Athena

Athena was the Olympian goddess of wisdom and good counsel, war, the defence of towns, heroic endeavour, weaving, pottery and various other crafts. She was depicted as a stately woman armed with a shield and spear, and wearing a long robe, crested helm, and the famed aigis--a snake-trimmed cape adorned with the monstrous visage of the Gorgon Medousa (Medusa).

Athena was one of the great divinities of the Greeks. A daughter of Zeus, without any allusion to her mother or to the manner in which she was called into existence, while most of the later traditions agree in stating that she was born from the head of Zeus. According to Hesiod (Theog. 886, &c.), Metis, the first wife of Zeus, was the mother of Athena, but when Metis was pregnant with her, Zeus, on the advice of Gaea and Uranus, swallowed Metis up, and afterwards gave birth himself to Athena, who sprang from his head. Some add that Hephaestus split the head of Zeus with his axe, and that Athena sprang forth with a mighty war-shout. Other traditions again relate, that Athena sprang from the head of Zeus in full armour.

She was the daughter of Zeus, and if we take Metis to have been her mother, we have at once the clue to the character which she bears in the religion of Greece; for, as her father was the most powerful and her mother the wisest among the gods, so Athena was a combination of the two, that is, a goddess in whom power and wisdom were harmoniously blended.