friends but God and death the one a defender of his innocency, the other a finisher of all his troubles." If imperious in temper and inflexible in dogmatic determina tion, Athanasius had yet a great heart and intellect, enthusiastic in their devotion to Christ, and in work for
the good of the church and of mankind.His chief distinction as a theologian was his zealous advocacy of the essential divinity of Christ as co-equal in substance with the Father. This was the doctrine of the Homoousion, proclaimed by the Nicene Creed, and elabo rately defended by his life and writings. Whether or not Athanasius first suggested the use of this expression, he was its greatest defender ; and the catholic doctrine of the Trinity has ever since been more identified with his " immortal " name than with any other in the history of the church and of Christian theology. (For an exposition of the Athanasian Creed, see the article Creeds.)
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ATHELSTAN, or Æthelstan, son of King Edward the elder, and grandson of Alfred the Great, was born in 895. There has been much doubt with regard to his legi timacy, as his mother, Ecgwyn, is said to have been of humble origin ; but these suspicions appear to rest on slight foundations. On the death of Edward in 925, Athelstan, who had been named by him as his successor, was elected king by the Mercians and West Saxons, and crowned at Kingston in Surrey. Considerable opposition was made to his election, and several of the leading nobles entered into a conspiracy to put out his eyes and deprive him of the kingdom. Alfred the Atheling, who himself aimed at the royal power, was suspected of being concerned in this plot, and was obliged to proceed to Rome and there take an oath of innocence. While in the act of swearing at the altar, he is said to have dropped down in a fit, and to have died three days afterwards. In 925 Athelstan gave one of his sisters in marriage to Sihtric, the Danish ruler of Northumbria, on whose death, in the following year, he invaded the Danish dominions, drove out Sihtric s son, Guthfrith, and took possession of his territory. Guth- frith, after an unsuccessful attempt to stir up Constantine, king of Scotland, to whom he had fled, and after a fruitless invasion of England, made submission to Athelstan, and was kindly treated by him. During the next few years, the Welsh, both of Wales and of Cornwall, appear to have been subdued, and to have done homage to the king of England, who levied tribute on them, and fixed the Wye and the Tamar as the boundaries of Wales and Cornwall respectively. He was thus virtually king of all England. In 933 or 934 he also invaded Scotland, ravaged all the south country, and compelled Constantine to pay a yearly tribute. Four years later, in 937, a powerful combination was made against him. Anlaf, a Danish chief, or, accord ing to some accounts, a son of Sihtric, with the king of Scotland, the Welsh, and the Danes of the north, invaded England. Athelstan, with his half brother Edmund, met and signally defeated the invaders in the battle of Brunan- burh, celebrated in the " Brunanburh War-Song." In 940 or 941 Athelstan died at Gloucester, and was buried at Malmesbury. England had prospered under his reign; for he devoted much attention to commerce, and exercised a fostering care over the civil and religious interests of his people. His power made him respected and esteemed on the Continent, and several foreign princes and nobles were sent to be educated at his court.
ATHENA (Ἀθηνᾶ, Ἀθήνη, Ἀθηναία), in Greek Mythology, a goddess who, from being originally a personification of the clear, bright upper region of the sky, had, as early as the time of the epic poets, changed, or advanced, so as to embody under a divine form a conception of the clear in sight of the human mind in its various functions. This upper air or ether seemed to be a distinct element in the universe. From it came the light of morning before sunrise and of evening after sunset, reminding us of the light which, in the Mosaic account of the Creation, existed before the sun and moon were placed in the sky. In the first stage of her character, in which, like the other deities of Olympus, she was directly identified with an element of nature and supposed to act as it acted, Athena bore the name of Pallas, and was thought of more in connection with the storms than with the serenity or light of the heavens. The obvious counterpart of a storm was a raging battle, and, accordingly, she became a goddess of war, armed with spear and helmet, and with the ægis, or storm-shield, of her father, resistless among men, hurling to the ground the giant Enceladus, and even superior in might to Ares himself, the god of war. The storm sweeps sorest round high citadels, where also the storms of war rage fiercest; and on such places was her favourite abode. But a storm is followed by serenity brighter than before, more enjoyable, and more exciting to activity of every kind; and then the goddess lays aside her armour to encourage and foster skill and industry. Her title is then Ergane. To her was ascribed the invention of spinning and weaving; of taming horses, bridling and yoking them to the war-chariot; of the flute, and in some way of the healing art. This is the second stage of her character, which the myth, agreeably to its principle, explains in a different fashion, when it says that she sprang into existence from the brain of the all-wise ruler of the world, Zeus, and that he had before swallowed his wife, Metis (intelligence). She must therefore have been in a measure a complement of him, created for the purpose of carrying out among men what was in his mind, but what yet he could not himself, as the supreme and impartial ruler, execute. As his substitute, she lent her aid to Heracles in all his hardships and adventures; to Theseus under similar circumstances; to the Greeks in their war against Troy; to Perseus in slaying the Gorgon Medusa, whose head she afterwards bore upon her ægis, from which she obtained the name of Gorgophone; and to the Argonauts on their expedition to Colchis. She maintained always her character of a virgin, and, to express this, bore, at Athens in particular, the name of Parthenos. Her birth took place in Olympus, in presence of the other deities, Hephæstus aiding it, as it is coarsely said, by splitting open with his hatchet the skull of Zeus, a subject often represented on the ancient painted vases. This was also the subject of the sculptures in the front pediment of her greatest temple, the Parthenon at Athens. From the fact that in the other pediment the sculptures represented her contest with Poseidon for divine supremacy over Attica, it might perhaps seem that the first act of her existence was to claim this sovereignty. Foremost in her character always is her protection of high citadels, like that of Athens. Yet it was not for this, but for her causing an olive to grow on the bare rock of the Acropolis, that she was chosen rather than Poseidon, whose claim was that he had raised on the same rock a spring of brackish water. The olives of Attica were a source of great wealth, and the light supplied by their oil may have seemed not unlike the light of the ether. As the defender of citadels her title was Polias.
