Before the entrance to the Academy is an altar to Eros, with an inscription indicating that Kharmos was the first Athenian to dedicate an altar to that god. The altar within the city called the altar of Ant-eros they say was dedicated by resident aliens, because the Athenian Meles, spurning the love of Timagoras, a resident alien, ordered him to ascend to the highest point of the rock and cast himself down. Now Timagoras took no account of his life, and was ready to gratify the youth in any of his requests, so he went and cast himself down. When Meles saw that Timagoras was dead, he suffered such pangs of remorse that he threw himself from the same rock and so died. From this time the resident aliens worshipped as Ant-eros the avenging spirit of Timagoras.
In the Academy is an altar to Prometheus, and from it they run to the city carrying burning torches. The contest is while running to keep the torch still lit; if the torch of the first runner goes out, he has no longer any claim to victory, but the second runner has. If his torch also goes out, then the third man is the victor. If all the torches go out, no one is left to be winner. There is an altar to the Muses, and another to Hermes, and one inside to Athena, and they have built one to Hēraklēs. There is also an olive tree, accounted to be the second that appeared.
Not far from the Academy is the tomb [mnēma] of Plato, to whom the god [theos] foretold [pro-sēmainein] that he would be the best [aristos] when it comes to philosophy. The manner of the foretelling [pro-sēmainein] was this. On the night before Plato was to become his pupil Socrates dreamed that he saw a swan [kuknos] fly into his insides [kolpos]. Now the swan is a bird with a reputation for the art-of-the-Muses [mousikē], because, they say, a practitioner-of-the-art-of-the-Muses [mousikos] by the name of Swan [Kuknos] became king of the Ligyes on the other side of the Eridanos beyond the Celtic territory, and after his death by the will of Apollo he was changed into the bird. I am ready to believe that a practitioner-of-the-art-of-the-Muses [mousikos] became king of the Ligyes, but I cannot believe that a bird was generated out of a man.
In this landscape [khōrā] is visible the tower [purgos] of Timon, the only man to see that there is no way to be happy [eudaimōn] except to shun other humans [anthrōpoi]. There is also pointed out a place [khōros] called the Kolōnos Hippios [‘Tumulus of Horses’], the first point in Attica, they say, that Oedipus reached—these things that are said do differ from what is in the poetry [poiēsis] Homer, but they say these things in any case—and an altar [bōmos] of Poseidon Hippios [‘(controller of) horses’], and of Athena Hippiā [‘(controller of) horses’], and a hero-shrine [hērōion] of Peirithoös and Theseus, Oedipus and Adrastos. The grove [alsos] and shrine [nāos] of Poseidon were burned down by Antigonos1 when he invaded Attica, who at other times also ravaged the land of the Athenians.
Footnotes
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Pausanias 1.1.1.
I see here a most revealing set of details that point to a Mycenaean role of Athena. We have just learned that the epithet *Hippiā *is applied to the goddess by the natives of Colonus, just as they apply the epithet *Hippios *to the god Poseidon. This epithet, which I translate in both cases as ‘controller-of-horses’, is I think referring primarily to the skill of charioteering. At a later point in his write-up, at 8.46.1, 4–5, Pausanias is commenting on a statue of Athena that had been safeguarded by the people of Tegea in Arcadia—until they were robbed of their prized possession by their Roman conquerors; they then replaced that statue of Athena that was lost to Rome by taking another statue of Athena from another site that was sacred to her—in this case, from a neighboring Arcadian *dēmos *or ‘district’ by the name of Manthouria, as we read further in Pausanias 8.47.1. We learn there that the goddess represented by this statue was called *Hippiā *by the local Arcadian population that worshipped her, and that she was addressed this way, as ‘controller of the horses’. Pausanias then proceeds to give the reason for worshipping Athena as Hippiā. In the mythology of these Arcadians, he reports, Athena went to war as a charioteer in their local version of a widespread myth traditionally known as the Battle of the Gods and Giants. With these details in mind, I now turn to relevant evidence in Mycenaean Greek as written in the Linear B texts found at Knossos and at Pylos. In these texts, as we are about to see, the comparable forms *Athānā *and *hikkʷeiā *are attested in contexts that correspond to the contexts of *Athēnē *and *Hippiā *as reported by Pausanias. In analyzing these texts and contexts, I mostly agree with the relevant argumentation presented in a paper jointly authored by Joann Gulizia, Kevin Pluta, and Thomas Palaima (2001). The authors, hereafter abbreviated GPP, concentrate on two texts: the tablet V 52 from Knossos, which they date around 1400 BCE, and the tablet An 1281 from Pylos, unambiguously dated around 1200 BCE.
We start with the Linear B tablet V 52 from Knossos. The specific context of this text, according to GPP, can be traced back—with some certainty—to the Room of the Chariot Tablets or RCT, as it is known to archaeologists. This context, as we will see, is relevant to a detail mentioned by Pausanias at 1.30.4: according to our traveler, as I have already noted, the goddess Athena is worshipped as *Hippiā *or ‘charioteer’ at Colonus. But what about the goddess in the text of tablet V 52, situated in the context of the Room of the Chariot Tablets? She is mentioned prominently, in the first line of V 52, where we read a-ta-na-po-ti-ni-ja. The second element, -po-ti-ni-ja, spells potniāi, dative case of potnia, corresponding to classical Greek *potnia *(πότνια), meaning ‘mistress, lady’. As for the first element, a-ta-na-, it can be interpreted as spelling either *Athānāi *or Athānās—so, either the dative or the genitive case of the name Athānā, corresponding to the classical Greek name Athēnē. A big question remains, though: is this Mycenaean name *Athānā *(1) the personal name of the goddess Athena or (2) a place-name, referring to the citadel of Athens, a primary residence of the goddess? In the paper of GPP, a persuasive argument is made for the second of these two alternative explanations. Crucial for their argumentation is a fact that I have highlighted in my own work: the fact is, as I showed at §§4–9 in Nagy 2015.09.10 with reference to Odyssey 7.78 and with bibliography referring to earlier phases of my relevant work, the singular form *Athēnē *can refer in Homeric Greek to the citadel of the goddess Athena in what later became, already well before the classical era, the city of Athens. Accordingly, if we follow the interpretation preferred by GPP, the wording of the first line in the tablet V 52 can be interpreted this way: ‘to the Lady [potnia] of Athens’, where a-ta-na- spells Athānās, in the genitive case, while po-ti-ni-ja spells potniāi, in the dative. Alternatively, if we were to read a-ta-na- as Athānāi, in the dative case, then we could interpret the wording this way: ‘to the Lady Athena’. Either way, in any case, the referent would be the goddess Athena, in a Mycenaean phase of her evolution.
But more can be said about such a Mycenaean Athena as a charioteer, to be matched with the role of the “classical” Athena at Colonus as Hippiā. Here we turn to the Linear B tablet An 1281 from Pylos, dated around 1200 BCE. We read in this text the noun po-ti-ni-ja, spelling potniāi, in the dative case, and meaning ‘to the Lady [potnia]’. Although the name of the goddess who receives the offering is not indicated, the identity of the divine referent here is most likely to be the goddess Athena. As we see from the analysis of GPP (p. 456), the noun po-ti-ni-ja that we see in the text of this tablet is described by way of the epithet i-qe-ja, which can be interpreted as hikkʷeiā, in the dative case—so, adjective *hikkʷeiāi *describing and agreeing with the noun potniāi. As observed by GPP (again, p. 456), this Mycenaean Greek epithet *hikkʷeiā *would be the equivalent of *hippeiā *in classical Greek. Thus the combination of po-ti-ni-ja and i-qe-ja in the text of this tablet can be interpreted to mean this: ‘to the Lady [potnia], controller-of-horses [hikkʷeiā]’—or, to word it more specifically, ‘to the Lady, Charioteer’.