Customer Reviews

Athena: A Biography

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
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Athena is an excellent book for undergraduates and for anyone looking for a thoughtful overview of diachronic changes in religious beliefs from the Bronze to the Heroic Age. The view is through the eyes of Athena with a focus on the Trojan war, `Athena's war.' Through the goddess' relationship with Odysseus, the author reveals changes in Athena's personality (function) as portrayed in the Iliad and Odyssey. The author links Athena's transition from war goddess to goddess of justice, wisdom and civility to societal changes including a shift of emphasis from personal bravado to civic honor and from individual to community spirit and responsibility.

Through lively word choices and a deep sense of needs and concerns of humans of all eras, the author makes relevant to us the religion of the ancients. They, like we, struggle to control forces surrounding us. Through `Athena' we better appreciate the ancient Greek need and concern for religion and, accordingly, we realize a! ll the more that we share today their same fears and life questions.

Lee hall has provided an excellent auxillary reading for students in the humanities and social sciences. ATHENA is a book that opens up an exciting multidisciplinary dialogue that combines a splendid story--supernatural beings, mythical heores, and heroic events--with a solid focus on parallel social struggles in modern times. First and foremost, ATHENA is an exciting story--well written and fun to read. Familiar and obscure myths combine to make this "biography" of the great warrior goddess a more useful reading for students, especially students in Classical Studies, than the usual mythology sources (Graves & Hamilton). Using a modern "voice," Lee Hall shows how Athena changes identities over the centuries, reflecting the development of ancient civilization as well as telling us much about our own contemporary identity stuggles. ATHENA was a pleasure to read, integrating a vast amount of mythological stories into a creative statement about the processes of civilization itself.

This book relates the "biography" of Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom.

If I had no previous knowledge of Greek mythology, I would have found this book and the events covered therein much more useful and intriguing; or if I was not interested in ever reading either the Iliad or the Odyssey, I would have found this a good summary of the events in those poems. I was really put off by the constant reminders in this book that most of the Greek gods were selfish, horny brats; while I think this is an accurate description (of most) of the gods, I don't need the constant reference back to this particular fact. I also felt that the author was trying to channel Homer in writing this book with the abundance of reminders of what Athena was the goddess of and the overall writing style of this book.

I would not recommend this book to people interested in Athena.

For the average person who has some familiarity with Greek mythology but is fairly ignorant, this book is a great overview. I found it to be a relatively fast read and packed with information. Worthy of special note is Athena's dichotomous nature: a bloodthirsty goddess of war, she is also known for her wisdom. She supported males and scorned females, yet she was also a goddess of female arts. Anyone who ever admired Athena should read this book.

What a terrific book-one that seems, at times, more than a little subversive. Most pleasing of all, it is not addressed to the scholar, but to average folks like me, who have an interest in myth and enjoy exploring the idea of myth as an organizing system used to make sense of an often senseless world. More than once during my reading-and rereading sections-of *Athena,* I noticed little light bulbs flicker on as previously unmade connections were effected. More often, however, I felt shivers of recognition or disturbance when the author brings into focus ways gods and goddesses were imagined and used to rationalize some foregone conclusion(s) that may not have been sitting right. (E.g., the attribution of "maleness" to Athena's actions and attitudes as a means to set Athenian-and Greek-partriarchy in stone.) Finally, it shows myth for what it should be-a system of belief and attitude-rather than a conglomeration of cliches for which it so often passes in New Age parlance

This book was a fascinating look at the history of the greek goddess Athena from her beginning as an African deity. Athena is my favorite of all the greek pantheon.