ATHENA GOD OF WAR STRATEGY

Athena^[b] or Athene,^[c] often given the epithet Pallas,^[d] is an ancient Greek goddess associated with wisdom, handicraft, and warfare,^[2] who was later syncretized with the Roman goddess Minerva.^[3] Athena was regarded as the patron and protectress of various cities across Greece, particularly the city of Athens, from which she most likely received her name.^[4] She is usually shown in art wearing a helmet and holding a spear. Her major symbols include owls, olive trees, snakes, and the Gorgoneion.
From her origin as an Aegean palace goddess, Athena was closely associated with the city. She was known as Polias and Poliouchos(both derived from polis, meaning “city-state”), and her temples were usually located atop the fortified Acropolis in the central part of the city. The Parthenon on the Athenian Acropolis is dedicated to her, along with numerous other temples and monuments. As the patron of craft and weaving, Athena was known as Ergane. She was also a warrior goddess, and was believed to lead soldiers into battle as Athena Promachos. Her main festival in Athens was the Panathenaia, which was celebrated during the month of Hekatombaion in midsummer and was the most important festival on the Athenian calendar.
In Greek mythology, Athena was believed to have been born from the head of her father Zeus. In the founding myth of Athens, Athena bested Poseidon in a competition over patronage of the city by creating the first olive tree. She was known as Athena Parthenos(“Athena the Virgin”), but, in one archaic Attic myth, the god Hephaestus tried and failed to rape her, resulting in Gaia giving birth to Erichthonius, an important Athenian founding hero. Athena was the patron goddess of heroic endeavor; she was believed to have also aided the heroes Perseus, Heracles, Bellerophon, and Jason. Along with Aphrodite and Hera, Athena was one of the three goddesses whose feud resulted in the beginning of the Trojan War. She plays an active role in the Iliad, in which she assists the Achaeans and, in the Odyssey, she is the divine counselor to Odysseus.
In the later writings of the Roman poet Ovid, Athena was said to have competed against the mortal Arachne in a weaving competition, afterwards transforming Arachne into the first spider; Ovid also describes how she transformed Medusa into a Gorgon after witnessing her being raped by Poseidon in her temple. Since the Renaissance, Athena has become an international symbol of wisdom, the arts, and classical learning. Western artists and allegorists have often used Athena as a symbol of freedom and democracy.

HERMIS THE GOD OF TRADE

Hermes (/ˈhɜːrmiːz/; Greek: Ἑρμῆς) is the god of trade, heraldry, merchants, commerce, roads, thieves, trickery, sports, travelers, and athletes in Ancient Greek religion and mythology; the son of Zeus and the Pleiad Maia, he was the second youngest of the Olympian gods (Dionysus being the youngest).

Hermes was the emissary and messenger of the gods.^[1] Hermes was also “the divine trickster”^[2] and “the god of boundaries and the transgression of boundaries, … the patron of herdsmen, thieves, graves, and heralds.”^[3] He is described as moving freely between the worlds of the mortal and divine, and was the conductor of souls into the afterlife.^[4] He was also viewed as the protector and patron of roads and travelers.^[5]

In some myths, he is a trickster and outwits other gods for his own satisfaction or for the sake of humankind. His attributes and symbols include the herma, the rooster, the tortoise, satchel or pouch, winged sandals, and winged cap. His main symbol is the Greek kerykeionor Latin caduceus, which appears in a form of two snakes wrapped around a winged staff with carvings of the other gods.^[6]

In the Roman adaptation of the Greek pantheon (see interpretatio romana), Hermes is identified with the Roman god Mercury,^[7] who, though inherited from the Etruscans, developed many similar characteristics such as being the patron of commerce.

APOLLO THE PROPHETIC DEITY OF THE DELPHIC ORACLE

Apollo (Attic, Ionic, and Homeric Greek: Ἀπόλλων, Apollōn (GEN Ἀπόλλωνος); Latin: Apollō) is one of the most important and complex of the Olympian deities in classical Greek and Roman religion and Greek and Roman mythology. The national divinity of the Greeks, Apollo has been variously recognized as a god of music, truth and prophecy, healing, the sun and light, plague, poetry, and more. Apollo is the son of Zeus and Leto, and has a twin sister, the chaste huntress Artemis. Seen as the most beautiful god and the ideal of the kouros (a beardless, athletic youth), Apollo is considered to be the most Greek of all gods. Apollo is known in Greek-influenced Etruscan mythology as Apulu.^[1]

As the patron of Delphi (Pythian Apollo), Apollo was an oracular god—the prophetic deity of the Delphic Oracle.

Medicine and healing are associated with Apollo, whether through the god himself or mediated through his son Asclepius, yet Apollo was also seen as a god who could bring ill-health and deadly plague.

Apollo is the god of archery and the invention of archery is credited to him and his sister Artemis. He had a golden bow (silver bow, sometimes) and a quiver of golden arrows. He is said to have never missed his aim, and his arrows could inflict harm by causing sudden deaths or deadly plague.

As the leader of the Muses (Apollon Musegetes) and director of their choir, Apollo functions as the patron god of music, dance and poetry. He is the inventor of string-music. The Cithara and the lyre are also said to be his inventions. The lyre is a common attribute of Apollo. Hymns sung to Apollo were called paeans.

Apollo favors and delights in the foundation of towns and the establishment of civil constitution. Hence is associated with dominion over colonists. Additionally, he is the god of foreigners, the protector of fugitives and refugees. Apollo is the giver and interpreter of laws. He presides over the divine law and custom along with Zeus, Demeter and Themis.

As the protector of young, Apollo (kourotrophos) is concerned with the health of children. He presides over their education and brings them out of their adolescence. Boys in Ancient Greece, upon reaching their adulthood, cut their hair and dedicated it to Apollo.

Apollo is the patron of herdsmen and protector of herds and flocks. He is causes abundance in the milk produced by cattle, and is also connected with their fertility. As an agricultural deity, Apollo protects the crops from diseases, especially the rust in corns and grains. He is also the controller and destroyer of pests that infect plants and plant harvests.

Apollo is the god who affords help and wards off evil. He delivered men from the epidemics. Various epithets call him the “averter of evil”.

In Hellenistic times, especially during the 5th century BCE, as Apollo Helios he became identified among Greeks with Helios, Titan god of the sun.^[2] In Latin texts, however, there was no conflation of Apollo with Sol among the classical Latin poets until 1st century AD.^[3]Apollo and Helios/Sol remained separate beings in literary and mythological texts until the 5th century CE.

MEDUSA THE GORGON MONSTER

In Greek mythology, Medusa (/mɪˈdjuːzə, -sə/; Μέδουσα “guardian, protectress”)^[1] was a monster, a Gorgon, generally described as a winged human female with living venomous snakes in place of hair. Those who gazed upon her face would turn to stone. Most sources describe her as the daughter of Phorcys and Ceto,^[2] though the author Hyginus makes her the daughter of Gorgon and Ceto.^[3]According to Hesiod and Aeschylus, she lived and died on an island named Sarpedon, somewhere near Cisthene. The 2nd-century BCE novelist Dionysios Skytobrachion puts her somewhere in Libya, where Herodotus had said the Berbers originated her myth, as part of their religion.

Medusa was beheaded by the hero Perseus, who thereafter used her head, which retained its ability to turn onlookers to stone, as a weapon^[4] until he gave it to the goddess Athena to place on her shield. In classical antiquity the image of the head of Medusa appeared in the evil-averting device known as the Gorgoneion.

HADES THE GOD OF THE UNDERWORLD

Hades (/ˈheɪdiːz/; Greek: ᾍδης Hádēs; Ἅιδης Háidēs), in the ancient Greek religion and myth, is the god of the dead and the king of the underworld, with which his name became synonymous.^[14] Hades was the eldest son of Cronus and Rhea, although the last son regurgitated by his father.^[15] He and his brothers, Zeus and Poseidon, defeated their father’s generation of gods, the Titans, and claimed rulership over the cosmos. Hades received the underworld, Zeus the sky, and Poseidon the sea, with the solid earth, long the province of Gaia, available to all three concurrently. Hades was often portrayed with his three-headed guard dog Cerberus.

The Etruscan god Aita and the Roman gods Dis Pater and Orcus were eventually taken as equivalent to Hades and merged into Pluto, a Latinization of Plouton (Greek: Πλούτων, Ploútōn)^[16], itself a euphemistic title often given to Hades.

POSEIDON THE GOD OF THE SEA

Poseidon (/pəˈsaɪdən, 
pɒ-, 
poʊ-/;^[1] Greek: Ποσειδῶν, pronounced 
[pose͜edɔ́͜ɔn]) was one of the Twelve Olympians in ancient Greek religion and myth. He was god of the Sea and other waters; of earthquakes; and of horses.^[2] In pre-Olympian Bronze Age Greece, he was venerated as a chief deity at Pylos and Thebes.^[2] His Roman equivalent is Neptune.
Poseidon was protector of seafarers, and of many Hellenic cities and colonies. In Homer‘s Iliad, Poseidon supports the Greeks against the Trojans during the Trojan War. In the Odyssey, during the sea-voyage from Troy back home to Ithaca, the Greek hero Odysseus provokes Poseidon’s fury by blinding his son, the Cyclops Polyphemus, resulting in Poseidon punishing him with storms, the complete loss of his ship and companions, and a ten-year delay. Poseidon is also the subject of a Homeric hymn. In Plato‘s Timaeus and Critias, the island of Atlantis was Poseidon’s domain.

ZUES THE GOD OF THE SKY AND THUNDER

Zeus (/zjuːs/^[3] or /zuːs/;Greek: Ζεύς, Zeús 
[zdeǔ̯s])^[4] is the sky and thunder god in ancient Greek religion, who rules as king of the gods of Mount Olympus. His name is cognate with the first element of his Roman equivalent Jupiter. His mythologies and powers are similar, though not identical, to those of Indo-European deities such as Indra, Jupiter, Perkūnas, Perun, and Thor.^[5][6][7]
Zeus is the child of Cronus and Rhea, the youngest of his siblings to be born, though sometimes reckoned the eldest as the others required disgorging from Cronus’s stomach. In most traditions, he is married to Hera, by whom he is usually said to have fathered Ares, Hebe, and Hephaestus.^[8] At the oracle of Dodona, his consort was said to be Dione, by whom the Iliad states that he fathered Aphrodite.^[11] Zeus was also infamous for his erotic escapades. These resulted in many divine and heroic offspring, including Athena, Apollo, Artemis, Hermes, Persephone, Dionysus, Perseus, Heracles, Helen of Troy, Minos, and the Muses.^[8]
He was respected as an allfather who was chief of the gods^[12] and assigned the others to their roles:^[13] “Even the gods who are not his natural children address him as Father, and all the gods rise in his presence.”^[14][15] He was equated with many foreign weather gods, permitting Pausanias to observe “That Zeus is king in heaven is a saying common to all men”.^[16] Zeus’ symbols are the thunderbolt, eagle, bull, and oak. In addition to his Indo-European inheritance, the classical “cloud-gatherer” (Greek: Νεφεληγερέτα, Nephelēgereta)^[17] also derives certain iconographic traits from the cultures of the ancient Near East, such as the scepter. Zeus is frequently depicted by Greek artists in one of two poses: standing, striding forward with a thunderbolt leveled in his raised right hand, or seated in majesty.

ARES THE GOD OF WAR

Ares (/ˈɛəriːz/; Ancient Greek: Ἄρης, Áres 
[árɛːs]) is the Greek god of war. He is one of the Twelve Olympians, the son of Zeus and Hera.^[1] In Greek literature, he often represents the physical or violent and untamed aspect of war, in contrast to his sister, the armored Athena, whose functions as a goddess of intelligence include military strategy and generalship.^[2]
The Greeks were ambivalent toward Ares: although he embodied the physical valor necessary for success in war, he was a dangerous force, “overwhelming, insatiable in battle, destructive, and man-slaughtering.”^[3] His sons Phobos (Fear) and Deimos(Terror) and his lover, or sister, Enyo (Discord) accompanied him on his war chariot.^[4] In the Iliad, his father Zeus tells him that he is the god most hateful to him.^[5] An association with Ares endows places and objects with a savage, dangerous, or militarized quality.^[6]His value as a war god is placed in doubt: during the Trojan War, Ares was on the losing side, while Athena, often depicted in Greek art as holding Nike (Victory) in her hand, favoured the triumphant Greeks.^[3]
Ares plays a relatively limited role in Greek mythology as represented in literary narratives, though his numerous love affairs and abundant offspring are often alluded to.^[7] When Ares does appear in myths, he typically faces humiliation.^[8] He is well known as the lover of Aphrodite, the goddess of love, who was married to Hephaestus, god of craftsmanship.^[9] The most famous story related to Ares and Aphrodite shows them exposed to ridicule through the wronged husband’s device.^[10]
The counterpart of Ares among the Roman gods is Mars,^[11] who as a father of the Roman people was given a more important and dignified place in ancient Roman religion as a guardian deity. During the Hellenization of Latin literature, the myths of Ares were reinterpreted by Roman writers under the name of Mars. Greek writers under Roman rule also recorded cult practices and beliefs pertaining to Mars under the name of Ares. Thus in the classical tradition of later Western art and literature, the mythology of the two figures later became virtually indistinguishable.