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 warrior-goddess with her "palladion", or her palladion 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.