The Birth of Athena


In the pantheon of Greek mythology, Zeus was king of the gods on Mount Olympus, god of thunder and sky, and a prolific rapist who made Harvey Weinstein look like a Boy Scout. In Hesiod's 8th century BC poem the "Theogony" young Zeus and the Titaness Metis were married, and she became pregnant (in some versions of the story, he raped her), but when the child was prophesied to be even wiser than him, he decided to play it safe by swallowing his pregnant wife whole (no really, the child was going to be wiser than him). Six wives later into his career, Zeus was married to his queen, Hera, when one day he experienced a terrific headache. That pregnant wife he'd eaten a while back was now coming back to haunt him, and suddenly an armor-clad goddess of wisdom with a pet owl exploded out from his head, landing on the ground right before his eyes to the astonishment of all the other gods and completely ruining Zeus's hair. Yes, this was Zeus's daughter, who they called Athena, goddess of wisdom. Hera, understandably upset that her husband had been hiding a secret daughter inside his melon and given birth to her all by himself (not accounting for the Titaness mother who gave birth inside of Zeus first) decided to get back at him by conceiving and bearing a child all by herself, but when the result was the god of metalworking, Hephaestus, and he was ugly with shriveled feet, Hera threw him off of Mount Olympus like so many banana peels.

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