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Astrometry | References | References |
Astrometry | Further reading | Further reading
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Astrometry | External links | External links
MPC Guide to Minor Body Astrometry
Astrometry Department of the U.S. Naval Observatory
USNO Astrometric Catalog and related Products
SuperNOVAS high-precision astrometry library for C/C++.
Planet-Like Body Discovered at Fringes of Our Solar System (2004-03-15)
Mike Brown's Caltech Home Page
Scientific Paper describing Sedna's discovery
The Hipparcos Space Astrometry Mission — on ESA
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Astrometry | Table of Content | short description, History, Applications, Statistics, Computer programs, See also, References, Further reading, External links |
Athena | short description | Athena or Athene, often given the epithet Pallas, is an ancient Greek goddess associated with wisdom, warfare, and handicraft who was later syncretized with the Roman goddess Minerva. Athena was regarded as the patron and protectress of various cities across Greece, particularly the city of Athens, from which she most likely received her name. The Parthenon on the Acropolis of Athens is dedicated to her. Her major symbols include owls, olive trees, snakes, and the Gorgoneion. In art, she is generally depicted wearing a helmet and holding a spear.
From her origin as an Aegean palace goddess, Athena was closely associated with the city. She was known as Polias and Poliouchos (both derived from polis, meaning "city-state"), and her temples were usually located atop the fortified acropolis in the central part of the city. The Parthenon on the Athenian Acropolis is dedicated to her, along with numerous other temples and monuments. As the patron of craft and weaving, Athena was known as Ergane. She was also a warrior goddess, and was believed to lead soldiers into battle as Athena Promachos. Her main festival in Athens was the Panathenaia, which was celebrated during the month of Hekatombaion in midsummer and was the most important festival on the Athenian calendar.
In Greek mythology, Athena was believed to have been born from the forehead of her father Zeus. In almost all versions of the story, Athena has no mother and is born from Zeus' forehead by parthenogenesis. In a few others, such as Hesiod's Theogony, Zeus swallows his consort Metis, who was pregnant with Athena; in this version, Athena is first born within Zeus and then escapes from his body through his forehead. In the founding myth of Athens, Athena bested Poseidon in a competition over patronage of the city by creating the first olive tree. She was known as Athena Parthenos "Athena the Virgin". In one archaic Attic myth, Hephaestus tried and failed to rape her, resulting in Gaia giving birth to Erichthonius, an important Athenian founding hero Athena raised. She was the patron goddess of heroic endeavor; she was believed to have aided the heroes Perseus, Heracles, Bellerophon, and Jason. Along with Aphrodite and Hera, Athena was one of the three goddesses whose feud resulted in the Trojan War. She plays an active role in the Iliad, in which she assists the Achaeans and, in the Odyssey, she is the tutelary deity to Odysseus.
In the later writings of the Roman poet Ovid, Athena was said to have competed against the mortal Arachne in a weaving competition, afterward transforming Arachne into the first spider, and to have transformed Medusa into the Gorgon after witnessing the young woman being raped by Poseidon in the goddess's temple. Ovid also says that Athena saved the mortal maiden Corone from the same god by transforming her into a crow. Since the Renaissance, Athena has become an international symbol of wisdom, the arts, and classical learning. Western artists and allegorists have often used Athena as a symbol of freedom and democracy. |
Athena | Etymology | Etymology
thumb|The Acropolis at Athens (1846) by Leo von Klenze. Athena's name probably comes from the name of the city of Athens.
Athena is associated with the city of Athens. The name of the city in ancient Greek is (), a plural toponym, designating the place where—according to myth—she presided over the Athenai, a sisterhood devoted to her worship. In ancient times, scholars argued whether Athena was named after Athens or Athens after Athena. Now scholars generally agree that the goddess takes her name from the city; the ending -ene is common in names of locations, but rare for personal names. Testimonies from different cities in ancient Greece attest that similar city goddesses were worshipped in other cities and, like Athena, took their names from the cities where they were worshipped. For example, in Mycenae there was a goddess called Mykene, whose sisterhood was known as Mykenai, whereas at Thebes an analogous deity was called Thebe, and the city was known under the plural form Thebai (or Thebes, in English, where the 's' is the plural formation). The name Athenai is likely of Pre-Greek origin because it contains the presumably Pre-Greek morpheme *-ān-.
In his dialogue Cratylus, the ancient Greek philosopher Plato (428–347 BC) gives some rather imaginative etymologies of Athena's name, based on the theories of the ancient Athenians and his etymological speculations:
Thus, Plato believed that Athena's name was derived from Greek , —which the later Greeks rationalised as from the deity's (, ) mind (, ). The second-century AD orator Aelius Aristides attempted to derive natural symbols from the etymological roots of Athena's names to be aether, air, earth, and moon. |
Athena | Origins | Origins
thumb|upright=1.3|Fragment of a fresco from the Cult Center at Mycenae dating the late thirteenth century BC depicting a warrior goddess, possibly Athena, wearing a boar's tusk helmet and clutching a griffin.
Athena was originally the Aegean goddess of the palace, who presided over household crafts and protected the king. A single Mycenaean Greek inscription appears at Knossos in the Linear B tablets from the Late Minoan II-era "Room of the Chariot Tablets"; these comprise the earliest Linear B archive anywhere. Although Athana potnia is often translated as "Mistress Athena", it could also mean "the Potnia of Athana", or the Lady of Athens. However, any connection to the city of Athens in the Knossos inscription is uncertain. A sign series appears in the still undeciphered corpus of Linear A tablets, written in the unclassified Minoan language.KO Za 1 inscription, line 1. This could be connected with the Linear B Mycenaean expressions and or (Diwia, "of Zeus" or, possibly, related to a homonymous goddess), resulting in a translation "Athena of Zeus" or "divine Athena". Similarly, in the Greek mythology and epic tradition, Athena figures as a daughter of Zeus (; cfr. Dyeus). However, the inscription quoted seems to be very similar to "", quoted as SY Za 1 by Jan Best. Best translates the initial , which is recurrent in line beginnings, as "I have given".
A Mycenean fresco depicts two women extending their hands towards a central figure, who is covered by an enormous figure-eight shield; this may depict the warrior-goddess with her palladium, or her palladium in an aniconic representation. In the "Procession Fresco" at Knossos, which was reconstructed by the Mycenaeans, two rows of figures carrying vessels seem to meet in front of a central figure, which is probably the Minoan precursor to Athena. The early twentieth-century scholar Martin Persson Nilsson argued that the Minoan snake goddess figurines are early representations of Athena.
Nilsson and others have claimed that, in early times, Athena was either an owl herself or a bird goddess in general. In the third book of the Odyssey, she takes the form of a sea-eagle. Proponents of this view argue that she dropped her prophylactic owl mask before she lost her wings. "Athena, by the time she appears in art," Jane Ellen Harrison remarks, "has completely shed her animal form, has reduced the shapes she once wore of snake and bird to attributes, but occasionally in black-figure vase-paintings she still appears with wings."Harrison 1922:306. Cfr. ibid., p. 307, fig. 84: .
thumb|upright=1.3|left|Ancient Akkadian cylinder seal (dating 2334–2154 BC) depicting Inanna, the goddess of war, armored and carrying weapons, resting her foot on the back of a lion
It is generally agreed that the cult of Athena preserves some aspects of the Proto-Indo-European transfunctional goddess. The cult of Athena may have also been influenced by those of Near Eastern warrior goddesses such as the East Semitic Ishtar and the Ugaritic Anat, both of whom were often portrayed bearing arms. Classical scholar Charles Penglase notes that Athena resembles Inanna in her role as a "terrifying warrior goddess" and that both goddesses were closely linked with creation. Athena's birth from the head of Zeus may be derived from the earlier Sumerian myth of Inanna's descent into and return from the Underworld.
Plato notes that the citizens of Sais in Egypt worshipped a goddess known as Neith, whom he identifies with Athena.Cf. also Herodotus, Histories 2:170–175. Neith was the ancient Egyptian goddess of war and hunting, who was also associated with weaving; her worship began during the Egyptian Pre-Dynastic period. In Greek mythology, Athena was reported to have visited mythological sites in North Africa, including Libya's Triton River and the Phlegraean plain. Based on these similarities, the Sinologist Martin Bernal created the "Black Athena" hypothesis, which claimed that Neith was brought to Greece from Egypt, along with "an enormous number of features of civilization and culture in the third and second millennia". The "Black Athena" hypothesis stirred up widespread controversy near the end of the twentieth century, but it has now been widely rejected by modern scholars. |
Athena | Epithets and attributes | Epithets and attributes
Athena was also the goddess of peace.
In a similar manner to her patronage of various activities and Greek cities, Athena was thought to be a "protector of heroes" and a "patron of art" and various local traditions related to the arts and handicrafts.
Athena was known as Atrytone ( "the Unwearying"), Parthenos ( "Virgin"), and Promachos ( "she who fights in front"). The epithet Polias (Πολιάς "of the city"), refers to Athena's role as protectress of the city. The epithet Ergane (Εργάνη "the Industrious") pointed her out as the patron of craftsmen and artisans. Burkert notes that the Athenians sometimes simply called Athena "the Goddess", hē theós (ἡ θεός), certainly an ancient title. After serving as the judge at the trial of Orestes in which he was acquitted of having murdered his mother Clytemnestra since he was following Apollo's orders, Athena won the epithet Areia (Αρεία). Some have described Athena, along with the goddesses Hestia and Artemis as being asexual, this is mainly supported by the fact that in the Homeric Hymns, 5, To Aphrodite, where Aphrodite is described as having "no power" over the three goddesses.
Athena was sometimes given the epithet Hippia (Ἵππια "of the horses", "equestrian"), referring to her invention of the bit, bridle, chariot, and wagon. The Greek geographer Pausanias mentions in his Guide to Greece that the temple of Athena Chalinitis ("the bridler") in Corinth was located near the tomb of Medea's children. Other epithets include Ageleia, Itonia and Aethyia, under which she was worshiped in Megara.Pausanias, i. 5. § 3; 41. § 6. She was worshipped as Assesia in Assesos. The word aíthyia () signifies a "diver", also some diving bird species (possibly the shearwater) and figuratively, a "ship", so the name must reference Athena teaching the art of shipbuilding or navigation.John Tzetzes, ad Lycophr., l.c.. In a temple at Phrixa in Elis, reportedly built by Clymenus, she was known as Cydonia (Κυδωνία). Pausanias wrote that at Buporthmus there was a sanctuary of Athena Promachorma (Προμαχόρμα), meaning protector of the anchorage.
The Greek biographer Plutarch describes Pericles's dedication of a statue to her as Athena Hygieia (Ὑγίεια, "Health") after she inspired, in a dream, his successful treatment of a man injured during the construction of the gateway to the Acropolis.
Mechanitis (Μηχανῖτις), meaning skilled in inventing, was one of the epithets of her.A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology, Mechaneus
At Athens there is the temple of Athena Phratria, as patron of a phratry, in the Ancient Agora of Athens. |
Athena | Pallas Athena | Pallas Athena
thumb|Pallas Athenas (1657) by Rembrandt, which recalls her attributes as the goddess of warfare.|left
Athena's epithet Pallas – her most renowned one – is derived either from , meaning "to brandish [as a weapon]", or, more likely, from and related words, meaning "youth, young woman".Chantraine, s.v.; the New Pauly says the etymology is simply unknown On this topic, Walter Burkert says "she is the Pallas of Athens, Pallas Athenaie, just as Hera of Argos is Here Argeie". In later times, after the original meaning of the name had been forgotten, the Greeks invented myths to explain its origins, such as those reported by the Epicurean philosopher Philodemus and the Bibliotheca of Pseudo-Apollodorus, which claim that Pallas was originally a separate entity, whom Athena had slain in combat.New Pauly s.v. Pallas
In one version of the myth, Pallas was the daughter of the sea-god Triton, and she and Athena were childhood friends. Zeus one day watched Athena and Pallas have a friendly sparring match. Not wanting his daughter to lose, Zeus flapped his aegis to distract Pallas, whom Athena accidentally impaled. Distraught over what she had done, Athena took the name Pallas for herself as a sign of her grief and tribute to her friend and Zeus gave her the aegis as an apology. In another version of the story, Pallas was a Giant; Athena slew him during the Gigantomachy and flayed off his skin to make her cloak, which she wore as a victory trophy. In an alternative variation of the same myth, Pallas was instead Athena's father, who attempted to assault his own daughter, causing Athena to kill him and take his skin as a trophy.
The palladium was a statue of Athena that was said to have stood in her temple on the Trojan Acropolis. Athena was said to have carved the statue herself in the likeness of her dead friend Pallas. The statue had special talisman-like properties and it was thought that, as long as it was in the city, Troy could never fall. When the Greeks captured Troy, Cassandra, the daughter of Priam and Hecuba, clung to the palladium for protection, but Ajax the Lesser violently tore her away from it, dragged her over to the other captives and raped her. Athena was infuriated by this violation of her protection. Although Agamemnon attempted to placate her anger with sacrifices, Athena sent a storm at Cape Kaphereos to destroy almost the entire Greek fleet and scatter all of the surviving ships across the Aegean. |
Athena | ''Glaukopis'' | Glaukopis
thumb|The owl of Athena, surrounded by an olive wreath. Reverse of an Athenian silver tetradrachm, 175 BC
In Homer's epic works, Athena's most common epithet is (), which usually is translated as, "bright-eyed" or "with gleaming eyes".. The word is a combination of (, meaning "gleaming, silvery", and later, "bluish-green" or "gray"). and (, "eye, face")..
The word (, "little owl"). is from the same root, presumably according to some, because of the bird's own distinctive eyes. Athena was associated with the owl from very early on; in archaic images, she is frequently depicted with an owl perched on her hand. Through its association with Athena, the owl evolved into the national mascot of the Athenians and eventually became a symbol of wisdom. |
Athena | ''Tritogeneia'' | Tritogeneia
In the Iliad (4.514), the Odyssey (3.378), the Homeric Hymns, and in Hesiod's Theogony, Athena is also given the curious epithet Tritogeneia (Τριτογένεια), whose significance remains unclear. It could mean various things, including "Triton-born", perhaps indicating that the homonymous sea-deity was her parent according to some early myths. One myth relates the foster father relationship of this Triton towards the half-orphan Athena, whom he raised alongside his own daughter Pallas. Kerényi suggests that "Tritogeneia did not mean that she came into the world on any particular river or lake, but that she was born of the water itself; for the name Triton seems to be associated with water generally.". In Ovid's Metamorphoses, Athena is occasionally referred to as "Tritonia".
Another possible meaning may be "triple-born" or "third-born", which may refer to a triad or to her status as the third daughter of Zeus or the fact she was born from Metis, Zeus, and herself; various legends list her as being the first child after Artemis and Apollo, though other legends identify her as Zeus' first child.Hesiod, Theogony II, 886–900. Several scholars have suggested a connection to the Rigvedic god Trita, who was sometimes grouped in a body of three mythological poets. Michael Janda has connected the myth of Trita to the scene in the Iliad in which the "three brothers" Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades divide the world between them, receiving the "broad sky", the sea, and the underworld respectively.Homer, Iliad XV, 187–195. Janda further connects the myth of Athena being born of the head (i. e. the uppermost part) of Zeus, understanding Trito- (which perhaps originally meant "the third") as another word for "the sky". In Janda's analysis of Indo-European mythology, this heavenly sphere is also associated with the mythological body of water surrounding the inhabited world (cfr. Triton's mother, Amphitrite, queen of Poseidon).
Yet another possible meaning is mentioned in Diogenes Laertius' biography of Democritus, that Athena was called "Tritogeneia" because three things, on which all mortal life depends, come from her. |
Athena | Cult and patronages | Cult and patronages |
Athena | Panhellenic and Athenian cult | Panhellenic and Athenian cult
thumb|left|Athenian tetradrachm representing the goddess Athena
In her aspect of Athena Polias, Athena was venerated as the goddess of the city and the protectress of the citadel. In Athens, the Plynteria, or "Feast of the Bath", was observed every year at the end of the month of Thargelion. The festival lasted for five days. During this period, the priestesses of Athena, or plyntrídes, performed a cleansing ritual within the Erechtheion, a sanctuary devoted to Athena and Poseidon. Here Athena's statue was undressed, her clothes washed, and body purified. Athena was worshipped at festivals such as Chalceia as Athena Ergane, the patroness of various crafts, especially weaving. She was also the patron of metalworkers and was believed to aid in the forging of armor and weapons. During the late fifth century BC, the role of goddess of philosophy became a major aspect of Athena's cult.
thumb|A new peplos was woven for Athena and ceremonially brought to dress her cult image (British Museum).
As Athena Promachos, she was believed to lead soldiers into battle. Athena represented the disciplined, strategic side of war, in contrast to her brother Ares, the patron of violence, bloodlust, and slaughter—"the raw force of war". Athena was believed to only support those fighting for a just cause and was thought to view war primarily as a means to resolve conflict. The Greeks regarded Athena with much higher esteem than Ares. Athena was especially worshipped in this role during the festivals of the Panathenaea and Pamboeotia, both of which prominently featured displays of athletic and military prowess. As the patroness of heroes and warriors, Athena was believed to favor those who used cunning and intelligence rather than brute strength.
thumb|left|upright=1.3|The Parthenon on the Athenian Acropolis, which is dedicated to Athena Parthenos
In her aspect as a warrior maiden, Athena was known as Parthenos ( "virgin"), because, like her fellow goddesses Artemis and Hestia, she was believed to remain perpetually a virgin. Athena's most famous temple, the Parthenon on the Athenian Acropolis, takes its name from this title. According to Karl Kerényi, a scholar of Greek mythology, the name Parthenos is not merely an observation of Athena's virginity, but also a recognition of her role as enforcer of rules of sexual modesty and ritual mystery. Even beyond recognition, the Athenians allotted the goddess value based on this pureness of virginity, which they upheld as a rudiment of female behavior. Kerényi's study and theory of Athena explains her virginal epithet as a result of her relationship to her father Zeus and a vital, cohesive piece of her character throughout the ages. This role is expressed in several stories about Athena. Marinus of Neapolis reports that when Christians removed the statue of the goddess from the Parthenon, a beautiful woman appeared in a dream to Proclus, a devotee of Athena, and announced that the "Athenian Lady" wished to dwell with him.
Athena was also credited with creating the pebble-based form of divination. Those pebbles were called thriai, which was also the collective name of a group of nymphs with prophetic powers. Her half-brother Apollo, however, angered and spiteful at the practitioners of an art rival to his own, complained to their father Zeus about it, with the pretext that many people took to casting pebbles, but few actually were true prophets. Zeus, sympathizing with Apollo's grievances, discredited the pebble divination by rendering the pebbles useless. Apollo's words became the basis of an ancient Greek idiom. |
Athena | Regional cults | Regional cults
thumb|right|Reverse side of a Pergamene silver tetradrachm minted by Eumenes I (r. 263–241 BC), showing Athena seated on a throne
Athena was not only the patron goddess of Athens, but also other cities, including Pergamon, Argos, Sparta, Gortyn, Lindos, and Larisa. The various cults of Athena were all branches of her panhellenic cult and often proctored various initiation rites of Grecian youth, such as the passage into citizenship by young men or the passage of young women into marriage. These cults were portals of a uniform socialization, even beyond mainland Greece. Athena was frequently equated with Aphaea, a local goddess of the island of Aegina, originally from Crete and also associated with Artemis and the nymph Britomartis. In Arcadia, she was assimilated with the ancient goddess Alea and worshiped as Athena Alea. Sanctuaries dedicated to Athena Alea were located in the Laconian towns of Mantineia and Tegea. The temple of Athena Alea in Tegea was an important religious center of ancient Greece. The geographer Pausanias was informed that the temenos had been founded by Aleus.Pausanias, Description of Greece viii.4.8.
Athena had a major temple on the Spartan Acropolis, where she was venerated as Poliouchos and Khalkíoikos ("of the Brazen House", often latinized as Chalcioecus). This epithet may refer to the fact that cult statue held there may have been made of bronze, that the walls of the temple itself may have been made of bronze, or that Athena was the patron of metal-workers. Bells made of terracotta and bronze were used in Sparta as part of Athena's cult. An Ionic-style temple to Athena Polias was built at Priene in the fourth century BC. It was designed by Pytheos of Priene, the same architect who designed the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus. The temple was dedicated by Alexander the Great and an inscription from the temple declaring his dedication is now held in the British Museum. She was worshipped as Athena Asia in Colchis – supposedly on an account of a nearby mountain with that name – from which her worship was believed to have been brought by Castor and Pollux to Laconia, where a temple was built to her at Las.Pausanias, Description of Greece 3.24.5
In Pergamon, Athena was thought to have been a god of the cosmos and the aspects of it that aided Pergamon and its fate. |
Athena | Mythology | Mythology |
Athena | Birth | Birth
thumb|upright=1.2|Athena is "born" from Zeus's forehead parthenogenetically as he grasps the clothing of Eileithyia on the right; black-figured amphora, 550–525 BC, Louvre.
left|thumb|The Varvakeion Athena, the most faithful copy of the Athena Parthenos, as displayed in the National Archaeological Museum, Athens.
In the classical Olympian pantheon, Athena was regarded as the favorite child of Zeus, the king of the gods, born fully armed from his forehead. Since her birth, she possessed great power. The story of her birth comes in several versions. The earliest mention is in Book V of the Iliad, when Ares accused Zeus of being biased in favor of Athena because "autos egeinao" (literally "you fathered her", but probably intended as "you gave birth to her").Iliad Book V, line 880 She usually is the daughter of Zeus, produced without a mother, and often emerged full-grown from his forehead; but there is an uncommon alternate story in which Zeus swallowed Metis, the goddess of counsel, while she was pregnant with Athena and when she was fully grown she emerged from his forehead.
In the version recounted by Hesiod in his Theogony, Zeus married Metis, who is described as the "wisest among gods and mortal men", and engaged in sexual intercourse with her.Hesiod, Theogony 885–900 , 929e-929t After learning that Metis was pregnant, however, he became afraid that the unborn offspring would try to overthrow him, because Gaia and Ouranos had prophesied that Metis would bear a son wiser and more powerful than his father who would overthrow him. In order to prevent this, Zeus tricked Metis into letting him swallow her, but it was too late because she had already conceived and soon gave birth to their daughter Athena, whom Metis raised inside of his mind, where she continues to give him advice as a ruler. When Athena grew up, Metis forged robes, armor, a shield and a spear for her daughter. A later account of the story from the Bibliotheca of Pseudo-Apollodorus, written in the second century AD, makes Metis Zeus's unwilling sexual partner, rather than his wife.Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 1.3.6 According to this version of the story, Metis transformed into many different shapes in effort to escape Zeus, but Zeus successfully raped her and swallowed her.
After swallowing Metis, according to Hesiod, Zeus took six more wives in succession until he married his seventh and present wife, Hera. Then Zeus experienced an enormous headache. He was in such pain that he ordered someone (either Prometheus, Hephaestus, Hermes, Ares, or Palaemon, depending on the sources examined) to cleave his head open with the labrys, the double-headed Minoan axe. Athena leaped from Zeus's head, often fully grown and armed. The "First Homeric Hymn to Athena" states in lines 9–16 that the gods were awestruck by Athena's appearance and even Helios, the god of the sun, stopped his chariot in the sky. Pindar, in his "Seventh Olympian Ode", states that she "cried aloud with a mighty shout" and that "the Sky and mother Earth shuddered before her".Pindar, "Seventh Olympian Ode " lines 37–38
Hesiod states that Hera was so annoyed at Zeus for having given birth to a child on his own that she conceived and bore Hephaestus by herself, but in Imagines 2. 27 (trans. Fairbanks), the third-century AD Greek rhetorician Philostratus the Elder writes that Hera "rejoices" at Athena's birth "as though Athena were her daughter also". The second-century AD Christian apologist Justin Martyr takes issue with those pagans who erect at springs images of Kore, whom he interprets as Athena: "They said that Athena was the daughter of Zeus not from intercourse, but when the god had in mind the making of a world through a word (logos) his first thought was Athena."Justin, Apology 64.5, quoted in Robert McQueen Grant, Gods and the One God, vol. 1:155, who observes that it is Porphyry "who similarly identifies Athena with 'forethought'. According to a rare account of the story in a scholium on the Iliad, when Zeus swallowed Metis, she was pregnant with Athena by the Cyclops Brontes.Gantz, p. 51; Yasumura, p. 89 ; scholia bT to Iliad 8.39. The Etymologicum Magnum instead deems Athena the daughter of the Daktyl Itonos. Fragments attributed by the Christian Eusebius of Caesarea to the semi-legendary Phoenician historian Sanchuniathon, which Eusebius thought had been written before the Trojan War, make Athena instead the daughter of Cronus, a king of Byblos who visited "the inhabitable world" and bequeathed Attica to Athena.
Athena, born a daughter instead of the son of the prophecy Hesiod described, never successfully overthrew her father Zeus as the ruler of the cosmos; but Homer' Illiad tells of an attempted overthrow, in which she, Hera and Poseidon conspired to overpower Zeus and tie him in bonds. It is only because of the Nereid Thetis, who summoned Briareus, one of the Hecatoncheires, to Mount Olympus, that the other gods abandon their plans (out of fear for Briareus).Gantz, p. 59; Hard 2004, p. 82; Homer, Iliad 1.395–410. |
Athena | Lady of Athens | Lady of Athens
thumb|left|upright=1.3|The Dispute of Minerva and Neptune by René-Antoine Houasse ()
As the goddess of war, good counsel, prudent restraint and practical insight, Athena became the guardian of the welfare of kings. In a founding myth reported by Pseudo-Apollodorus, she competed with Poseidon for the patronage of Athens. They agreed that each would give the Athenians one gift and that Cecrops, the king of Athens, would determine which gift was better. Poseidon struck the ground with his trident and a salt water spring sprang up; this gave the Athenians access to trade and water. Athens at its height was a significant sea power, defeating the Persian fleet at the Battle of Salamis—but the water was salty and undrinkable. In an alternative version of the myth from Vergil's Georgics, Poseidon instead gave the Athenians the first horse. Athena offered the first domesticated olive tree. Cecrops accepted this gift and declared Athena the patron goddess of Athens. The olive tree brought wood, oil, and food, and became a symbol of Athenian economic prosperity. Robert Graves was of the opinion that "Poseidon's attempts to take possession of certain cities are political myths", which reflect the conflict between matriarchal and patriarchal religions.
thumb|upright=1.2|The Athena Giustiniani, a Roman copy of a Greek statue of Pallas Athena. The guardian serpent of the Athenian Acropolis sits coiled at her feet.
Afterwards, Poseidon was so angry over his defeat that he sent one of his sons, Halirrhothius, to cut down the tree. But as he swung his axe, he missed his aim and it fell in himself, killing him. This was supposedly the origin of calling Athena's sacred olive tree moria, for Halirrhotius's attempt at revenge proved fatal (moros in Greek). Poseidon in fury accused Ares of murder, and the matter was eventually settled on the Areopagus ("hill of Ares") in favour of Ares, which was thereafter named after the event.Servius On Virgil's Georgics 1.18; scholia on Aristophanes's Clouds 1005
Pseudo-Apollodorus records an archaic legend, which claims that Hephaestus once attempted to rape Athena, but she pushed him away, causing him to ejaculate on her thigh. Athena wiped the semen off using a tuft of wool, which she tossed into the dust, impregnating Gaia and causing her to give birth to Erichthonius. Athena adopted Erichthonius as her son and raised him. The Fabulae, a work of Roman mythography attributed to Gaius Julius Hyginus, records a similar story in which Hephaestus demanded Zeus to let him marry Athena since he was the one who had smashed open Zeus's skull, allowing Athena to be born. Zeus agreed to this and Hephaestus and Athena were married, but, when Hephaestus was about to consummate the union, Athena vanished from the bridal bed, causing him to ejaculate on the floor, thus impregnating Gaia with Erichthonius.
The geographer Pausanias records that Athena went to place the infant Erichthonius into a small chest (cista), which she entrusted to the care of the three daughters of Cecrops: Herse, Pandrosos, and Aglauros of Athens. She warned the three sisters not to open the chest, but did not explain to them why or what was in it. Aglauros, and possibly one of the other sisters, opened the chest. Differing reports say that they either found that the child itself was a serpent, that it was guarded by a serpent, that it was guarded by two serpents, or that it had the legs of a serpent. In Pausanias's story, the two sisters were driven mad by the sight of the chest's contents and hurled themselves off the Acropolis, dying instantly, but an Attic vase painting shows them being chased by the serpent off the edge of the cliff instead. An alternative version of the story is that Athena left the box with the daughters of Cecrops while she went to fetch a limestone mountain from the Pallene peninsula to use in the Acropolis. While she was away, Aglaurus and Herse opened the box. A crow saw them open the box, and flew away to tell Athena, who fell into a rage and dropped the mountain she was carrying which became Mount Lycabettus.
Another version of the myth of the Athenian maidens is told in Metamorphoses by the Roman poet Ovid (43 BC17 AD); in this late variant Hermes falls in love with Herse. Herse, Aglaulus, and Pandrosus go to the temple to offer sacrifices to Athena. Hermes demands help from Aglaulus to seduce Herse. Aglaulus demands money in exchange. Hermes gives her the money the sisters have already offered to Athena. As punishment for Aglaulus's greed, Athena asks the goddess Envy to make Aglaulus jealous of Herse. When Hermes arrives to seduce Herse, Aglaulus stands in his way instead of helping him as she had agreed. He turns her to stone.Ovid, Metamorphoses, X. Aglaura, Book II, 708–751; XI. The Envy, Book II, 752–832.
Erichthonius was one of the most important founding heroes of Athens and the legend of the daughters of Cecrops was a cult myth linked to the rituals of the Arrhephoria festival. Pausanias records that, during the Arrhephoria, two young girls known as the Arrhephoroi, who lived near the temple of Athena Polias, would be given hidden objects by the priestess of Athena, which they would carry on their heads down a natural underground passage. They would leave the objects they had been given at the bottom of the passage and take another set of hidden objects, which they would carry on their heads back up to the temple. The ritual was performed in the dead of night and no one, not even the priestess, knew what the objects were. The serpent in the story may be the same one depicted coiled at Athena's feet in Pheidias's famous statue of the Athena Parthenos in the Parthenon. Many of the surviving sculptures of Athena show this serpent. Herodotus records that a serpent lived in a crevice on the north side of the summit of the Athenian Acropolis and that the Athenians left a honey cake for it each month as an offering. On the eve of the Second Persian invasion of Greece in 480 BC, the serpent did not eat the honey cake and the Athenians interpreted it as a sign that Athena herself had abandoned them.
Athena gave her favour to an Attic girl named Myrsine, a chaste girl who outdid all her fellow athletes in both the palaestra and the race. Out of envy, the other athletes murdered her, but Athena took pity in her and transformed her dead body into a myrtle, a plant thereafter as favoured by her as the olive was. An almost exact story was said about another girl, Elaea, who transformed into an olive, Athena's sacred tree.
According to Ovid, one day as the mortal maiden Corone was walking by the seashore, Poseidon saw her and attempted to seduce her. When his efforts failed, he attempted to rape her instead. However, Corone fled from his rapacious advances, crying out to men and gods. While no man heard her, "the virgin goddess feels pity for a virgin"; Athena saved her by transforming her into a crow.
After the deaths of their parents, the orphaned Cleothera and Merope were raised by Aphrodite.Homer, Odyssey 20.66-78 The other Olympian goddesses also blessed the girls with gifts and blessings; Hera gave them beauty, Artemis high stature, and Athena taught them women's crafts.Pausanias 10.30.1 |
Athena | Patron of heroes | Patron of heroes
In Homer's Iliad, Athena, as a war goddess, inspired and fought alongside the Greek heroes; her aid was synonymous with military prowess. Zeus, the chief god, specifically assigned the sphere of war to Ares, the god of war, and Athena. Athena's moral and military superiority to Ares derived in part from the fact that she represented the intellectual and civilized side of war and the virtues of justice and skill, whereas Ares represented mere blood lust. Her superiority also derived in part from the vastly greater variety and importance of her functions and the patriotism of Homer's predecessors, Ares being of foreign origin. In the Iliad, Athena was the divine form of the heroic, martial ideal: she personified excellence in close combat and glory, and was personally attended by Nike, the goddess of victory. The qualities that led to victory were found on the aegis, or breastplate, that Athena wore when she went to war: fear, strife, defense, and assault. thumb|upright=1.3|Attic red-figure kylix painting from 480-470 BC showing Athena observing as the Colchian dragon disgorges the hero Jason
According to Pseudo-Apollodorus's Bibliotheca, Athena advised Argos, the builder of the Argo, the ship on which the hero Jason and his band of Argonauts sailed, and aided in the ship's construction.Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 1.9.16 According to Pindar's Thirteenth Olympian Ode, Athena helped the hero Bellerophon tame the winged horse Pegasus by giving him a bit.Pindar, Olympian Ode 13.75–78 In Aeschylus's tragedy Orestes, Athena intervenes to save Orestes from the wrath of the Erinyes and presides over his trial for the murder of his mother Clytemnestra. When half the jury votes to acquit and the other half votes to convict, Athena casts the deciding vote to acquit Orestes and declares that, from then on, whenever a jury is tied, the defendant shall always be acquitted.
Pseudo-Apollodorus also records that Athena guided the hero Perseus in his quest to behead Medusa. She and Hermes, the god of travelers, appeared to Perseus after he set off on his quest and gifted him with tools he would need to kill the Gorgon.Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 2.37, 38, 39 Athena lent Perseus her polished bronze shield to view Medusa's reflection without becoming petrified himself.Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 2.41 Hermes lent Perseus his harpe to behead Medusa with.Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 2.39 When Perseus swung the blade to behead Medusa, Athena guided it, allowing the blade to cut the Gorgon's head clean off.
In ancient Greek art, Athena is frequently shown aiding the hero Heracles. She appears in four of the twelve metopes on the Temple of Zeus at Olympia depicting Heracles's Twelve Labors, including the first, in which she simply watches him slay the Nemean lion after having told him how to use the lion's own claws to skin the pelt, and in the tenth, in which she is shown actively helping him hold up the sky itself. According to Apollodorus, on Athena's advice, Heracles dragged Alcyoneus, one of the two strongest Giants alongside Porphyrion, beyond the borders of his native land, where he was immortal, and then fatally shot him (compare with Antaeus).Antaeus, another offspring of Gaia who was an opponent of Heracles, was immortal as long as he was in contact with the earth. Heracles killed Antaeus by crushing him while holding him off the ground. For Pindar, Hearacles' battle with Alcyoneus (whom he calls a herdsman) and the Gigantomachy were separate events, see: Isthmian 6.30–35, Nemean 4.24–30. She is presented as Heracles' "stern ally", but also the "gentle ... acknowledger of his achievements". Artistic depictions of Heracles's apotheosis show Athena driving him to Mount Olympus in her chariot and presenting him to Zeus for his deification.
In The Odyssey, Odysseus' cunning and shrewd nature quickly wins Athena's favour. For the first part of the poem, however, she largely is confined to aiding him only from afar, mainly by implanting thoughts in his head during his journey home from Troy. Her guiding actions reinforce her role as the "protectress of heroes", or, as mythologian Walter Friedrich Otto dubbed her, the "goddess of nearness", due to her mentoring and motherly probing.W. F. Otto, Die Gotter Griechenlands (55–77). Bonn: F. Cohen, 1929. It is not until he washes up on the shore of the island of the Phaeacians, where Nausicaa is washing her clothes that Athena arrives personally to provide more tangible assistance. She appears in Nausicaa's dreams to ensure that the princess rescues Odysseus and plays a role in his eventual escort to Ithaca. Athena appears to Odysseus upon his arrival, disguised as a herdsman; she initially lies and tells him that Penelope, his wife, has remarried and that he is believed to be dead, but Odysseus lies back to her, employing skillful prevarications to protect himself. Impressed by his resolve and shrewdness, she reveals herself and tells him what he needs to know to win back his kingdom. She disguises him as an elderly beggar so that he will not be recognized by the suitors or Penelope, and helps him to defeat the suitors. Athena also appears to Odysseus's son Telemachus. Her actions lead him to travel around to Odysseus's comrades and ask about his father. He hears stories about some of Odysseus's journey. Athena's push for Telemachus's journey helps him grow into the man role, that his father once held. She also plays a role in ending the resultant feud against the suitors' relatives. She instructs Laertes to throw his spear and to kill Eupeithes, the father of Antinous. |
Athena | Punishment myths | Punishment myths
A myth told by the early third-century BC Hellenistic poet Callimachus in his Hymn 5 begins with Athena bathing in a spring on Mount Helicon at midday with one of her favorite companions, the nymph Chariclo. Chariclo's son Tiresias happened to be hunting on the same mountain and came to the spring searching for water. He inadvertently saw Athena naked, so she struck him blind to ensure he would never again see what man was not intended to see. Chariclo intervened on her son's behalf and begged Athena to have mercy. Athena replied that she could not restore Tiresias's eyesight, so, instead, she gave him the ability to understand the language of the birds and thus foretell the future.
Myrmex was a clever and chaste Attic girl who became quickly a favourite of Athena. However, when Athena invented the plough, Myrmex went to the Atticans and told them that it was in fact her own invention. Hurt by the girl's betrayal, Athena transformed her into the small insect bearing her name, the ant.Servius, Commentary on Virgil's Aeneid 4.402 ; Smith 1873, s.v. Myrmex thumb|left|upright=1.3|Classical Greek depiction of Medusa from the fourth century BC
The Gorgoneion appears to have originated as an apotropaic symbol intended to ward off evil. In a late Roman myth invented to explain the origins of the Gorgon, Medusa is described as having been raped by Poseidon in the temple of Athena. Upon discovering the desecration of her temple, Athena transformed Medusa into a hideous monster with serpents for hair whose gaze would turn any mortal to stone.
In his Twelfth Pythian Ode, Pindar recounts the story of how Athena invented the aulos, a kind of flute, in imitation of the lamentations of Medusa's sisters, the Gorgons, after she was beheaded by the hero Perseus. According to Pindar, Athena gave the aulos to mortals as a gift. Later, the comic playwright Melanippides of Melos ( 480–430 BC) embellished the story in his comedy Marsyas, claiming that Athena looked in the mirror while she was playing the aulos and saw how blowing into it puffed up her cheeks and made her look silly, so she threw the aulos away and cursed it so that whoever picked it up would meet an awful death. The aulos was picked up by the satyr Marsyas, who was later killed by Apollo for his hubris. Later, this version of the story became accepted as canonical and the Athenian sculptor Myron created a group of bronze sculptures based on it, which was installed before the western front of the Parthenon in around 440 BC.
thumb|right|upright=1.3|Minerva and Arachne by René-Antoine Houasse (1706)
The fable of Arachne appears in the Roman poet Ovid's Metamorphoses (8 AD) (vi.5–54 and 129–145), which is nearly the only extant source for the legend. The story does not appear to have been well known prior to Ovid's rendition of it and the only earlier reference to it is a brief allusion in Virgil's Georgics, (29 BC) (iv, 246) that does not mention Arachne by name. According to Ovid, Arachne (whose name means spider in ancient Greek, .) was the daughter of a famous dyer in Tyrian purple in Hypaipa of Lydia, and a weaving student of Athena. She became so conceited of her skill as a weaver that she began claiming that her skill was greater than that of Athena herself and that she didn't feel grateful to the goddess for anything, despite Athena invented weaving. Athena gave Arachne a chance to redeem herself by assuming the form of an old woman and warning Arachne not to offend the deities. Arachne scoffed and wished for a weaving contest, so she could prove her skill. Athena revelead her true form, accepted and wove the scene of her victory over Poseidon in the contest for the patronage of Athens. Her tapestry also depicted the 12 Olympian gods and defeat of mythological figures who challenged their authority. Arachne's tapestry featured twenty-one episodes of the deities' sexual affairs, including Zeus being unfaithful with Leda, with Europa, and with Danaë. It represented the unjust and discrediting behavior of the gods towards mortals. Athena admitted that Arachne's work was flawless, but was outraged at Arachne's choice of subject. Finally, losing her temper, Athena destroyed Arachne's tapestry and loom, striking it with her shuttle. Athena then struck Arachne across the face with her staff four times. Arachne hanged herself in despair, but Athena took pity on her and brought her back from the dead in the form of a spider.
In a rarer version, surviving in the scholia of an unnamed scholiast on Nicander, whose works heavily influenced Ovid, Arachne is placed in Attica instead and has a brother named Phalanx. Athena taught Arachne the art of weaving and Phalanx the art of war, but when brother and sister laid together in bed, Athena was so disgusted with them that she turned them both into spiders, animals forever doomed to be eaten by their own young.
According to Book VIII (236–59) of Ovid's Metamorphoses, Daedalus was so proud of his achievements as an inventor that he could not bear the idea of a rival. His sister had placed her son Perdix under his charge to be taught the mechanical arts. While walking on the seashore, he picked up the spine of a fish or a serpent's jaw. Imitating it, he took a piece of iron and notched it on the edge, thus inventing the saw. Daedalus was so envious of his nephew's accomplishments that he took an opportunity, when they were together one day on the top of a high tower, to push him off, but Athena, who favors ingenuity, saw him falling and saved his life by changing him into a bird called after his name, the perdix (partridge). This bird does not build its nest in the trees, nor take lofty flights, but nestles in the hedges, and mindful of his fall, avoids high places. For this crime, Daedalus was tried and banished. In some accounts, she leaves Daedalus with a scar in the shape of a partridge, to always remind him of his crime. |
Athena | Trojan War | Trojan War
thumb|upright=1.3|left|Ancient Greek mosaic from Antioch dating to the second century AD, depicting the Judgement of Paris
The myth of the Judgement of Paris is mentioned briefly in the Iliad, but is described in depth in an epitome of the Cypria, a lost poem of the Epic Cycle, which records that all the gods and goddesses as well as various mortals were invited to the marriage of Peleus and Thetis (the eventual parents of Achilles). Only Eris, goddess of discord, was not invited. She was annoyed at this, so she arrived with a golden apple inscribed with the word καλλίστῃ (kallistēi, "for the fairest"), which she threw among the goddesses. Aphrodite, Hera, and Athena all claimed to be the fairest, and thus the rightful owner of the apple. The goddesses chose to place the matter before Zeus, who, not wanting to favor one of the goddesses, put the choice into the hands of Paris, a Trojan prince. After bathing in the spring of Mount Ida where Troy was situated, the goddesses appeared before Paris for his decision. In the extant ancient depictions of the Judgement of Paris, Aphrodite is only occasionally represented nude, and Athena and Hera are always fully clothed. Since the Renaissance, however, Western paintings have typically portrayed all three goddesses as completely naked. All three goddesses were ideally beautiful and Paris could not decide between them, so they resorted to bribes. Hera tried to bribe Paris with power over all Asia and Europe, and Athena offered fame and glory in battle, but Aphrodite promised Paris that, if he were to choose her as the fairest, she would let him marry the most beautiful woman on earth. This woman was Helen, who was already married to King Menelaus of Sparta. Paris selected Aphrodite and awarded her the apple. The other two goddesses were enraged and, as a direct result, sided with the Greeks in the Trojan War.
thumb|Athena statue in the Antalya Museum.
In Books V–VI of the Iliad, Athena aids the hero Diomedes, who, in the absence of Achilles, proves himself to be the most effective Greek warrior. Several artistic representations from the early sixth century BC may show Athena and Diomedes, including an early sixth-century BC shield band depicting Athena and an unidentified warrior riding on a chariot, a vase painting of a warrior with his charioteer facing Athena, and an inscribed clay plaque showing Diomedes and Athena riding in a chariot. Numerous passages in the Iliad also mention Athena having previously served as the patron of Diomedes's father Tydeus.Iliad 4.390 , 5.115–120 , 10.284-94 When the Trojans go to her temple on the Acropolis to plead her for protection from Diomedes, Athena ignores them. Later, when Zeus allows the gods to fight, Ares, who sided with the Trojans, attacks Athena, but she overpowers him by striking him with a boulder.Iliad 15.110–128, 20.20–29, 21.391–408.
In Book XXII of the Iliad, while Achilles is chasing Hector around the walls of Troy, Athena appears to Hector disguised as his brother Deiphobus and persuades him to hold his ground so that they can fight Achilles together. Then, Hector throws his spear at Achilles and misses, expecting Deiphobus to hand him another, but Athena disappears instead, leaving Hector to face Achilles alone without his spear. In Sophocles's tragedy Ajax, she punishes Odysseus's rival Ajax the Great, driving him insane and causing him to massacre the Achaeans' cattle, thinking that he is slaughtering the Achaeans themselves. Even after Odysseus himself expresses pity for Ajax, Athena declares, "To laugh at your enemies – what sweeter laughter can there be than that?" (lines 78–9). Ajax later commits suicide as a result of his humiliation. |
Athena | Classical art | Classical art
Athena appears frequently in classical Greek art, including on coins and in paintings on ceramics. She is especially prominent in works produced in Athens. In classical depictions, Athena is usually portrayed standing upright, wearing a full-length chiton. She is most often represented dressed in armor like a male soldier and wearing a Corinthian helmet raised high atop her forehead. Her shield bears at its centre the aegis with the head of the gorgon (gorgoneion) in the center and snakes around the edge. Sometimes she is shown wearing the aegis as a cloak. As Athena Promachos, she is shown brandishing a spear. Scenes in which Athena was represented include her birth from the head of Zeus, her battle with the Gigantes, the birth of Erichthonius, and the Judgement of Paris.
The Mourning Athena or Athena Meditating is a famous relief sculpture dating to around 470–460 BC that has been interpreted to represent Athena Polias. The most famous classical depiction of Athena was the Athena Parthenos, a now-lost gold and ivory statue of her in the Parthenon created by the Athenian sculptor Phidias. Copies reveal that this statue depicted Athena holding her shield in her left hand with Nike, the winged goddess of victory, standing in her right. Athena Polias is also represented in a Neo-Attic relief now held in the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, which depicts her holding an owl in her hand and wearing her characteristic Corinthian helmet while resting her shield against a nearby herma. The Roman goddess Minerva adopted most of Athena's Greek iconographical associations, but was also integrated into the Capitoline Triad. |
Athena | Post-classical culture | Post-classical culture |
Athena | Art and symbolism | Art and symbolism
thumb|right|upright=1.3|Statue of Pallas Athena in front of the Austrian Parliament Building. Athena has been used throughout Western history as a symbol of freedom and democracy.
Early Christian writers, such as Clement of Alexandria and Firmicus, denigrated Athena as representative of all the things that were detestable about paganism; they condemned her as "immodest and immoral". During the Middle Ages, however, many attributes of Athena were given to the Virgin Mary, who, in fourth-century portrayals, was often depicted wearing the Gorgoneion. Some even viewed the Virgin Mary as a warrior maiden, much like Athena Parthenos; one anecdote tells that the Virgin Mary once appeared upon the walls of Constantinople when it was under siege by the Avars, clutching a spear and urging the people to fight. During the Middle Ages, Athena became widely used as a Christian symbol and allegory, and she appeared on the family crests of certain noble houses.
During the Renaissance, Athena donned the mantle of patron of the arts and human endeavor; allegorical paintings involving Athena were a favorite of the Italian Renaissance painters. In Sandro Botticelli's painting Pallas and the Centaur, probably painted sometime in the 1480s, Athena is the personification of chastity, who is shown grasping the forelock of a centaur, who represents lust. Andrea Mantegna's 1502 painting Minerva Expelling the Vices from the Garden of Virtue uses Athena as the personification of Graeco-Roman learning chasing the vices of medievalism from the garden of modern scholarship. Athena is also used as the personification of wisdom in Bartholomeus Spranger's 1591 painting The Triumph of Wisdom or Minerva Victorious over Ignorance.
During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Athena was used as a symbol for female rulers. In his book A Revelation of the True Minerva (1582), Thomas Blennerhassett portrays Queen Elizabeth I of England as a "new Minerva" and "the greatest goddesse nowe on earth". A series of paintings by Peter Paul Rubens depict Athena as Marie de' Medici's patron and mentor; the final painting in the series goes even further and shows Marie de' Medici with Athena's iconography, as the mortal incarnation of the goddess herself. The Flemish sculptor Jean-Pierre-Antoine Tassaert (Jan Peter Anton Tassaert) later portrayed Catherine II of Russia as Athena in a marble bust in 1774. During the French Revolution, statues of pagan gods were torn down all throughout France, but statues of Athena were not. Instead, Athena was transformed into the personification of freedom and the republic and a statue of the goddess stood in the center of the Place de la Revolution in Paris. In the years following the Revolution, artistic representations of Athena proliferated.
A statue of Athena stands directly in front of the Austrian Parliament Building in Vienna, and depictions of Athena have influenced other symbols of Western freedom, including the Statue of Liberty and Britannia. For over a century, a full-scale replica of the Parthenon has stood in Nashville, Tennessee. In 1990, the curators added a gilded forty-two-foot (12.5 m) tall replica of Phidias's Athena Parthenos, built from concrete and fiberglass. The Great Seal of California bears the image of Athena kneeling next to a brown grizzly bear. Athena has occasionally appeared on modern coins, as she did on the ancient Athenian drachma. Her head appears on the $50 1915-S Panama-Pacific commemorative coin. |
Athena | Modern interpretations | Modern interpretations
thumb|Modern Neopagan Hellenist altar dedicated to Athena and Apollo
One of Sigmund Freud's most treasured possessions was a small, bronze sculpture of Athena, which sat on his desk. Freud once described Athena as "a woman who is unapproachable and repels all sexual desires since she displays the terrifying genitals of the Mother". Feminist views on Athena are sharply divided; some regard her as "the ultimate patriarchal sell out ... who uses her powers to promote and advance men rather than others of her sex", while some feminists regard her as a symbol of female empowerment, In contemporary Wicca, Athena is venerated as an aspect of the Goddess and some Wiccans believe that she may bestow the "Owl Gift" ("the ability to write and communicate clearly") upon her worshippers. Due to her status as one of the twelve Olympians, Athena is a major deity in Hellenismos, a Neopagan religion which seeks to authentically revive and recreate the religion of ancient Greece in the modern world.
Athena is a natural patron of universities: At Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania, a statue of Athena (a replica of the original bronze one in the arts and archaeology library) resides in the Great Hall. It is traditional at exam time for students to leave offerings to the goddess with a note asking for good luck, or to repent for accidentally breaking any of the college's numerous other traditions. Pallas Athena is the tutelary goddess of the international social fraternity Phi Delta Theta. Her owl is also a symbol of the fraternity. |
Athena | Genealogy | Genealogy |
Athena | See also | See also
Athenaeum (disambiguation)
Ambulia, a Spartan epithet used for Athena, Zeus, and Castor and Pollux |
Athena | Notes | Notes |
Athena | References | References |
Athena | Bibliography | Bibliography |
Athena | Ancient sources | Ancient sources
Apollodorus, Library, 3,180
Augustine, De civitate dei xviii.8–9
Cicero, De natura deorum iii.21.53, 23.59
Eusebius, Chronicon 30.21–26, 42.11–14
Homer, The Iliad with an English Translation by A.T. Murray, PhD in two volumes. Cambridge, Massachusetts., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1924. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library .
Homer; The Odyssey with an English Translation by A.T. Murray, PH.D. in two volumes. Cambridge, Massachusetts., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1919. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library .
Hesiod, Theogony, in The Homeric Hymns and Homerica with an English Translation by Hugh G. Evelyn-White, Cambridge, Massachusetts., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1914. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library .
Lactantius, Divinae institutions i.17.12–13, 18.22–23
Livy, Ab urbe condita libri vii.3.7
Lucan, Bellum civile ix.350
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Athena | Modern sources | Modern sources
Gantz, Timothy, Early Greek Myth: A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996, Two volumes: (Vol. 1), (Vol. 2).
Harrison, Jane Ellen, 1903. Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion.
Telenius, Seppo Sakari, (2005) 2006. Athena-Artemis (Helsinki: Kirja kerrallaan).
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Athena | External links | External links
ATHENA on the Perseus Project
ATHENA from The Theoi Project
ATHENA from Mythopedia
The Warburg Institute Iconographic Database (images of Athena)
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Athena | Table of Content | short description, Etymology, Origins, Epithets and attributes, Pallas Athena, ''Glaukopis'', ''Tritogeneia'', Cult and patronages, Panhellenic and Athenian cult, Regional cults, Mythology, Birth, Lady of Athens, Patron of heroes, Punishment myths, Trojan War, Classical art, Post-classical culture, Art and symbolism, Modern interpretations, Genealogy, See also, Notes, References, Bibliography, Ancient sources, Modern sources, External links |
Amber Diceless Roleplaying Game | Short description | The Amber Diceless Roleplaying Game is a role-playing game created and written by Erick Wujcik, set in the fictional universe created by author Roger Zelazny for his Chronicles of Amber. The game is unusual in that no dice are used in resolving conflicts or player actions; instead a simple diceless system of comparative ability, and narrative description of the action by the players and gamemaster, is used to determine how situations are resolved.
Amber DRPG was created in the 1980s, and is much more focused on relationships and roleplaying than most of the roleplaying games of that era. Most Amber characters are members of the two ruling classes in the Amber multiverse, and are much more advanced in matters of strength, endurance, psyche, warfare and sorcery than ordinary beings. This often means that the only individuals who are capable of opposing a character are from his or her family, a fact that leads to much suspicion and intrigue. |
Amber Diceless Roleplaying Game | History | History
Erick Wujcik wanted to design a role-playing game based on Amber for West End Games, and they agreed to look at his work. Wujcik intended to integrate the feel of the Amber setting from the novels into a role-playing game, and playtested his system for a few months at the Michigan Gaming Center where he decided to try it out as a diceless game. West End Games was not interested in a diceless role-playing game, so Wujcik acquired the role-playing game rights to Amber and offered the game to R. Talsorian Games, until he withdrew over creative differences. Wujcik then founded Phage Press, and published Amber Diceless Role-playing in 1991.
The original 256-page game bookErick Wujcik Amber Diceless Roleplaying Game (Phage Press, 1991) was published in 1991 by Phage Press, covering material from the first five novels (the "Corwin Cycle") and some details – sorcery and the Logrus – from the remaining five novels (the "Merlin Cycle"), in order to allow players to roleplay characters from the Courts of Chaos. Some details were changed slightly to allow more player choice – for example, players can be full Trump Artists without having walked the Pattern or the Logrus, which Merlin says is impossible; and players' psychic abilities are far greater than those shown in the books.
thumb|200px|right|Cover of Shadow Knight
A 256-page companion volume, Shadow Knight,Erick Wujcik Shadow Knight (Phage Press, 1993) was published in 1993. This supplemental rule book includes the remaining elements from the Merlin novels, such as Broken Patterns, and allows players to create Constructs such as Merlin's Ghostwheel. The book presents the second series of novels not as additions to the series' continuity but as an example of a roleplaying campaign with Merlin, Luke, Julia, Jurt and Coral as the PCs. The remainder of the book is a collection of essays on the game, statistics for the new characters and an update of the older ones in light of their appearance in the second series, and (perhaps most usefully for GMs) plot summaries of each of the ten books. The book includes some material from the short story "The Salesman's Tale," and some unpublished material cut from Prince of Chaos, notably Coral's pregnancy by Merlin.
Both books were translated into French and published by Jeux Descartes in 1994 and 1995.
A third book, Rebma, was promised. Cover art was commissionedStephen Hickman's Rebma cover art and pre-orders were taken, but it was never published. Wujcik also expressed a desire to create a book giving greater detail to the Courts of Chaos. The publishing rights to the Amber DRPG games were acquired in 2004 by Guardians of Order, who took over sales of the game and announced their intention to release a new edition of the game. However, no new edition was released before Guardians of Order went out of business in 2006. The two existing books are now out-of-print, but they have been made available as PDF downloads.Amber DRPG books at DriveThruRPG
In June 2007 a new publishing company, headed by Edwin Voskamp and Eleanor Todd, was formed with the express purpose of bringing Amber DRPG back into print. The new company is named Diceless by Design.
In May 2010, Rite Publishing secured a license from Diceless by Design to use the rules system with a new setting in the creation of a new product to be written by industry and system veteran Jason Durall. The project Lords of Gossamer & Shadow (Diceless) was funded via Kickstarter in May 2013. In Sept 2013 the project was completed, and on in Nov 2013 Lords of Gossamer and Shadow (Diceless) was released publicly in full-color Print and PDF, along with additional supplements and continued support. |
Amber Diceless Roleplaying Game | Setting | Setting
The game is set in the multiverse described in Zelazny's Chronicles of Amber. The first book assumes that gamemasters will set their campaigns after the Patternfall war; that is, after the end of the fifth book in the series, The Courts of Chaos, but uses material from the following books to describe those parts of Zelazny's cosmology that were featured there in more detail. The Amber multiverse consists of Amber, a city at one pole of the universe wherein is found the Pattern, the symbol of Order; The Courts of Chaos, an assembly of worlds at the other pole where can be found the Logrus, the manifestation of Chaos, and the Abyss, the source or end of all reality; and Shadow, the collection of all possible universes (shadows) between and around them. Inhabitants of either pole can use one or both of the Pattern and the Logrus to travel through Shadow.
It is assumed that players will portray the children of the main characters from the books – the ruling family of Amber, known as the Elder Amberites – or a resident of the Courts. However, since some feel that being the children of the main characters is too limiting, it is fairly common to either start with King Oberon's death before the book begins and roleplay the Elder Amberites as they vie for the throne; or to populate Amber from scratch with a different set of Elder Amberites. The former option is one presented in the book; the latter is known in the Amber community as an "Amethyst" game. A third option is to have the players portray Corwin's children, in an Amber-like city built around Corwin's pattern; this is sometimes called an "Argent" game, since one of Corwin's heraldic colours is Silver. |
Amber Diceless Roleplaying Game | System | System |
Amber Diceless Roleplaying Game | Attributes | Attributes
Characters in Amber DRPG are represented by four attributes: Psyche, Strength, Endurance and Warfare.
Psyche is used for feats of willpower or magic
Strength is used for feats of strength or unarmed combat
Endurance is used for feats of endurance
Warfare is used for armed combat, from duelling to commanding armies
The attributes run from −25 (normal human level), through −10 (normal level for a denizen of the Courts of Chaos) and 0 (normal level for an inhabitant of Amber), upwards without limit. Scores above 0 are "ranked", with the highest score being ranked 1st, the next-highest 2nd, and so on. The character with 1st rank in each attribute is considered "superior" in that attribute, being considered to be substantially better than the character with 2nd rank even if the difference in scores is small. All else being equal, a character with a higher rank in an attribute will always win a contest based on that attribute. |
Amber Diceless Roleplaying Game | The Attribute Auction | The Attribute Auction
A character's ability scores are purchased during character creation in an auction; players get 100 character points, and bid on each attribute in turn. The character who bids the most for an attribute is "ranked" first and is considered superior to all other characters in that attribute. Unlike conventional auctions, bids are non-refundable; if one player bids 65 for psyche and another wins with a bid of 66, then the character with 66 is "superior" to the character with 65 even though there is only one bid difference. Instead, lower bidding characters are ranked in ascending order according to how much they have bid, the characters becoming progressively weaker in that attribute as they pay less for it. After the auction, players can secretly pay extra points to raise their ranks, but they can only pay to raise their scores to an existing rank. Further, a character with a bid-for rank is considered to have a slight advantage over character with a bought-up rank.
The Auction simulates a 'history' of competition between the descendants of Oberon for player characters who have not had dozens of decades to get to know each other. Through the competitive Auction, characters may begin the game vying for standings. The auction serves to introduce some unpredictability into character creation without the need to resort to dice, cards, or other randomizing devices. A player may intend, for example, to create a character who is a strong, mighty warrior, but being "outplayed" in the auction may result in lower attribute scores than anticipated, therefore necessitating a change of character concept. Since a player cannot control another player's bids, and since all bids are non-refundable, the auction involves a considerable amount of strategizing and prioritization by players. A willingness to spend as many points as possible on an attribute may improve your chances of a high ranking, but too reckless a spending strategy could leave a player with few points to spend on powers and objects. In a hotly contested auction, such as for the important attribute of warfare, the most valuable skill is the ability to force one's opponents to back down. With two or more equally determined players, this can result in a "bidding war," in which the attribute is driven up by increments to large sums. An alternative strategy is to try to cow other players into submission with a high opening bid. Most players bid low amounts between one and ten points in an initial bid in order to feel out the competition and to save points for other uses. A high enough opening bid could signal a player's determination to be first ranked in that attribute, thereby dissuading others from competing. |
Amber Diceless Roleplaying Game | Psyche in ''Amber DRPG'' compared to the ''Chronicles'' | Psyche in Amber DRPG compared to the Chronicles
Characters with high psyche are presented as having strong telepathic abilities, being able to hypnotise and even mentally dominate any character with lesser psyche with whom they can make eye-contact. This is likely due to three scenes in the Chronicles: first, when Eric paralyzes Corwin with an attack across the Trump and refuses to desist because one or the other would be dominated; second, when Corwin faces the demon Strygalldwir, it is able to wrestle mentally with him when their gazes meet; and third, when Fiona is able to keep Brand immobile in the final battle at the Courts of Chaos.Roger Zelazny The Great Book of Amber (Eos Press, 1999) However, in general, the books only feature mental battles when there is some reason for mind-to-mind contact (for example, Trump contact) and magic or Trump is involved in all three of the above conflicts, so it is not clear whether Zelazny intended his characters to have such a power; the combination of Brand's "living trump" powers and his high Psyche (as presented in the roleplaying game) would have guaranteed him victory over Corwin. Shadow Knight does address this inconsistency somewhat, by presenting the "living trump" abilities as somewhat limited. |
Amber Diceless Roleplaying Game | Powers | Powers
Characters in Amber DRPG have access to the powers seen in the Chronicles of Amber: Pattern, Logrus, Shape-shifting, Trump, and magic.
Pattern: A character who has walked the pattern can walk in shadow to any possible universe, and while there can manipulate probability.
Logrus: A character who has mastered the Logrus can send out Logrus tendrils and pull themselves or objects through shadow.
Shape-shifting: Shape-shifters can alter their physical form and abilities.
Trump: Trump Artists can create Trumps, a sort of tarot card which allows mental communication and travel. The book features Trump portraits of each of the elder Amberites. The trump picture of Corwin is executed in a subtly different style – and has features very similar to Roger Zelazny's.
Magic: Three types of magic are detailed: Power Words, with a quick, small effect; Sorcery, with pre-prepared spells as in many other game systems; and Conjuration, the creation of small objects.
Each of the first four powers is available in an advanced form. |
Amber Diceless Roleplaying Game | Artifacts, Personal shadows and Constructs | Artifacts, Personal shadows and Constructs
While a character with Pattern, Logrus or Conjuration can acquire virtually any object, players can choose to spend character points to obtain objects with particular virtues – unbreakability, or a mind of their own. Since they have paid points for the items, they are a part of the character's legend, and cannot lightly be destroyed. Similarly, a character can find any possible universe, but they can spend character points to know of or inhabit shadows which are (in some sense) "real" and therefore useful. The expansion, Shadow Knight, adds Constructs – artifacts with connections to shadows. |
Amber Diceless Roleplaying Game | Stuff | Stuff
Unspent character points become good stuff – a good luck for the character. Players are also allowed to overspend (in moderation), with the points becoming bad stuff – bad luck which the Gamemaster should inflict on the character. Stuff governs how non-player characters perceive and respond to the character: characters with good stuff will often receive friendly or helpful reactions, while characters with bad stuff are often treated with suspicion or hostility.
As well as representing luck, stuff can be seen as representing a character's outlook on the universe: characters with good stuff seeing the multiverse as a cheerful place, while characters with bad stuff see it as hostile. |
Amber Diceless Roleplaying Game | Conflict resolution | Conflict resolution
In any given fair conflict between two characters, the character with the higher score in the relevant attribute will eventually win. The key words here are fair and eventually – if characters' ranks are close, and the weaker character has obtained some advantage, then the weaker character can escape defeat or perhaps prevail. Close ranks result in longer contests while greater difference between ranks result in fast resolution. Alternatively, if characters' attribute ranks are close, the weaker character can try to change the relevant attribute by changing the nature of the conflict. For example, if two characters are wrestling the relevant attribute is Strength; a character could reveal a weapon, changing it to Warfare; they could try to overcome the other character's mind using a power, changing it to Psyche; or they could concentrate their strength on defense, changing it to Endurance. If there is a substantial difference between characters' ranks, the conflict is generally over before the weaker character can react. |
Amber Diceless Roleplaying Game | The "Golden Rule" | The "Golden Rule"
Amber DRPG advises gamemasters to change rules as they see fit, even to the point of adding or removing powers or attributes. |
Amber Diceless Roleplaying Game | Reception | Reception
Steve Crow reviewed Amber Diceless Roleplaying Game in White Wolf #31 (May/June, 1992), rating it a 4 out of 5 and stated that "It is undoubtedly a game for experienced gamers. While I would not recommend Amber to novices, it is a must buy for experienced gamemasters and players looking for new challenges."
In the June 1992 edition of Dragon (Issue 182), both Lester Smith and Allen Varney published reviews of this game.
Smith admired the professional production qualities of the 256-page rulebook, noting that because it was Smyth sewn in 32-page signatures, the book would always lie flat when opened. However, he found the typeface difficult to read, and the lack a coherent hierarchy of rules increased the reading difficulty as well. Smith admired the Attribute Auction and point-buy system for skills, and the focus on roleplaying in place of dice-rolling, but he mused that all of the roleplaying would mean "GMs have to spend quite a bit of time and creative effort coming up with wide-reaching plots for their players to work through. Canned, linear adventures just won't serve." He concluded by stating that the diceless system is not for every gamer: "As impressed as I am with the game, do I think it is the 'end-all' of role-playing games, or that diceless systems are the wave of the future? I'll give a firm “No” on both counts... However, I certainly do think that the Amber Diceless Roleplaying Game is destined for great popularity and a niche among the most respected of role-playing game designs."
Allen Varney thought the "Attribute Auction" to be "brilliant and elegant", but he wondered if character advancement was perhaps too slow to keep marginal players interested. He also believed that being a gamemaster would be "tough work. Proceed with caution." Varney recommended that players need some familiarity with the first five "Amber" novels by Zelazny. He concluded, "The intensity of the Amber game indicates [game designer Erik ] Wujcik is on to something. When success in every action depends on the role and not the roll, players develop a sense of both control and urgency, along with creativity that borders on mania."
In Issue 65 of Challenge, Dirk DeJong had a good first impression of the game, especially the information provided about the Amber family members and their various flaws and strengths. However he found that "The biggest problem with this endeavor, and its downfall, is the nature of the conflict systems. First, they are diceless, really diceless, and don't involve any sort of random factors at all, aside from those that you can introduce by roleplaying them out. Thus, if you get involved with a character who's better than you at sword-fighting, even if only by one point out of 100, you're pretty much dead meat, unless you can act your way out." DeJong also disagreed with the suggestion that if the referee and players disagreed with a rule to simply remove it from the game. "I thought the entire idea of using rules and random results was to prevent the type of arguments that I can see arising from this setup." DeJong concluded on an ambivalent note, saying, "If you love Zelazny and the Amber series, jump on it, as this is the premier sourcebook for running an Amber campaign. [...] Personally, I just can't get turned on by a system that expects me to either be content with a simple subtraction of numbers to find out who won, or to describe an entire combat blow by blow, just so that I can attempt some trick to win."
Loyd Blankenship reviewed Amber in Pyramid #2 (July/Aug., 1993), and stated that "Amber is a valuable resource to a GM - even if he isn't running an Amber game. For gamers who have an aspiring actor or actress lurking within their breast, or for someone running a campaign via electronic mail or message base, Amber should be given serious consideration."
In his 2023 book Monsters, Aliens, and Holes in the Ground, RPG historian Stu Horvath noted, "There hasn't been an RPG quite like Amber, before or since. Bold though it was, the game didn't do very well commercially. The lack of dice became a flashpoint of controversy, with dice enthusiasts dramatically swearing off the game. That's a bit ridiculous, but it does get at a key hurdle Amber face: People like rolling dice. They've been doing it for thousands of years and a significant part of the appeal of RPGs is giving dice, often in sparkly colours, a toss." |
Amber Diceless Roleplaying Game | Community | Community
Despite the game's out-of-print status, a thriving convention scene exists supporting the game. Amber conventions, known as Ambercons, are held yearly in Massachusetts, Michigan, Portland (United States), Milton Keynes (England), Belfast (Northern Ireland) and Modena, Italy. Additionally, Phage Press published 12 volumes of a dedicated Amber DRPG magazine called Amberzine. Some Amberzine issues are still available from Phage Press. |
Amber Diceless Roleplaying Game | References | References
Review |
Amber Diceless Roleplaying Game | External links | External links
The Official Amber DRPG, Erick Wujcik, and Lords of Olympus Forum
Category:The Chronicles of Amber
Category:Fantasy role-playing games
Category:Role-playing games based on novels
Category:American role-playing games
Category:Role-playing games introduced in 1991
Category:Role-playing game systems |
Amber Diceless Roleplaying Game | Table of Content | Short description, History, Setting, System, Attributes, The Attribute Auction, Psyche in ''Amber DRPG'' compared to the ''Chronicles'', Powers, Artifacts, Personal shadows and Constructs, Stuff, Conflict resolution, The "Golden Rule", Reception, Community, References, External links |
Athene (disambiguation) | wiktionary | Athene or Athena is the shrewd companion of heroes and the goddess of heroic endeavour in Greek mythology.
Athene may also refer to:
881 Athene, a main-belt asteroid
Athene (bird), a genus of small owls
Athene (Cynuria), a town in ancient Cynuria, Greece
Athene Glacier, a glacier in Antarctica
HMS Athene, an aircraft transport
USS Athene (AKA-22), an Artemis-class attack cargo ship
Bachir Boumaaza or Athene (born 1980), Belgian YouTube personality and social activist
Athene (research center), stylized as ATHENE, an IT security research institute in Darmstadt, Germany
Athene, an insurance company acquired by Apollo Global Management |
Athene (disambiguation) | People with the given name | People with the given name
Athene Seyler (1889–1990), English actress
Athene Donald (born 1953), British physicist
Athene (gamer), pseudonym of Bachir Boumaaza (born 1980), Belgian internet personality |
Athene (disambiguation) | See also | See also
Altena (disambiguation)
Atena (disambiguation)
Athen (disambiguation)
Athena (disambiguation)
Athens (disambiguation)
Athenea (given name) |
Athene (disambiguation) | Table of Content | wiktionary, People with the given name, See also |
Alloy | pp-semi-indef | thumb|300x300px|From left to right: three alloys (beryllium copper, Inconel, steel) and three pure metals (titanium, aluminium, magnesium)
An alloy is a mixture of chemical elements of which in most cases at least one is a metallic element, although it is also sometimes used for mixtures of elements; herein only metallic alloys are described. Metallic alloys often have properties that differ from those of the pure elements from which they are made.
The vast majority of metals used for commercial purposes are alloyed to improve their properties or behavior, such as increased strength, hardness or corrosion resistance. Metals may also be alloyed to reduce their overall cost, for instance alloys of gold and copper.
A typical example of an alloy is 304 grade stainless steel which is commonly used for kitchen utensils, pans, knives and forks. Sometime also known as 18/8, it as an alloy consisting broadly of 74% iron, 18% chromium and 8% nickel. The chromium and nickel alloying elements add strength and hardness to the majority iron element, but their main function is to make it resistant to rust/corrosion.
In an alloy, the atoms are joined by metallic bonding rather than by covalent bonds typically found in chemical compounds.Callister, W.D. "Materials Science and Engineering: An Introduction" 2007, 7th edition, John Wiley and Sons, Inc. New York, Section 4.3 and Chapter 9. The alloy constituents are usually measured by mass percentage for practical applications, and in atomic fraction for basic science studies. Alloys are usually classified as substitutional or interstitial alloys, depending on the atomic arrangement that forms the alloy. They can be further classified as homogeneous (consisting of a single phase), or heterogeneous (consisting of two or more phases) or intermetallic. An alloy may be a solid solution of metal elements (a single phase, where all metallic grains (crystals) are of the same composition) or a mixture of metallic phases (two or more solutions, forming a microstructure of different crystals within the metal).
Examples of alloys include red gold (gold and copper), white gold (gold and silver), sterling silver (silver and copper), steel or silicon steel (iron with non-metallic carbon or silicon respectively), solder, brass, pewter, duralumin, bronze, and amalgams.
Alloys are used in a wide variety of applications, from the steel alloys, used in everything from buildings to automobiles to surgical tools, to exotic titanium alloys used in the aerospace industry, to beryllium-copper alloys for non-sparking tools. |
Alloy | Characteristics | Characteristics
thumb|Liquid bronze, being poured into molds during casting
An alloy is a mixture of chemical elements, which forms an impure substance (admixture) that retains the characteristics of a metal. An alloy is distinct from an impure metal in that, with an alloy, the added elements are well controlled to produce desirable properties, while impure metals such as wrought iron are less controlled, but are often considered useful. Alloys are made by mixing two or more elements, at least one of which is a metal. This is usually called the primary metal or the base metal, and the name of this metal may also be the name of the alloy. The other constituents may or may not be metals but, when mixed with the molten base, they will be soluble and dissolve into the mixture.
The mechanical properties of alloys will often be quite different from those of its individual constituents. A metal that is normally very soft (malleable), such as aluminium, can be altered by alloying it with another soft metal, such as copper. Although both metals are very soft and ductile, the resulting aluminium alloy will have much greater strength. Adding a small amount of non-metallic carbon to iron trades its great ductility for the greater strength of an alloy called steel. Due to its very-high strength, but still substantial toughness, and its ability to be greatly altered by heat treatment, steel is one of the most useful and common alloys in modern use. By adding chromium to steel, its resistance to corrosion can be enhanced, creating stainless steel, while adding silicon will alter its electrical characteristics, producing silicon steel.
thumb|left|A brass lamp
Like oil and water, a molten metal may not always mix with another element. For example, pure iron is almost completely insoluble with copper. Even when the constituents are soluble, each will usually have a saturation point, beyond which no more of the constituent can be added. Iron, for example, can hold a maximum of 6.67% carbon. Although the elements of an alloy usually must be soluble in the liquid state, they may not always be soluble in the solid state. If the metals remain soluble when solid, the alloy forms a solid solution, becoming a homogeneous structure consisting of identical crystals, called a phase. If as the mixture cools the constituents become insoluble, they may separate to form two or more different types of crystals, creating a heterogeneous microstructure of different phases, some with more of one constituent than the other. However, in other alloys, the insoluble elements may not separate until after crystallization occurs. If cooled very quickly, they first crystallize as a homogeneous phase, but they are supersaturated with the secondary constituents. As time passes, the atoms of these supersaturated alloys can separate from the crystal lattice, becoming more stable, and forming a second phase that serves to reinforce the crystals internally.
thumb|A gate valve, made from Inconel
Some alloys, such as electrum—an alloy of silver and gold—occur naturally. Meteorites are sometimes made of naturally occurring alloys of iron and nickel, but are not native to the Earth. One of the first alloys made by humans was bronze, which is a mixture of the metals tin and copper. Bronze was an extremely useful alloy to the ancients, because it is much stronger and harder than either of its components. Steel was another common alloy. However, in ancient times, it could only be created as an accidental byproduct from the heating of iron ore in fires (smelting) during the manufacture of iron. Other ancient alloys include pewter, brass and pig iron. In the modern age, steel can be created in many forms. Carbon steel can be made by varying only the carbon content, producing soft alloys like mild steel or hard alloys like spring steel. Alloy steels can be made by adding other elements, such as chromium, molybdenum, vanadium or nickel, resulting in alloys such as high-speed steel or tool steel. Small amounts of manganese are usually alloyed with most modern steels because of its ability to remove unwanted impurities, like phosphorus, sulfur and oxygen, which can have detrimental effects on the alloy. However, most alloys were not created until the 1900s, such as various aluminium, titanium, nickel, and magnesium alloys. Some modern superalloys, such as incoloy, inconel, and hastelloy, may consist of a multitude of different elements.
An alloy is technically an impure metal, but when referring to alloys, the term impurities usually denotes undesirable elements. Such impurities are introduced from the base metals and alloying elements, but are removed during processing. For instance, sulfur is a common impurity in steel. Sulfur combines readily with iron to form iron sulfide, which is very brittle, creating weak spots in the steel. Lithium, sodium and calcium are common impurities in aluminium alloys, which can have adverse effects on the structural integrity of castings. Conversely, otherwise pure-metals that contain unwanted impurities are often called "impure metals" and are not usually referred to as alloys. Oxygen, present in the air, readily combines with most metals to form metal oxides; especially at higher temperatures encountered during alloying. Great care is often taken during the alloying process to remove excess impurities, using fluxes, chemical additives, or other methods of extractive metallurgy.Davis, Joseph R. (1993) ASM Specialty Handbook: Aluminum and Aluminum Alloys. ASM International. p. 211. . |
Alloy | Theory | Theory
Alloying a metal is done by combining it with one or more other elements. The most common and oldest alloying process is performed by heating the base metal beyond its melting point and then dissolving the solutes into the molten liquid, which may be possible even if the melting point of the solute is far greater than that of the base. For example, in its liquid state, titanium is a very strong solvent capable of dissolving most metals and elements. In addition, it readily absorbs gases like oxygen and burns in the presence of nitrogen. This increases the chance of contamination from any contacting surface, and so must be melted in vacuum induction-heating and special, water-cooled, copper crucibles.Metals Handbook: Properties and selection By ASM International – ASM International 1978 Page 407 However, some metals and solutes, such as iron and carbon, have very high melting-points and were impossible for ancient people to melt. Thus, alloying (in particular, interstitial alloying) may also be performed with one or more constituents in a gaseous state, such as found in a blast furnace to make pig iron (liquid-gas), nitriding, carbonitriding or other forms of case hardening (solid-gas), or the cementation process used to make blister steel (solid-gas). It may also be done with one, more, or all of the constituents in the solid state, such as found in ancient methods of pattern welding (solid-solid), shear steel (solid-solid), or crucible steel production (solid-liquid), mixing the elements via solid-state diffusion.
By adding another element to a metal, differences in the size of the atoms create internal stresses in the lattice of the metallic crystals; stresses that often enhance its properties. For example, the combination of carbon with iron produces steel, which is stronger than iron, its primary element. The electrical and thermal conductivity of alloys is usually lower than that of the pure metals. The physical properties, such as density, reactivity, Young's modulus of an alloy may not differ greatly from those of its base element, but engineering properties such as tensile strength,Mills, Adelbert Phillo (1922) Materials of Construction: Their Manufacture and Properties, John Wiley & sons, inc, originally published by the University of Wisconsin, Madison ductility, and shear strength may be substantially different from those of the constituent materials. This is sometimes a result of the sizes of the atoms in the alloy, because larger atoms exert a compressive force on neighboring atoms, and smaller atoms exert a tensile force on their neighbors, helping the alloy resist deformation. Sometimes alloys may exhibit marked differences in behavior even when small amounts of one element are present. For example, impurities in semiconducting ferromagnetic alloys lead to different properties, as first predicted by White, Hogan, Suhl, Tian Abrie and Nakamura.
Unlike pure metals, most alloys do not have a single melting point, but a melting range during which the material is a mixture of solid and liquid phases (a slush). The temperature at which melting begins is called the solidus, and the temperature when melting is just complete is called the liquidus. For many alloys there is a particular alloy proportion (in some cases more than one), called either a eutectic mixture or a peritectic composition, which gives the alloy a unique and low melting point, and no liquid/solid slush transition. |
Alloy | Heat treatment | Heat treatment
thumb|left|Allotropes of iron, (alpha iron and gamma iron) showing the differences in atomic arrangement
thumb|Photomicrographs of steel. Top photo: Annealed (slowly cooled) steel forms a heterogeneous, lamellar microstructure called pearlite, consisting of the phases cementite (light) and ferrite (dark). Bottom photo: Quenched (quickly cooled) steel forms a single phase called martensite, in which the carbon remains trapped within the crystals, creating internal stresses
Alloying elements are added to a base metal, to induce hardness, toughness, ductility, or other desired properties. Most metals and alloys can be work hardened by creating defects in their crystal structure. These defects are created during plastic deformation by hammering, bending, extruding, et cetera, and are permanent unless the metal is recrystallized. Otherwise, some alloys can also have their properties altered by heat treatment. Nearly all metals can be softened by annealing, which recrystallizes the alloy and repairs the defects, but not as many can be hardened by controlled heating and cooling. Many alloys of aluminium, copper, magnesium, titanium, and nickel can be strengthened to some degree by some method of heat treatment, but few respond to this to the same degree as does steel.
The base metal iron of the iron-carbon alloy known as steel, undergoes a change in the arrangement (allotropy) of the atoms of its crystal matrix at a certain temperature (usually between and , depending on carbon content). This allows the smaller carbon atoms to enter the interstices of the iron crystal. When this diffusion happens, the carbon atoms are said to be in solution in the iron, forming a particular single, homogeneous, crystalline phase called austenite. If the steel is cooled slowly, the carbon can diffuse out of the iron and it will gradually revert to its low temperature allotrope. During slow cooling, the carbon atoms will no longer be as soluble with the iron, and will be forced to precipitate out of solution, nucleating into a more concentrated form of iron carbide (Fe3C) in the spaces between the pure iron crystals. The steel then becomes heterogeneous, as it is formed of two phases, the iron-carbon phase called cementite (or carbide), and pure iron ferrite. Such a heat treatment produces a steel that is rather soft. If the steel is cooled quickly, however, the carbon atoms will not have time to diffuse and precipitate out as carbide, but will be trapped within the iron crystals. When rapidly cooled, a diffusionless (martensite) transformation occurs, in which the carbon atoms become trapped in solution. This causes the iron crystals to deform as the crystal structure tries to change to its low temperature state, leaving those crystals very hard but much less ductile (more brittle).
While the high strength of steel results when diffusion and precipitation is prevented (forming martensite), most heat-treatable alloys are precipitation hardening alloys, that depend on the diffusion of alloying elements to achieve their strength. When heated to form a solution and then cooled quickly, these alloys become much softer than normal, during the diffusionless transformation, but then harden as they age. The solutes in these alloys will precipitate over time, forming intermetallic phases, which are difficult to discern from the base metal. Unlike steel, in which the solid solution separates into different crystal phases (carbide and ferrite), precipitation hardening alloys form different phases within the same crystal. These intermetallic alloys appear homogeneous in crystal structure, but tend to behave heterogeneously, becoming hard and somewhat brittle.
In 1906, precipitation hardening alloys were discovered by Alfred Wilm. Precipitation hardening alloys, such as certain alloys of aluminium, titanium, and copper, are heat-treatable alloys that soften when quenched (cooled quickly), and then harden over time. Wilm had been searching for a way to harden aluminium alloys for use in machine-gun cartridge cases. Knowing that aluminium-copper alloys were heat-treatable to some degree, Wilm tried quenching a ternary alloy of aluminium, copper, and the addition of magnesium, but was initially disappointed with the results. However, when Wilm retested it the next day he discovered that the alloy increased in hardness when left to age at room temperature, and far exceeded his expectations. Although an explanation for the phenomenon was not provided until 1919, duralumin was one of the first "age hardening" alloys used, becoming the primary building material for the first Zeppelins, and was soon followed by many others.Metallurgy for the Non-Metallurgist by Harry Chandler – ASM International 1998 Page 1–3 Because they often exhibit a combination of high strength and low weight, these alloys became widely used in many forms of industry, including the construction of modern aircraft.Jacobs, M.H. Precipitation Hardnening . University of Birmingham. TALAT Lecture 1204. slideshare.net |
Alloy | Mechanisms | Mechanisms
thumb|Different atomic mechanisms of alloy formation, showing pure metal, substitutional, interstitial, and a combination of the two
When a molten metal is mixed with another substance, there are two mechanisms that can cause an alloy to form, called atom exchange and the interstitial mechanism. The relative size of each element in the mix plays a primary role in determining which mechanism will occur. When the atoms are relatively similar in size, the atom exchange method usually happens, where some of the atoms composing the metallic crystals are substituted with atoms of the other constituent. This is called a substitutional alloy. Examples of substitutional alloys include bronze and brass, in which some of the copper atoms are substituted with either tin or zinc atoms respectively.
In the case of the interstitial mechanism, one atom is usually much smaller than the other and can not successfully substitute for the other type of atom in the crystals of the base metal. Instead, the smaller atoms become trapped in the interstitial sites between the atoms of the crystal matrix. This is referred to as an interstitial alloy. Steel is an example of an interstitial alloy, because the very small carbon atoms fit into interstices of the iron matrix.
Stainless steel is an example of a combination of interstitial and substitutional alloys, because the carbon atoms fit into the interstices, but some of the iron atoms are substituted by nickel and chromium atoms.Dossett, Jon L.; Boyer, Howard E. (2006) Practical heat treating. ASM International. pp. 1–14. . |
Alloy | History and examples | History and examples
thumb|left|A meteorite and a hatchet that was forged from meteoric iron. Evidence of the Widmanstätten patterns from the original meteorite used to make the hatchet's head can be seen on its surface. |
Alloy | Meteoric iron | Meteoric iron
The use of alloys by humans started with the use of meteoric iron, a naturally occurring alloy of nickel and iron. It is the main constituent of iron meteorites. As no metallurgic processes were used to separate iron from nickel, the alloy was used as it was. Meteoric iron could be forged from a red heat to make objects such as tools, weapons, and nails. In many cultures it was shaped by cold hammering into knives and arrowheads. They were often used as anvils. Meteoric iron was very rare and valuable, and difficult for ancient people to work.Buchwald, pp. 13–22 |
Alloy | Bronze and brass | Bronze and brass
thumb|Bronze axe 1100 BC
thumb|left|A bronze doorknocker
Iron is usually found as iron ore on Earth, except for one deposit of native iron in Greenland, which was used by the Inuit.Buchwald, pp. 35–37 Native copper, however, was found worldwide, along with silver, gold, and platinum, which were also used to make tools, jewelry, and other objects since Neolithic times. Copper was the hardest of these metals, and the most widely distributed. It became one of the most important metals to the ancients. Around 10,000 years ago in the highlands of Anatolia (Turkey), humans learned to smelt metals such as copper and tin from ore. Around 2500 BC, people began alloying the two metals to form bronze, which was much harder than its ingredients. Tin was rare, however, being found mostly in Great Britain. In the Middle East, people began alloying copper with zinc to form brass.Buchwald, pp. 39–41 Ancient civilizations took into account the mixture and the various properties it produced, such as hardness, toughness and melting point, under various conditions of temperature and work hardening, developing much of the information contained in modern alloy phase diagrams. For example, arrowheads from the Chinese Qin dynasty (around 200 BC) were often constructed with a hard bronze-head, but a softer bronze-tang, combining the alloys to prevent both dulling and breaking during use.Emperor's Ghost Army . pbs.org. November 2014 |
Alloy | Amalgams | Amalgams
Mercury has been smelted from cinnabar for thousands of years. Mercury dissolves many metals, such as gold, silver, and tin, to form amalgams (an alloy in a soft paste or liquid form at ambient temperature). Amalgams have been used since 200 BC in China for gilding objects such as armor and mirrors with precious metals. The ancient Romans often used mercury-tin amalgams for gilding their armor. The amalgam was applied as a paste and then heated until the mercury vaporized, leaving the gold, silver, or tin behind.Rapp, George (2009) Archaeomineralogy . Springer. p. 180. Mercury was often used in mining, to extract precious metals like gold and silver from their ores.Miskimin, Harry A. (1977) The economy of later Renaissance Europe, 1460–1600 . Cambridge University Press. p. 31. . |
Alloy | Precious metals | Precious metals
thumb|Electrum, a natural alloy of silver and gold, was often used for making coins
Many ancient civilizations alloyed metals for purely aesthetic purposes. In ancient Egypt and Mycenae, gold was often alloyed with copper to produce red-gold, or iron to produce a bright burgundy-gold. Gold was often found alloyed with silver or other metals to produce various types of colored gold. These metals were also used to strengthen each other, for more practical purposes. Copper was often added to silver to make sterling silver, increasing its strength for use in dishes, silverware, and other practical items. Quite often, precious metals were alloyed with less valuable substances as a means to deceive buyers.Nicholson, Paul T. and Shaw, Ian (2000) Ancient Egyptian materials and technology . Cambridge University Press. pp. 164–167. . Around 250 BC, Archimedes was commissioned by the King of Syracuse to find a way to check the purity of the gold in a crown, leading to the famous bath-house shouting of "Eureka!" upon the discovery of Archimedes' principle.Kay, Melvyn (2008) Practical Hydraulics . Taylor and Francis. p. 45. . |
Alloy | Pewter | Pewter
The term pewter covers a variety of alloys consisting primarily of tin. As a pure metal, tin is much too soft to use for most practical purposes. However, during the Bronze Age, tin was a rare metal in many parts of Europe and the Mediterranean, so it was often valued higher than gold. To make jewellery, cutlery, or other objects from tin, workers usually alloyed it with other metals to increase strength and hardness. These metals were typically lead, antimony, bismuth or copper. These solutes were sometimes added individually in varying amounts, or added together, making a wide variety of objects, ranging from practical items such as dishes, surgical tools, candlesticks or funnels, to decorative items like ear rings and hair clips.
The earliest examples of pewter come from ancient Egypt, around 1450 BC. The use of pewter was widespread across Europe, from France to Norway and Britain (where most of the ancient tin was mined) to the Near East.Hull, Charles (1992) Pewter. Shire Publications. pp. 3–4; The alloy was also used in China and the Far East, arriving in Japan around 800 AD, where it was used for making objects like ceremonial vessels, tea canisters, or chalices used in shinto shrines.Brinkley, Frank (1904) Japan and China: Japan, its history, arts, and literature. Oxford University. p. 317 |
Alloy | Iron | Iron
thumb|Puddling in China, . Opposite to most alloying processes, liquid pig-iron is poured from a blast furnace into a container and stirred to remove carbon, which diffuses into the air forming carbon dioxide, leaving behind a mild steel to wrought iron
The first known smelting of iron began in Anatolia, around 1800 BC. Called the bloomery process, it produced very soft but ductile wrought iron. By 800 BC, iron-making technology had spread to Europe, arriving in Japan around 700 AD. Pig iron, a very hard but brittle alloy of iron and carbon, was being produced in China as early as 1200 BC, but did not arrive in Europe until the Middle Ages. Pig iron has a lower melting point than iron, and was used for making cast-iron. However, these metals found little practical use until the introduction of crucible steel around 300 BC. These steels were of poor quality, and the introduction of pattern welding, around the 1st century AD, sought to balance the extreme properties of the alloys by laminating them, to create a tougher metal. Around 700 AD, the Japanese began folding bloomery-steel and cast-iron in alternating layers to increase the strength of their swords, using clay fluxes to remove slag and impurities. This method of Japanese swordsmithing produced one of the purest steel-alloys of the ancient world.Smith, Cyril (1960) History of metallography. MIT Press. pp. 2–4. .
While the use of iron started to become more widespread around 1200 BC, mainly because of interruptions in the trade routes for tin, the metal was much softer than bronze. However, very small amounts of steel, (an alloy of iron and around 1% carbon), was always a byproduct of the bloomery process. The ability to modify the hardness of steel by heat treatment had been known since 1100 BC, and the rare material was valued for the manufacture of tools and weapons. Because the ancients could not produce temperatures high enough to melt iron fully, the production of steel in decent quantities did not occur until the introduction of blister steel during the Middle Ages. This method introduced carbon by heating wrought iron in charcoal for long periods of time, but the absorption of carbon in this manner is extremely slow thus the penetration was not very deep, so the alloy was not homogeneous. In 1740, Benjamin Huntsman began melting blister steel in a crucible to even out the carbon content, creating the first process for the mass production of tool steel. Huntsman's process was used for manufacturing tool steel until the early 1900s.Roberts, George Adam; Krauss, George; Kennedy, Richard and Kennedy, Richard L. (1998) Tool steels . ASM International. pp. 2–3. .
The introduction of the blast furnace to Europe in the Middle Ages meant that people could produce pig iron in much higher volumes than wrought iron. Because pig iron could be melted, people began to develop processes to reduce carbon in liquid pig iron to create steel. Puddling had been used in China since the first century, and was introduced in Europe during the 1700s, where molten pig iron was stirred while exposed to the air, to remove the carbon by oxidation. In 1858, Henry Bessemer developed a process of steel-making by blowing hot air through liquid pig iron to reduce the carbon content. The Bessemer process led to the first large scale manufacture of steel.
Steel is an alloy of iron and carbon, but the term alloy steel usually only refers to steels that contain other elements— like vanadium, molybdenum, or cobalt—in amounts sufficient to alter the properties of the base steel. Since ancient times, when steel was used primarily for tools and weapons, the methods of producing and working the metal were often closely guarded secrets. Even long after the Age of Enlightenment, the steel industry was very competitive and manufacturers went through great lengths to keep their processes confidential, resisting any attempts to scientifically analyze the material for fear it would reveal their methods. For example, the people of Sheffield, a center of steel production in England, were known to routinely bar visitors and tourists from entering town to deter industrial espionage. Thus, almost no metallurgical information existed about steel until 1860. Because of this lack of understanding, steel was not generally considered an alloy until the decades between 1930 and 1970 (primarily due to the work of scientists like William Chandler Roberts-Austen, Adolf Martens, and Edgar Bain), so "alloy steel" became the popular term for ternary and quaternary steel-alloys.Sheffield Steel and America: A Century of Commercial and Technological Independence By Geoffrey Tweedale – Cambridge University Press 1987 Page 57–62Experimental Techniques in Materials and Mechanics By C. Suryanarayana – CRC Press 2011 p. 202
After Benjamin Huntsman developed his crucible steel in 1740, he began experimenting with the addition of elements like manganese (in the form of a high-manganese pig-iron called spiegeleisen), which helped remove impurities such as phosphorus and oxygen; a process adopted by Bessemer and still used in modern steels (albeit in concentrations low enough to still be considered carbon steel).Tool Steels, 5th Edition By George Adam Roberts, Richard Kennedy, G. Krauss – ASM International 1998 p. 4 Afterward, many people began experimenting with various alloys of steel without much success. However, in 1882, Robert Hadfield, being a pioneer in steel metallurgy, took an interest and produced a steel alloy containing around 12% manganese. Called mangalloy, it exhibited extreme hardness and toughness, becoming the first commercially viable alloy-steel. Afterward, he created silicon steel, launching the search for other possible alloys of steel.Sheffield Steel and America: A Century of Commercial and Technological Independence By Geoffrey Tweedale – Cambridge University Press 1987 pp. 57–62
Robert Forester Mushet found that by adding tungsten to steel it could produce a very hard edge that would resist losing its hardness at high temperatures. "R. Mushet's special steel" (RMS) became the first high-speed steel.Sheffield Steel and America: A Century of Commercial and Technological Independence By Geoffrey Tweedale – Cambridge University Press 1987 pp. 66–68 Mushet's steel was quickly replaced by tungsten carbide steel, developed by Taylor and White in 1900, in which they doubled the tungsten content and added small amounts of chromium and vanadium, producing a superior steel for use in lathes and machining tools. In 1903, the Wright brothers used a chromium-nickel steel to make the crankshaft for their airplane engine, while in 1908 Henry Ford began using vanadium steels for parts like crankshafts and valves in his Model T Ford, due to their higher strength and resistance to high temperatures.Metallurgy for the Non-Metallurgist by Harry Chandler – ASM International 1998 Page 3–5 In 1912, the Krupp Ironworks in Germany developed a rust-resistant steel by adding 21% chromium and 7% nickel, producing the first stainless steel.Sheffield Steel and America: A Century of Commercial and Technological Independence By Geoffrey Tweedale – Cambridge University Press 1987 p. 75 |
Alloy | Others | Others
Due to their high reactivity, most metals were not discovered until the 19th century. A method for extracting aluminium from bauxite was proposed by Humphry Davy in 1807, using an electric arc. Although his attempts were unsuccessful, by 1855 the first sales of pure aluminium reached the market. However, as extractive metallurgy was still in its infancy, most aluminium extraction-processes produced unintended alloys contaminated with other elements found in the ore; the most abundant of which was copper. These aluminium-copper alloys (at the time termed "aluminium bronze") preceded pure aluminium, offering greater strength and hardness over the soft, pure metal, and to a slight degree were found to be heat treatable.Aluminium: Its History, Occurrence, Properties, Metallurgy and Applications by Joseph William Richards – Henry Cairy Baird & Co 1887 Page 25–42 However, due to their softness and limited hardenability these alloys found little practical use, and were more of a novelty, until the Wright brothers used an aluminium alloy to construct the first airplane engine in 1903. During the time between 1865 and 1910, processes for extracting many other metals were discovered, such as chromium, vanadium, tungsten, iridium, cobalt, and molybdenum, and various alloys were developed.Metallurgy: 1863–1963 by W.H. Dennis – Routledge 2017
Prior to 1910, research mainly consisted of private individuals tinkering in their own laboratories. However, as the aircraft and automotive industries began growing, research into alloys became an industrial effort in the years following 1910, as new magnesium alloys were developed for pistons and wheels in cars, and pot metal for levers and knobs, and aluminium alloys developed for airframes and aircraft skins were put into use. The Doehler Die Casting Co. of Toledo, Ohio were known for the production of Brastil, a high tensile corrosion resistant bronze alloy.Woldman’s Engineering Alloys, 9th Edition 1936, American Society for Metals, |
Alloy | See also | See also
Alloy broadening
CALPHAD
Ideal mixture
List of alloys |
Alloy | References | References |
Alloy | Bibliography | Bibliography
|
Alloy | External links | External links
Category:Metallurgy
Category:Chemistry |
Alloy | Table of Content | pp-semi-indef, Characteristics, Theory, Heat treatment, Mechanisms, History and examples, Meteoric iron, Bronze and brass, Amalgams, Precious metals, Pewter, Iron, Others, See also, References, Bibliography, External links |
Artistic revolution | more citations needed | Throughout history, forms of art have gone through periodic abrupt changes called artistic revolutions. Movements have come to an end to be replaced by a new movement markedly different in striking ways. |
Artistic revolution | Scientific and technological | Scientific and technological
Not all artistic revolutions were political. Sometimes, science and technological innovations have brought about unforeseen transformations in the works of artists. The stylistic revolution known as Impressionism, by painters eager to more accurately capture the changing colors of light and shadow, is inseparable from discoveries and inventions in the mid-19th century in which the style was born.
Michel Eugène Chevreul, a French chemist hired as director of dyes at a French tapestry works, began to investigate the optical nature of color in order to improve color in fabrics. Chevreul realized It was the eye, and not the dye, that had the greatest influence on color, and from this, he revolutionized color theory by grasping what came to be called the law of simultaneous contrast: that colors mutually influence one another when juxtaposed, each imposing its own complementary color on the other. The French painter Eugène Delacroix, who had been experimenting with what he called broken tones, embraced Chevreul's book, The Law of Contrast of Color (1839) with its explanations of how juxtaposed colors can enhance or diminish each other, and his exploration of all the visible colors of the spectrum. Inspired by Chevreul's 1839 treatise, Delacroix passed his enthusiasm on to the young artists who were inspired by him. It was Chevreul who led the Impressionists to grasp that they should apply separate brushstrokes of pure color to a canvas and allow the viewer's eye to combine them optically.
They were aided greatly in this by innovations in oil paint itself. Since the Renaissance, painters had to grind pigment, add oil and thus create their own paints; these time-consuming paints also quickly dried out, making studio painting a necessity for large works, and limiting painters to mix one or two colors at a time and fill in an entire area using just that one color before it dried out. In 1841, a little-known American painter named John G. Rand invented a simple improvement without which the Impressionist movement could not have occurred: the small, flexible tin tube with removable cap in which oil paints could be stored.http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/never-underestimate-the-power-of-a-paint-tube-36637764/?no-ist, May 2013, by Perry Hurt Oil paints kept in such tubes stayed moist, usable, and portable. For the first time since the Renaissance, painters were not trapped by the time frame of how quickly oil paint dried.
Paints in tubes could be easily loaded up and carried out into the real world, to directly observe the play of color and natural light, in shadow and movement, to paint in the moment. Selling the oil paint in tubes also brought about the arrival of dazzling new pigments - chrome yellow, cadmium blue - invented by 19th century industrial chemists. The tubes freed the Impressionists to paint quickly, and across an entire canvas, rather than carefully delineated single-color sections at a time; in short, to sketch directly in oil - racing across the canvas in every color that came to hand and thus inspiring their name of "impressionists" - since such speedy, bold brushwork and dabs of separate colors made contemporary critics think their paintings were mere impressions, not finished paintings, which were to have no visible brush marks at all, seamless under layers of varnish.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir said, “Without colors in tubes, there would be no Cézanne, no Monet, no Pissarro, and no Impressionism.”
Finally, the careful, hyper-realistic techniques of French neo-classicism were seen as stiff and lifeless when compared to the remarkable new vision of the world as seen through the new invention of photography by the mid-1850s. It was not merely that the increasing ability of this new invention, particularly by the French inventor Daguerre, made the realism of the painted image redundant as he deliberately competed in the Paris diorama with large-scale historical paintings."Speculating Daguerre: Art and Enterprise in the Work of L. J. M. Daguerre" by Stephen C. Pinson, Chicago, (2012) p. 1-12 The neo-classical subject matter, limited by Academic tradition to Greek and Roman legends, historical battles and Biblical stories, seemed oppressively clichéd and limited to artists eager to explore the actual world in front of their own eyes revealed by the camera - daily life, candid groupings of everyday people doing simple things, Paris itself, rural landscapes and most particularly the play of captured light - not the imaginary lionizing of unseen past events.Review of "The Lens of Impressionism," at University of Michigan Museum of Art, October- Dec. 2009 by Simon Kelly, Volume 9, Issue 1 Spring 2010, http://www.19thc-artworldwide.org/spring10/the-lens-of-impressionism Early photographs influenced Impressionist style by its use of asymmetry, cropping and most obviously the blurring of motion, as inadvertently captured in the very slow speeds of early photography.
Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir - in their framing, use of color, light and shadow, subject matter - put these innovations to work to create a new language of visual beauty and meaning. |
Artistic revolution | The CIA and Abstract Expressionism | The CIA and Abstract Expressionism
Their initial break with realism into an exploration of light, color and the nature of paint was brought to an ultimate conclusion by the abstract expressionists who broke away from recognizable content of any kind into works of pure shape, color and painterliness which emerged at the end of the Second World War. At first thought of as primitive, inept works - as in "my four year old could do that - these works were misunderstood and neglected until given critical and support by the rise of art journalists and critics who championed their work in the 1940s and 50s, expressing the power of such work in aesthetic terms the artists themselves seldom used, or even understood. Jackson Pollock who pioneered splatter painting, dispensing with a paint brush altogether, soon became lionized as the angry young man in a large spread in Life magazine.
In fact, in a deliberate, secret and successful effort to separate artistic revolutions from political ones, abstract expressionists like Pollock, Robert Motherwell, Willem de Kooning and Mark Rothko, while seemingly difficult, pathbreaking artists, were in fact secretly supported for twenty years by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in a Cold War policy begun in 1947 to prove that the United States could foster more artistic freedom than the Soviet bloc. "It was recognized that Abstract Expressionism was the kind of art that made Socialist Realism look even more stylized and rigid and confined than it was," said former CIA case worker Donald Jameson, who finally broke the silence on this program in 1995. Ironically, the covert CIA support for these radical works was required because an attempt to use government funds for a European tour of these works during the Truman administration led to a public uproar in conservative McCarthy-era America, with Truman famously remarking, "If that's art, I'm a Hottentot." Thus, the program was hidden under the guise of fabricated foundations and the support of wealthy patrons who were actually using CIA funds, not their own, to sponsor traveling exhibitions of American abstract expressionists all over the world, publish books and articles praising them and to purchase and exhibit abstract expressionist works in major American and British museums. Thomas Braden, in charge of these cultural programs for the CIA, in the early years of the Cold War, had formerly been executive secretary of the Museum of Modern Art, America's leading institution for 20th century art and the charges of collusion between the two echoed for many years after this program was revealed, though most of the artists involved had no idea they were being used in this way and were furious when they found out. |
Artistic revolution | See also | See also
Cultural movement |
Artistic revolution | References | References
Category:History of art
Category:Revolutions by type |
Artistic revolution | Table of Content | more citations needed, Scientific and technological, The CIA and Abstract Expressionism, See also, References |
Agrarianism | Short description | Agrarianism is a social and political philosophy that advocates for rural development, a rural agricultural lifestyle, family farming, widespread property ownership, and political decentralization. Those who adhere to agrarianism tend to value traditional forms of local community over urban modernity. Agrarian political parties sometimes aim to support the rights and sustainability of small farmers and poor peasants against the wealthy, powerful and famous in society. |
Agrarianism | Philosophy | Philosophy
Some scholars suggest that agrarianism espouses the superiority of rural society to urban society and the independent farmer as superior to the paid worker, and sees farming as a way of life that can shape the ideal social values.Thompson, Paul. 2010. "Interview Eighteen" in Sustainability Ethics: 5 Questions Ed. Ryne Raffaelle, Wade Robinson, and Evan Selinger. United States: Automatic Press It stresses the superiority of a simpler rural life in comparison to the complexity of urban life. For example, M. Thomas Inge defines agrarianism by the following basic tenets:M. Thomas Inge, ed. Agrarianism in American Literature (1969), introduction; paraphrased
Farming is the sole occupation that offers total independence and self-sufficiency.
Urban life, fascism, capitalism, and technology destroy independence and dignity and foster vice and weakness.
The agricultural community, with its fellowship of labor and co-operation, is the model society.
The farmer has a solid, stable position in the world order. They have "a sense of identity, a sense of historical and religious tradition, a feeling of belonging to a concrete family, place, and region, which are psychologically and culturally beneficial." The harmony of their life checks the encroachments of a fragmented, alienated modern society.
Cultivation of the soil "has within it a positive spiritual good" and from it the cultivator acquires the virtues of "honor, manliness, self-reliance, courage, moral integrity, and hospitality." They result from a direct contact with nature and, through nature, a closer relationship to God. The agrarian is blessed in that they follow the example of God in creating order out of chaos. |
Agrarianism | History | History
The philosophical roots of agrarianism include European and Chinese philosophers. The Chinese school of Agriculturalism (农家/農家) was a philosophy that advocated peasant utopian communalism and egalitarianism. In societies influenced by Confucianism that had as its foundation that humans are innately good, the farmer was considered an esteemed productive member of society, but merchants who made money were looked down upon. That influenced European intellectuals like François Quesnay, an avid Confucianist and advocate of China's agrarian policies, in forming the French agrarian philosophy of physiocracy.L.A. Maverick, "Chinese Influences upon the Physiocrats," Economic History, 3:54–67 (February 1938), The physiocrats, along with the ideas of John Locke and the Romantic Era, formed the basis of modern European and American agrarianism. |
Agrarianism | Types of agrarianism | Types of agrarianism |
Agrarianism | Physiocracy | Physiocracy |
Agrarianism | Jeffersonian democracy | Jeffersonian democracy
thumb|right|200px|Thomas Jefferson and his supporters idealised farmers as the citizens that the American Republic should be formed around.
The United States president Thomas Jefferson was an agrarian who based his ideas about the budding American democracy around the notion that farmers are "the most valuable citizens" and the truest republicans.Thomas P. Govan, "Agrarian and Agrarianism: A Study in the Use and Abuse of Words," Journal of Southern History, Vol. 30#1 (Feb. 1964), pp. 35–47 Jefferson and his support base were committed to American republicanism, which they saw as being in opposition to monarchy, aristocracy, clericalism and corruption, and which prioritized morality and virtue, exemplified by the "yeoman farmer", "planters", and the "plain folk". In praising the rural farmfolk, the Jeffersonians felt that financiers, bankers and industrialists created "cesspools of corruption" in the cities and should thus be avoided.Elkins and McKitrick. (1995) ch 5; Wallace Hettle, The Peculiar Democracy: Southern Democrats in Peace and Civil War (2001) p. 15
The Jeffersonians sought to align the American economy more with agriculture than industry. Part of their motive to do so was Jefferson's fear that the over-industrialization of America would create a class of wage slaves who relied on their employers for income and sustenance. In turn, these workers would cease to be independent voters as their vote could be manipulated by said employers. To counter this, Jefferson introduced, as scholar Clay Jenkinson noted, "a graduated income tax that would serve as a disincentive to vast accumulations of wealth and would make funds available for some sort of benign redistribution downward" and tariffs on imported articles, which were mainly purchased by the wealthy.Jenkinson, Becoming Jefferson's People, p. 26 In 1811, Jefferson, writing to a friend, explained: "these revenues will be levied entirely on the rich... . the rich alone use imported articles, and on these alone the whole taxes of the general government are levied. the poor man ... pays not a farthing of tax to the general government, but on his salt."
There is general agreement that the substantial United States' federal policy of offering land grants (such as thousands of gifts of land to veterans) had a positive impact on economic development in the 19th century.Whaples, R. (1995). Where is there consensus among American economic historians? The results of a survey on forty propositions. The Journal of Economic History, 55(1), 139–154. |
Agrarianism | Agrarian socialism | Agrarian socialism
Agrarian socialism is a form of agrarianism that is anti-capitalist in nature and seeks to introduce socialist economic systems in their stead. |
Agrarianism | Zapatismo | Zapatismo
right|thumb|Emiliano Zapata fought in the Mexican Revolution in the name of the Mexican peasants and sought to introduce reforms such as land redistribution.
Notable agrarian socialists include Emiliano Zapata who was a leading figure in the Mexican Revolution. As part of the Liberation Army of the South, his group of revolutionaries fought on behalf of the Mexican peasants, whom they saw as exploited by the landowning classes. Zapata published the Plan of Ayala, which called for significant land reforms and land redistribution in Mexico as part of the revolution. Zapata was killed and his forces crushed over the course of the Revolution, but his political ideas lived on in the form of Zapatismo.
Zapatismo would form the basis for neozapatismo, the ideology of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation. Known as Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional or EZLN in Spanish, EZLN is a far-left libertarian socialist political and militant group that emerged in the state of Chiapas in southmost Mexico in 1994. EZLN and Neozapatismo, as explicit in their name, seek to revive the agrarian socialist movement of Zapata, but fuse it with new elements such as a commitment to indigenous rights and community-level decision making.
Subcommander Marcos, a leading member of the movement, argues that the peoples' collective ownership of the land was and is the basis for all subsequent developments the movement sought to create:...When the land became property of the peasants ... when the land passed into the hands of those who work it ... [This was] the starting point for advances in government, health, education, housing, nutrition, women's participation, trade, culture, communication, and information ...[it was] recovering the means of production, in this case, the land, animals, and machines that were in the hands of large property owners."See The Zapatistas' Dignified Rage: Final Public Speeches of Subcommander Marcos. Edited by Nick Henck. Translated by Henry Gales. (Chico: AK Press, 2018), pp. 81–82. |
Agrarianism | Maoism | Maoism
Maoism, the far-left ideology of Mao Zedong and his followers, places a heavy emphasis on the role of peasants in its goals. In contrast to other Marxist schools of thought which normally seek to acquire the support of urban workers, Maoism sees the peasantry as key. Believing that "political power grows out of the barrel of a gun", Maoism saw the Chinese Peasantry as the prime source for a Marxist vanguard because it possessed two qualities: (i) they were poor, and (ii) they were a political blank slate; in Mao's words, "A clean sheet of paper has no blotches, and so the newest and most beautiful words can be written on it".Gregor, A. James; Chang, Maria Hsia (1978). "Maoism and Marxism in Comparative Perspective". The Review of Politics. 40: 3. pp. 307–327. During the Chinese Civil War and the Second Sino-Japanese War, Mao and the Chinese Communist Party made extensive use of peasants and rural bases in their military tactics, often eschewing the cities.
Following the eventual victory of the Communist Party in both wars, the countryside and how it should be run remained a focus for Mao. In 1958, Mao launched the Great Leap Forward, a social and economic campaign which, amongst other things, altered many aspects of rural Chinese life. It introduced mandatory collective farming and forced the peasantry to organize itself into communal living units which were known as people's communes. These communes, which consisted of 5,000 people on average, were expected to meet high production quotas while the peasants who lived on them adapted to this radically new way of life. The communes were run as co-operatives where wages and money were replaced by work points. Peasants who criticised this new system were persecuted as "rightists" and "counter-revolutionaries". Leaving the communes was forbidden and escaping from them was difficult or impossible, and those who attempted it were subjected to party-orchestrated "public struggle sessions," which further jeopardized their survival.Thaxton, Ralph A. Jr (2008). Catastrophe and Contention in Rural China: Mao's Great Leap Forward Famine and the Origins of Righteous Resistance in Da Fo Village . Cambridge University Press. p. 3. . These public criticism sessions were often used to intimidate the peasants into obeying local officials and they often devolved into little more than public beatings.Thaxton 2008, p. 212.
On the communes, experiments were conducted in order to find new methods of planting crops, efforts were made to construct new irrigation systems on a massive scale, and the communes were all encouraged to produce steel backyard furnaces as part of an effort to increase steel production. However, following the Anti-Rightist Campaign, Mao had instilled a mass distrust of intellectuals into China, and thus engineers often were not consulted with regard to the new irrigation systems and the wisdom of asking untrained peasants to produce good quality steel from scrap iron was not publicly questioned. Similarly, the experimentation with the crops did not produce results. In addition to this the Four Pests Campaign was launched, in which the peasants were called upon to destroy sparrows and other wild birds that ate crop seeds, in order to protect fields. Pest birds were shot down or scared away from landing until they dropped from exhaustion. This campaign resulted in an ecological disaster that saw an explosion of the vermin population, especially crop-eating insects, which was consequently not in danger of being killed by predators.
None of these new systems were working, but local leaders did not dare to state this, instead, they falsified reports so as not to be punished for failing to meet the quotas. In many cases they stated that they were greatly exceeding their quotas, and in turn, the Chinese state developed a completely false sense of success with regard to the commune system.
All of this culminated in the Great Chinese Famine, which began in 1959, lasted 3 years, and saw an estimated 15 to 30 million Chinese people die.Holmes, Leslie. Communism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press 2009). . p. 32 "Most estimates of the number of Chinese people who died range from 15 to 30 million." A combination of bad weather and the new, failed farming techniques that were introduced by the state led to massive shortages of food. By 1962, the Great Leap Forward was declared to be at an end.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Mao once again radically altered life in rural China with the launching of the Down to the Countryside Movement. As a response to the Great Chinese Famine, the Chinese President Liu Shaoqi began "sending down" urban youths to rural China in order to recover its population losses and alleviate overcrowding in the cities. However, Mao turned the practice into a political crusade, declaring that the sending down would strip the youth of any bourgeois tendencies by forcing them to learn from the unprivileged rural peasants. In reality, it was the Communist Party's attempt to reign in the Red Guards, who had become uncontrollable during the course of the Cultural Revolution. 10% of the 1970 urban population of China was sent out to remote rural villages, often in Inner Mongolia. The villages, which were still poorly recovering from the effects of the Great Chinese Famine, did not have the excess resources that were needed to support the newcomers. Furthermore, the so-called "sent-down youth" had no agricultural experience and as a result, they were unaccustomed to the harsh lifestyle that existed in the countryside, and their unskilled labor in the villages provided little benefit to the agricultural sector. As a result, many of the sent-down youth died in the countryside. The relocation of the youths was originally intended to be permanent, but by the end of the Cultural Revolution, the Communist Party relented and some of those who had the capacity to return to the cities were allowed to do so.
In imitation of Mao's policies, the Khmer Rouge of Cambodia (who were heavily funded and supported by the People's Republic of China) created their own version of the Great Leap Forward which was known as "Maha Lout Ploh". With the Great Leap Forward as its model, it had similarly disastrous effects, contributing to what is now known as the Cambodian genocide. As a part of the Maha Lout Ploh, the Khmer Rouge sought to create an entirely agrarian socialist society by forcibly relocating 100,000 people to move from Cambodia's cities into newly created communes. The Khmer Rouge leader, Pol Pot sought to "purify" the country by setting it back to "Year Zero", freeing it from "corrupting influences". Besides trying to completely de-urbanize Cambodia, ethnic minorities were slaughtered along with anyone else who was suspected of being a "reactionary" or a member of the "bourgeoisie", to the point that wearing glasses was seen as grounds for execution. The killings were only brought to an end when Cambodia was invaded by the neighboring socialist nation of Vietnam, whose army toppled the Khmer Rouge. However, with Cambodia's entire society and economy in disarray, including its agricultural sector, the country still plunged into renewed famine due to vast food shortages. However, as international journalists began to report on the situation and send images of it out to the world, a massive international response was provoked, leading to one of the most concentrated relief efforts of its time. |
Agrarianism | Notable agrarian parties | Notable agrarian parties
Peasant parties first appeared across Eastern Europe between 1860 and 1910, when commercialized agriculture and world market forces disrupted traditional rural society, and the railway and growing literacy facilitated the work of roving organizers. Agrarian parties advocated land reforms to redistribute land on large estates among those who work it. They also wanted village cooperatives to keep the profit from crop sales in local hands and credit institutions to underwrite needed improvements. Many peasant parties were also nationalist parties because peasants often worked their land for the benefit of landlords of different ethnicity.
Peasant parties rarely had any power before World War I but some became influential in the interwar era, especially in Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia. For a while, in the 1920s and the 1930s, there was a Green International (International Agrarian Bureau) based on the peasant parties in Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Serbia. It functioned primarily as an information center that spread the ideas of agrarianism and combating socialism on the left and landlords on the right and never launched any significant activities. |
Agrarianism | Europe | Europe |
Agrarianism | Bulgaria | Bulgaria
In Bulgaria, the Bulgarian Agrarian National Union (BZNS) was organized in 1899 to resist taxes and build cooperatives. BZNS came to power in 1919 and introduced many economic, social, and legal reforms. However, conservative forces crushed BZNS in a 1923 coup and assassinated its leader, Aleksandar Stamboliyski (1879–1923). BZNS was made into a communist puppet group until 1989, when it reorganized as a genuine party. |
Agrarianism | Czechoslovakia | Czechoslovakia
In Czechoslovakia, the Republican Party of Agricultural and Smallholder People often shared power in parliament as a partner in the five-party pětka coalition. The party's leader, Antonín Švehla (1873–1933), was prime minister several times. It was consistently the strongest party, forming and dominating coalitions. It moved beyond its original agrarian base to reach middle-class voters. The party was banned by the National Front after the Second World War.Sharon Werning Rivera, "Historical cleavages or transition mode? Influences on the emerging party systems in Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia." Party Politics (1996) 2#2 : 177-208. |
Agrarianism | France | France
In France, the Hunting, Fishing, Nature, Tradition party is a moderate conservative, agrarian party, reaching a peak of 4.23% in the 2002 French presidential election. It would later on become affiliated to France's main conservative party, Union for a Popular Movement. More recently, the Resistons! movement of Jean Lassalle espoused agrarianism. |
Agrarianism | Hungary | Hungary
In Hungary, the first major agrarian party, the small-holders party was founded in 1908. The party became part of the government in the 1920s but lost influence in the government. A new party, the Independent Smallholders, Agrarian Workers and Civic Party was established in 1930 with a more radical program representing larger scale land redistribution initiatives. They implemented this program together with the other coalition parties after WWII. However, after 1949 the party was outlawed when a one-party system was introduced. They became part of the government again 1990–1994, and 1998–2002 after which they lost political support. The ruling Fidesz party has an agrarian faction, and promotes agrarian interest since 2010 with the emphasis now placed on supporting larger family farms versus small-holders. |
Agrarianism | Ireland | Ireland
thumb|Land League poster
In the late 19th century, the Irish National Land League aimed to abolish landlordism in Ireland and enable tenant farmers to own the land they worked on. The "Land War" of 1878–1909 led to the Irish Land Acts, ending absentee landlords and ground rent and redistributing land among peasant farmers.
Post-independence, the Farmers' Party operated in the Irish Free State from 1922, folding into the National Centre Party in 1932. It was mostly supported by wealthy farmers in the east of Ireland.
Clann na Talmhan (Family of the Land; also called the National Agricultural Party) was founded in 1938. They focused more on the poor smallholders of the west, supporting land reclamation, afforestation, social democracy and rates reform. They formed part of the governing coalition of the Government of the 13th Dáil and Government of the 15th Dáil. Economic improvement in the 1960s saw farmers vote for other parties and Clann na Talmhan disbanded in 1965. |
Agrarianism | Kazakhstan | Kazakhstan
In Kazakhstan, the Peasants' Union, originally a communist organization, was formed as one of first agrarian parties in independent Kazakhstan and would win four seats in the 1994 legislative election. The Agrarian Party of Kazakhstan, led by Romin Madinov, was founded in 1999, which favored the privatization of agricultural land, developments towards rural infrastructure, as well as changes in the tax system in agrarian economy. The party would go on to win three Mäjilis seats in the 1999 legislative election and eventually unite with the Civic Party of Kazakhstan to form the pro-government Agrarian-Industrial Union of Workers (AIST) bloc that would be chaired by Madinov for the 2004 legislative election, with the AIST bloc winning 11 seats in the Mäjilis. From there, the bloc remained short-lived as it would merge with the ruling Nur Otan party in 2006.
Several other parties in Kazakhstan over the years have embraced agrarian policies in their programs in an effort to appeal towards a large rural Kazakh demographic base, which included Amanat, ADAL, and Respublica.
Since late 2000s, the "Auyl" People's Democratic Patriotic Party remains the largest and most influential agrarian-oriented party in Kazakhstan, as its presidential candidate Jiguli Dairabaev had become the second-place frontrunner in the 2022 presidential election after sweeping 3.4% of the vote. In the 2023 legislative election, the Auyl party for the first time was represented the parliament after winning nine seats in the lower chamber Mäjilis. The party raises rural issues in regard to decaying villages, rural development and the agro-industrial complex, the issues of social security of the rural population, and has consistently opposed the ongoing rural flight in Kazakhstan. |
Agrarianism | Latvia | Latvia
In Latvia, the Union of Greens and Farmers is supportive of traditional small farms and perceives them as more environmentally friendly than large-scale farming: Nature is threatened by development, while small farms are threatened by large industrial-scale farms. |
Agrarianism | Lithuania | Lithuania
In Lithuania, the government led by the Lithuanian Farmers and Greens Union was in power between 2016 and 2020. |
Agrarianism | Nordic countries | Nordic countries
thumb|220px|As well as sharing similar backgrounds and policies, Nordic agrarian parties share the use of a four leaf clover as their primary symbol |
Agrarianism | Poland | Poland
In Poland, the Polish People's Party (Polskie Stronnictwo Ludowe, PSL) traces its tradition to an agrarian party in Austro-Hungarian-controlled Galician Poland. After the fall of the communist regime, PSL's biggest success came in 1993 elections, where it won 132 out of 460 parliamentary seats. Since then, PSL's support has steadily declined, until 2019, when they formed Polish Coalition with an anti-establishment, direct democracy Kukiz'15 party, and managed to get 8.5% of popular vote. Moreover, PSL tends to get much better results in local elections. In 2014 elections they have managed to get 23.88% of votes.
The right-wing Law and Justice party has also become supportive of agrarian policies in recent years and polls show that most of their support comes from rural areas. AGROunia resembles the features of agrarianism. |
Agrarianism | Romania | Romania
In Romania, older party parties from Transylvania, Moldavia, and Wallachia merged to become the National Peasants' Party (PNȚ) in 1926. Iuliu Maniu (1873–1953) was a prime minister with an agrarian cabinet from 1928 to 1930 and briefly in 1932–1933, but the Great Depression made proposed reforms impossible. The communist administration dissolved the party in 1947 (along with other historical parties such as the National Liberal Party), but it reformed in 1989 after they fell from power.
The reformed party, which also incorporated elements of Christian democracy in its ideology, governed Romania as part of the Romanian Democratic Convention (CDR) between 1996 and 2000. |
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