Athena Hera, Athena was one of the three goddesses whose feud resulted in the beginning of the Trojan War. She plays an active role in the "Iliad", in which she assists the Achaeans and, in the "Odyssey", she is the divine counselor 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, afterwards transforming Arachne into the first spider; Ovid also describes how she transformed Medusa into a Gorgon after witnessing her being raped by Poseidon in her temple. Since the Renaissance, Athena has become an
Athena Promachos where a large, bronze, statue of Athena was destroyed by a “drunken crowd” of Crusaders which is now thought to have been the "Athena Promachos." Of surviving models thought to represent the type, the two outstanding ones are the "Athena Elgin", a small bronze statuette in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, who bears an owl in her outstretched hand (as among some coin types), and the "Athena Medici" torso in the Musée du Louvre, of which there are a number of replicas. The engravings on the shield which Athena is holding were originally drafted by the great Greek painter, Parrhasius