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The play closes with an appearance of Athena, who prophesies that Ion shall be the founder of the great Ionian race, for Apollo's hand had protected him and Creusa throughout. The central problem of this piece is whether the gods govern the world righteously or not.
I thought you swore that so long as Edna Earl remained unmarried you would never relinquish your suit? He pointed to that lovely statuette of Pallas that stands on the mantelpiece, and said bitterly, 'Edna Earl has no more heart than that marble Athena. Whereupon I replied, 'Take care, Gordon. I notice that of late you seem inclined to deal rather too freely in hyperbole.
Also, upon the plumes of the bird are put the colors of the air; on these the gold of the cloud, that cannot be gathered by any covetousness; the rubies of the clouds, that are not the price of Athena, but are Athena; the vermillion of the cloud-bar, and the flame of the cloud-crest, and the snow of the cloud, and its shadow, and the melted blue of the deep wells of the sky, all these, seized by the creating spirit, and woven by Athena herself into films and threads of plume; with wave on wave following and fading along breast, and throat, and opened wings, infinite as the dividing of the foam and the sifting of the sea-sand; even the white down of the cloud seeming to flutter up between the stronger plumes, seen, but too soft for touch.
Similar figures might also be draped, and still represent gods; or, if female, would serve for Hera, Artemis, Aphrodite, and sometimes for Athena, if she was represented without her arms and aegis. Then, too, there was the seated type, usually enveloped in full drapery, which might readily be adapted to a statue of any of the chief gods.
Then as Attica was united and brought under the lead of its central city, the gods of the outlying districts began to claim places on the Acropolis. Pallas, the thunder-maid of Pallene in the south, came to form a joint personality with Athena.
While Odysseus lay in a deep sleep, the goddess Athena went to the royal dwelling of the king of the Phæacians, Alkinoös, in order to hasten the return of Odysseus to his native land. She entered the house, where she found Nausicaä, the king's daughter, sleeping in her beautiful chamber. Near her lay two maids who served her.
Nevertheless, their most ordinary expression, it must be confessed, was of a chastity to make one desperate a sublime coldness an ignorance of all possibilities of human passion, such as would have made the moon-bright eyes of Phoebe or the sea-green eyes of Athena appear by comparison more liquidly tempting than those of a young girl of Babylon sacrificing to the goddess Mylitta within the cord-circled enclosure of Succoth-Benohl.
We might indeed, without irreverence, impute to Phidias the words uttered in a very different sense by one who later gave a new and higher interpretation to a formula of "the received religion" in Greece: "Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, Him declare I unto you." The other great Phidian ideal, that of Athena, was represented by several statues, both in Athens and in other cities.
A moment more and a few drifting spars, a few bobbing heads, were all that was left of the Phœnician. The Ægean had swallowed her. A shout was pealing from the ships of the Hellenes. “Zeus is with us! Athena is with us!” At the outset of the battle, when advantage tells the most, advantage had been won. Themistocles’s deed had fused all the Greeks with hopeful courage. Eurybiades was charging.
Purple shadows fell on the brown rock of the Acropolis, while, above, the temple of Athena was outlined against the golden sky, and the Sun tipped as with gleaming fire the spear and the helmet of his sister goddess, the bronze Athena herself, as she stood a little beyond her temple, austere guardian of her city.
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