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The Athenian answered, it seemed, despite himself:— “If it is not to betray Hellas.” “It is not.” “Then I promise.” “Swear it then by your native Athena.” And Democrates—perhaps the wine was strong—lifted his right hand and swore by Athena Polias of Athens he would betray no secret. Lycon arose with what was part bellow, part laugh.
My vote is that if the foe by land be too great, we retire before him to our ships, ay, forsake even well-loved Attica, but only that we may trust to the ‘wooden wall,’ and fight the Great King by sea at Salamis. We contend not with gods but with men. Let others fear. I will trust to Athena Polias,—the goddess terrible in battle. “ ‘Our Athens need fear no hurt Though gods may conspire her ill.
A drawing of the Ionic capitals of the temple of Minerva Polias in the Erechtheum is accessible to nearly everybody. It is well to turn to it and see what use the Greeks, under such impulses, made of the Wild Honeysuckle and of Sea-Shells.
Northward from the Parthenon was the Erechtheum, a compound building which contained the temple of Minerva Polias; the proper Erechtheum, called also the Cecropium, and the Pandroseum.
We are accustomed to think of Greek religion as the religion of art and beauty, the religion of which the Olympian Zeus and the Athena Polias are the idols, the poems of Homer the sacred books. Thus Cardinal Newman speaks of "the classical polytheism which was gay and graceful, as was natural in a civilised age."
“Oh, he’s not Trœzenian, but one of the exiles from Athens,” volunteered Dion, who kept all the tittle-tattle of the little city in stock along with his philtres. “An Athenian! Praised be Athena Polias, then. I am from Athens myself. And his father?”
The tombs of the worthies of old, stretching out along the Sacred Way to Eleusis, where Solon, Clisthenes, Miltiades, and many another bulwark of Athens slept, had the last votive wreath hung lovingly upon them. And especially men sought the great temple of the “Rock,” to lift their hands to Athena Polias, and vow awful vows of how harm to the Virgin Goddess should be wiped away in blood.
The building was also called the temple of Athena Polias, because it contained a separate sanctuary of the goddess, as well as her most ancient statue. The building of the new Erechtheum was not commenced till the Parthenon and Propylaea were finished, and probably not before the year preceding the breaking out of the Peloponnesian war.
Nor is it without the strange significance which you will find in what at first seems chance, in all noble histories, as soon as you can read them rightly, that the statue of Athena Polias was of olive-wood, and that the Greek temple and Gothic spire are both merely the permanent representations of useful wooden structures.
The decision shall be hers, and we will accept it, whatever it is.... Philosophy. Well, well. Here we are at the appointed place. We will hold the trial in the forecourt of Athene Polias. Priestess, arrange our seats, while we salute the goddess. Lucian. Polias, come to my aid against these pretenders, mindful of the daily perjuries thou hearest from them.
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