Minerva

Following him, Diogenes of Babylon, in the book entitled On Minerva, by referring the birth of Jupiter and the origin of the virgin goddess to natural science, severs them from the fable.

" And of a bearded Jupiter, too, and a helmeted Minerva:

For in that way it will be allowed to say that Jupiter is always bearded, Apollo always beardless, that Minerva's eyes are grey, Neptune's blue.

and thou, our national goddess, swayer of the aegis, Minerva, guardian of the city!

There was in old times a God, said by his worshippers to be blind and lame and foolish, but who seems to me to be more quick-sighted, active and acute in the arts of construction than Minerva herself.

If they were able to bestow on the Romans, why did Minerva not defend Athens from Xerxes?

For even if Varro reports the most ancient gods to be Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva, it ought not to have escaped us that every father is older than his sons, both Saturn older than Jupiter and Heaven than Saturn;

And yet how much is the Attic Pallas distinguished from the post of a cross, or the Pharian Ceres, which stand without effigy, a rude stake and a shapeless block of wood?

likewise that every fruit teemed forth from the earth before Liber and Ceres and Minerva — nay, before that first man — since nothing that was provided for the sustenance and preservation of man could be brought in after man.

The very fact that the likeness of your god clothes an ignominious and infamous head, that an impure body, bred for that art by effeminacy, represents some Minerva or Hercules — is not majesty violated and divinity outraged, while you applaud?

But even if Minerva first built a ship, I shall see Jonah and the apostles sailing.

When warfare too is crowned with olive, the idolatry is toward Minerva, equally the goddess of arms, but crowned from this tree also for the peace entered into with Neptune.

The very first contribution of a new pupil he consecrates to the honour and name of Minerva, so that, although he be not pronounced, in word, to be profaned to some idol, partaking of idol-meat, he is shunned as an idolater.

But you preferred to assign all the dispensing of wool-work and the construction of looms to Minerva, though with Arachne the workshop was more diligent.

And there is plainly, in the scenic arts too, the patronage of Liber and Venus.

" Erichthonius, the son of Minerva and Vulcan—and indeed of lust spilled to the earth—is a demonic portent, nay, the devil himself, not a serpent.

on behalf of the college of the Musical and Minervalian and Apollinarian arts, and the Martial too, by combat, by trumpet in the stadium, they rival the circus, which is surely itself the temple of that idol whose solemnities it celebrates.

You stand beneath Aesculapius, you adorn Juno in bronze, you put black-formed helmets upon Minerva, and you call to witness none of the gods present.

That they shall each erect a pillar, that at Lacedaemon near the statue of Apollo in the Amyclaeum, and that at Athens in the citadel, near the statue of Minerva.

His descent from Cerdylium having been observed, as also his sacrificing, when he was in the city —of which a view is commanded from the outside—near the temple of Minerva, and his being occupied with these measures, tidings were carried to Cleon (for he had gone forward at the time to look about him) that the enemy's whole force was visible in the city;