Athena and Poseidon (and on conflict in myths)

[endymions_bower]

A thread from Twitter:

@selgowiros: What are your ideas on this supposed 'rivalry' between Athena and Poseidon? People often cite Ovid (which is awful), but also the founding of Athens.

 

Ovid, as usual, anthropomorphizes it, but the motif has deep roots. In my view, we need to understand it, in part, against the background of the transition in Greece at the end of the Bronze Age from absolute monarchies to law-governed polities.

 

Poseidon was not always, or originally, a God of the sea, but seems rather to have had strong associations with sovereignty early on. This is reflected in his importance in the Linear B tablets.

 

When the Mycenaean royal houses are upended, we often see the old palace site occupied by a temple of Athena, which symbolizes the new order, in which the relatively transparent institutions of the polis take the place of an older model of sovereignty.

 

This helps us to grasp Poseidon better—for example, His association with the Winter Solstice festivities. For Platonists, He is the sovereign of the psyche, demiurge of the world of process, presiding over the waters of flux and over horses as symbols of the soul vehicle.

 

Once we see that Poseidon is operating a model of sovereignty, obscured for us by the somewhat artificial construct of Him as "God of the Sea", it becomes a lot more understandable why Athena needs to keep negotiating their boundaries (e.g., the bridle, the ship…)

 

@chelydoreus: The worship of Poseidon was robust in Athens and Piraeus, sometimes even side-by-side (during the Skira, for example as well as on the Acropolis itself). The antagonism between the two Gods is almost entirely mythic; the practiced religion doesn't really show much of it.

While on a symbolic level it was a beloved theme (even on a Parthenon pediment!), people seemed to be keenly aware it wasn't literal. They would never worship truly opposing Gods so close or together; it would be deemed too hubristic and troublesome.

I'd add that the lack of the antagonism is also reflected on a more practical level on Athens' naval supremacy: the "loser" of the contest still showers the city with his greatest favor? Not exactly logical.

Furthermore, despite Poseidon's "loss" and the change in polis dynamics, he still remained a powerful figure and force behind Athens just in a different way. Just like the roles of the anax and basileus shifted towards more religious and cultural roles but remained significant.

 

Exactly! What's really happening is that an extra layer of structure is being added. The old institutions of sovereignty are still there, but they have a more strictly cultic significance, as new political institutions, under the purview of Zeus and Athena, come into play.

 

Polytheisms in general tend not to wipe out older structures with new; instead, the new structures create a scaffolding around them and preserve what are seen as the crucial elements.

 

This is a crucial point: conflict between Gods in myths is very often a strong indication of deep bonds between Their cults. One can't stress this enough: conflict is *engagement*.

 

If two Gods were actually antagonistic in some anthropomorphic way (which is an incoherent idea in any event), the last thing you'd see would be Them in a myth together. The *fact* of that mythic relationship is vastly more significant than the *tone* of it.

 

@chelydoreus: *This*. People anthropomorphize the myths too much. Conflict, however negative from a human POV, is generative and engaging for the Gods (cf. the abduction of Persephone, the rape of Demeter, the attempted rape of Athena etc).

 

For a God to even be *mentioned* in another God's myth is literally everything. It means They have a bond. That's huge.