Meet Minerva, Goddess of Intellect, Inspiration & the Arts

Minerva is one of the most recognisable Roman goddesses, with her shield and helmet. She continues to gaze at us whenever we see depictions of Britannia. But she’s also one of my favourite goddesses because she completely defies the contemporary tendency to consider all goddesses as either mother figures or love deities.

Instead, Minerva is very much a goddess of intellect, forethought, and craftsmanship. We see her as a supreme weaver, but she also becomes a tactical and strategic genius in military terms. Some consider her a goddess of peace as much as a war goddess. Martin Henig also describes her as the goddess of learning and writing, making her a figure very close to my own heart (1995: 93).

She’s also a virgin goddess who turned down both gods and mortals. But why was Minerva so popular? Let’s find out!

Who was Minerva?

She ruled as part of the Capitoline Triad with Jupiter and Juno. While she’s often syncretised with Athena of Greek mythology, this evolution of Minerva happened slowly in the third and fourth centuries BCE (Apel 2023).

In actual fact, she originated from Menrva, an Etruscan deity. This name came from an even older deity in the area, whose name Menes-wo meant “she who knows” and “she who measures”.

The most well-known origin story sees Minerva born from the forehead of her father, Jupiter. Her mother is Metis, a wise Titan who Jupiter has already seduced. A prophecy said that Jupiter would be overthrown by his son, which is ironic since Jupiter did the same to his father, Saturn.

Jupiter swallowed the pregnant Metis whole, and eventually, Minerva sprang from his forehead, fully grown and dressed for battle. In my favourite version of the myth, blacksmith god Vulcan splits Jupiter’s head open to set her free. She went on to become Jupiter’s favourite child.

These bronze heads of Minerva and Jupiter Taranis from Felmingham Hall in Norfolk probably came from the shrine there, and demonstrate the bond between the pair (Henig 1995: 142).

She’s usually depicted wearing a chiton, or full-length gown, carrying a shield and wearing a helmet. Her sacred bird was an owl, a motif borrowed from Athena.

Myths about Minerva

Perhaps one of the most famous myths about Minerva involves Arachne. She was a talented weaver and boasted that she was so good, she’d even beat Minerva. The goddess didn’t appreciate the comment and challenged Arachne to a weaving contest.

Minerva predictably made a beautiful tapestry. Arachne’s was also beautiful and well-made, but she made the mistake of depicting the gods seducing mortal women. Minerva took offence at Arachne’s mocking of the gods and struck her. In some versions of the story, Arachne tries to hang herself in shame, but Minerva turns her into a spider to save her using “the juice of Hecate’s herb”.

Minerva and the Trojan Wars

She also appears in the Trojan Wars, having been spurned during the Judgment of Paris. She offered Paris success in warfare, but Paris decided he’d rather have Helen of Troy, and declared Venus the fairest of them all.

As a result, Minerva threw her support behind the Greeks. She later gave Ulysses (Odysseus in the Greek version) the idea for the Trojan horse. See? Divine inspiration.

Like Juno, she hated Aeneas, one of the survivors of Troy, though she did change her mind about him over time. He carried a statue of her when he escape from Troy, and his dogged protection of the statue eventually won Minerva over.

Medusa and Minerva

Another legend was adapted from the Greek legend of Perseus and Medusa. In this myth, Medusa was a beautiful priestess who caught Neptune’s eye. He pursued Medusa and in some versions of the myth, Medusa fled to Minerva’s temple for protection, but Neptune forced himself on her anyway. Minerva was furious to have her temple defiled in such a manner, but rather than punishing her uncle, she turned Medusa into a gorgon. Her beautiful hair became snakes, and she turned any living creature she looked at to stone.

Minerva gave Perseus the idea of approaching Medusa by looking at the reflection in his shield. Able to avoid her petrifying glare, Perseus beheaded Medusa, although there are other versions of the myth in which he did the deed while she slept.

Perseus gave Medusa’s severed head to Minerva after using it to petrify the sea monster, Cetus, and Minerva added its image to her aegis. If you’re interested in depictions of Medusa in art and popular culture, then I have a talk about that very topic that you can buy here!

Minerva also went on to tame Pegasus, the winged horse that sprang from Medusa’s blood. It’s Minerva that gives Bellerophon an enchanted bridle that lets him catch Pegasus when he tries to defeat the Chimaira.

Who worshipped her?

She was a popular goddess, worshipped by everyone from merchants and craftsmen to military leaders and statesmen. As the goddess of inspiration, it seems artists also loved her (Apel 2022). As a knitter and crocheter, I can’t help thinking she’s probably the closest thing we have to a goddess of yarn crafts.

The oldest known sanctuary to her was found at Lavinium in Italy, which dated to the sixth to the fourth centuries BCE (Crerar 2022: 185).

People visited the different temples to Minerva based on what they needed from her. At the Temple of Minerva Medica on the Esquiline Hill, she offered healing (Apel 2022). At the Aventine temple, people worshipped her and asked for inspiration.

It’s perhaps under this last incarnation that musicians worshipped her. Though she had her own links to music too and is believed to have invented the flute. She pierced holes into boxwood, and tried playing it. While she liked how it sounded, she didn’t like how she looked while playing it. She tossed it away, and a satyr found it on a riverbank. The satyr had no such qualms about playing it!

When and how did people worship her?

Her main festival fell in March, and was five days long, called the Quinquatria. It started on March 19. It’s no surprised it fell at this time of the year, when Roman armies left for the campaign season. The festival was intended to get Minerva on-side ahead of their military efforts.

This was originally a festival dedicated to Mars, but Thomas Apel notes that shifting it to Minerva showed the maturation of the Roman empire as they needed patient strategy, rather than raw power (2022).

People didn’t just worship the gods, they also asked them for help. Various tablets have been found in which people address their god of choice, asking for their help in a specific matter. Where specifics aren’t available, the tablets have to be more cunning. So, for example, if you didn’t know the identity of a thief, you’d simply say “Whether man or woman, slave or free”. After all, if you specified a man and the thief was a woman, the god couldn’t help (Henig 1995: 143). There is a whole range of these curse tablets from the Temple of Sulis Minerva.

Leaving votive offerings was also a popular way to get your prayers heard, and people left a range of offerings at her temples. At Lavinium, they left loom weights, probably in reference to her patronage over the crafts (Crerar 2022: 186).

People might also spontaneously mark their gratitude to Minerva in some tangible way. Someone carved a small shrine to the goddess at a quarry near the Chester fortress, to show their thanks for the rock they needed (Henig 1995: 93).

Miranda Aldhouse-Green also notes that you didn’t necessarily need to go to a dedicated shrine to worship. Statues found at the London Mithraeum reveal the temple welcomed Minerva devotees, among others! (2018: 161)

Sulis Minerva: A Romano-British Figure?

It’s also worth considering the figure of Sulis Minerva, the deity that syncretised Minerva with Sulis, a Celtic water goddess. In Bath, the locals worshipped Sulis at the thermal spring. When the Romans arrived, they equated Sulis with Minerva to create Sulis Minerva. Henig suggests the Romano-British used the two names interchangeably (1995: 27).

He also notes that the healing activities in Bath would have differed little from the healing activities at the Minerva Medica Cabardiacensis near Piacenza (1995: 43). This helps to reveal the healing aspects of Minerva, even if they’re not immediately obvious from her incarnations as the embodiment of intelligence or military strategy.

I mentioned the lead curse tablets found at the Temple of Sulis Minerva. What’s striking about these is that it shows she essentially presided over justice in Bath. But it was more of a sense of retribution than the ‘official’ justice offered by Jupiter (Crerar 2022: 188).

The Rehabilitation of Minerva

It’s notable that goddesses like Juno or Ceres faded into the background. Venus was largely villified and turned into a wanton figure of lust and damnation. Fortuna managed to live on as Lady Luck, and Minerva was also preserved by Christianity, most likely due to her chastity (Crerar 2022: 188).

By the sixteenth century and onwards, Minerva had become synonymous with fair, level-headed, and rational female leadership. Queen Elizabeth I, Queen Anne, and Catherine the Great were all represented as Minerva in some way. She largely lost her deified status and came to embody concepts such as justice and intellect instead.

She alone survived the purge of classical symbols during the French Revolution. Where other statues were torn down, Minerva remained in the Place de la Revolution to represent Liberty (Crerar 2022: 190). She even retained her links with the military, appearing on the United States Medals of Honor, awarded for bravery in combat (Crerar 2022: 188).

I think this is why Minerva continues to be such a popular figure today. She can stand for a range of concepts that are acceptable to Western thought, and she’s even been embraced by the feminist cause. I love her because she mixes intellect with the arts, and her patronage over the crafts shows that we shouldn’t really separate the crafts into something twee while ‘fine art’ gets higher plaudits. But she also defies the New Age notion of the gentle, meek mother goddess, and the false equation of femininity with feeling, and masculinity with thinking. Minerva embodies the ability to do both.

What do you make of her?

References

Aldhouse-Green, Miranda (2018), Sacred Britannia: The Gods and Rituals of Roman Britain, London: Thames & Hudson.

Apel, Thomas (2022), ‘Minerva’, Mythopedia, https://mythopedia.com/topics/minerva.

Crerar, Belinda (2022), Feminine Power: The Divine to the Demonic, London: British Museum Press.

Henig, Martin (1995), Religion in Roman Britain, London: Batsford.