09 December 2014

Minerva – Goddess of Skilled Thought and Action

"Perseus Armed by Mercury and Minerva" (detail) by Bordone (c.1550)
Minerva is the Goddess of skillfulness and industriousness, or, to put it another way, Minerva is the divine spirit (numen) of skilled action and skilled thought. Caesar describes Minerva as she who “bestows the principles of arts and crafts”, and so she is the patron Goddess of any profession associated with skilled workmanship, thus carpenters, painters, sculptors, teachers, health care workers, shoemakers, anyone associated with the textile industry, indeed any artisan. Propertius describes Minerva as the Goddess of the chaste arts, and Cicero, Tibullus and Horace all refer to her as a chaste, or maiden, Goddess. Horace calls her “industrious”. She also has another significant aspect, a martial one. Ovid tells us that “fierce wars are waged by Minerva’s hands”, and calls her the “armed Goddess”  who likes “unsheathed swords”. Thus in iconography she is typically identifiable by her helmet. Though Mars is the God of war, he is more commonly associated with the bloody violence of war, whereas Minerva is associated with military strategy (skilled thought leading to skilled action), without which no war can be won.