to thee, yea, in ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang

... omission. Even so, we may be sure that a young lady whose cheek burned not at sight of the letter she had sealed untidily—'unworthily' the Manual calls it—would anon be blushing for her shamelessness. Such a thing as the blurring of the family crest, or as the pollution of the profile of Pallas Athene with the smoke of the taper, was hardly, indeed, one of those 'very slight causes' to which I have referred. The Georgian young lady was imbued through and through with the sense that it was her duty to be gracefully efficient in whatsoever she set her hand to. To the young lady of to-day, belike, ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm

... determinately with their Zeus or Jupiter, found it very much more difficult to fix on any single goddess in their Pantheon as the correspondent of Astarte. Now they made her Hera or Juno, now Aphrodite or Venus, now Athene, now Artemis, now Selene, now Rhea or Cybele. But her aphrodisiac character was certainly the one in which she most frequently appeared. She was the goddess of the sexual passion, rarely, however, represented with the chaste and modest attributes ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson

... but at last triumphs. The chief agent in his triumph is Athene. She represents Wisdom, which, by its life and increase, at last dethrones the God of Vengeance and enthrones the ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille

... that, as a controversy arose betwixt Neptune and Pallas from which of them two that land should receive its denomination which had been equally found out by them both together—though thereafter it was called and had the appellation of Athens, from Athene, which is Minerva—just so would Lynceus, King of Scythia, have treacherously slain the young Triptolemus, whom Ceres had sent to show unto mankind the invention of corn, which until then had been utterly ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... of the whole poem, lay the keystone of the whole arch of thought. There is no contest of conflicting forces, no judgment so much as by casting of lots: far less is there any light of heavenly harmony or of heavenly wisdom, of Apollo or Athene from above. We have heard much and often from theologians of the light of revelation: and some such thing indeed we find in Aeschylus; but the darkness of ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley

... l'Origine de l'Espece. Par Charles Darwin.' 'Archives des Sc. de la Bibliotheque Universelle de Geneve,' pages 242, 243, Mars 1860.) On the other hand, Lyell, up to that time a pillar of the anti-transmutationists (who regarded him, ever afterwards, as Pallas Athene may have looked at Dian, after the Endymion affair), declared himself a Darwinian, though not without putting in a serious caveat. Nevertheless, he was a tower of strength, and his courageous stand for truth as against consistency, did him infinite ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin



Words linked to "Athene" :   Pallas Athene, genus Athene, bird genus, little owl, Greek mythology, Greek deity, Strigidae, family Strigidae



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