_Zeus._--"This very thing, to cleave my head. If you disobey, not now for the first time will you make trial of my anger. You must strike with your whole heart and not delay for I am tortured by the pains which confuse my brain." _Heph._--"See to it, O Zeus, lest we do some harm, for the ax is sharp and not without bloodshed." _Zeus._--"Only strike quickly, Hephæstus, for I know the consequences." _Heph._--"I am unwilling, but still I shall strike, for what must I do when you bid? What is this? A maiden clad in armor! A great evil, O Zeus, did you have in your head! Naturally were you quick to anger, keeping such a maiden beneath the covering of your brain and armed too. I suppose it has escaped our notice that you had a camp and not a head. She leaps and dances, shakes her shield, brandishes her spear, and is in an ecstasy. And the greatest marvel, she is fair and vigorous--already in this short time. Quick-glancing eyes has she, and a helmet, too, adorns her. Therefore, oh Zeus, as my wages, promise her to me." _Zeus._--"You ask what is impossible, Hephæstus, for a maiden always it is her wish to remain. I, as far as I am concerned, do not gainsay it." _Heph._--"I wanted this. I'll manage it and I'll snatch her away." _Zeus._--"If it is easy for you, do it. Still I know that you ask what is impossible." A certain Philostratus gives descriptions of paintings which he pretended belonged to a gallery in Naples, and this is one of them: "The Birth of Athena." "Those astonished ones are the gods and goddesses to whom the order has been given that even the nymphs are not to be absent from heaven, but are to be present with the rivers from which they are sprung. They shudder at Athena, but just now sprung in her arms from the head of Zeus, by the arts of Hephæstus, as the ax shows. No one could imagine the material of her panoply, for as many as are the colors of the rainbow as it changes into different lights, so many colors flash from her arms. And Hephæstus seems in doubt by what gift he should win the favor of the goddess for his bait is spent since her arms have grown with her.