Zeus gasps with pleasure, as those enduring great pain for great gain, and inquires for his child, proud that he bore her, and Hera is not angry, but rejoices as if she had borne the maiden herself. Now two peoples sacrifice to Athena on two citadels, the Athenians and the Rhodians, land and sea; of the one indeed the sacrifices are without fire and incomplete. Among the Athenians fire is painted and the savor of sacrifices and smoke, as if fragrant and ascending with the savor; therefore, as to the wiser and those sacrificing well, the goddess comes to them. It is said that gold was poured down from heaven for the Rhodians and filled their houses and streets since Zeus poured out a cloud upon them because they, too, revered Athena; and the god Wealth stood upon their acropolis, winged, as if from the clouds and golden from the material in which he appears, and he is painted as having eyes, for from foresight he came to them." Now that practically all the evidence has been brought it is time to investigate the theories propounded by these modern scholars and the various interpretations which they put upon this strange birth of a deity. Preller looks upon Athena as the goddess of the clear sky. In the cloudy sky, in the midst of the storm and lightning the clear bright heaven appeared, and this was the birth of Athena. The sky is of the greatest beauty in Greece, especially in Attica, so Athena was most honored in this land. To another German scholar, Welcker, she is the æther and also the spirit, presenting both sides of the nature of her father, being æther, the daughter of Zeus dwelling in the æther and spirit, the daughter of Zeus the most high spirit. He lays a great deal of stress upon etymologies in his method of proof, deriving the name Athena from æther, but as every author has a different derivation for this name equally plausible, it is impossible to have full confidence in this gentleman's theory. Ploix regards Athena as the twilight, and Max Müller brings forward his inevitable "Dawn" as the true solution of the question, but the view which is presented in Roscher's Lexicon is perhaps the most sensible of all on this side. Originally Athena was the storm-cloud, and her birth from the head of Zeus shows this, Roscher maintains. This interpretation is evident all through the myth. The clouds appear in different forms, sometimes as the head of Zeus the god of the weather, at other times as the ægis. The lightning is the bright hatchet or glittering lance with which the blow is dealt. The thunder is the terrible war cry. That she was born in the west adds to this evidence, as storms came to the Greeks from that direction.