Minerva of different Roman emperors. She often is represented on the reverse side of a coin holding an owl and a spear among her attributes. Stemming from an Italic moon goddess "*Meneswā" ('She who measures'), the Etruscans adopted the inherited Old Latin name, "*Menerwā", thereby calling her Menrva. It is presumed that her Roman name, Minerva, is based on this Etruscan mythology. Minerva was the goddess of wisdom, war, art, schools, and commerce. She was the Etruscan counterpart to Greek Athena. Like Athena, Minerva burst from the head of her father, Jupiter (Greek Zeus), who had devoured her mother (Metis) in
The Cults of the Greek States The Cults of the Greek States The Cults of the Greek States is a series of works by Lewis Richard Farnell, D. Litt., first published between 1896 and 1909, in five volumes (at the outset Farnell had only planned for there to be three), at the Clarendon Press, Oxford. The works were groundbreaking because it was the first time that any scholar, let alone an Oxford scholar, had attempted to disentangle the history of Greek religion from that of Greek mythology. There was need for the two to be separated since Greek mythology had at the time, in literary circles