Of course the worship of Athena had been long in vogue before a story of her birth arose. So Farnell reasons out the origin of the story thus: In her worship Athena appeared to have abundant thought and counsel, therefore she naturally became the daughter of Thought or Counsel, the daughter of Metis; she had all the powers of Zeus, therefore she became the daughter of Zeus, and as she had no feminine weakness and inclined to father more than mother, she could not have been born in the ordinary way, and this might have been so if Zeus had followed a fashion common in myth and had swallowed her mother, Metis. The prophecy given in Hesiod as the reason for the swallowing probably arose after the story, as the fulfillment of the prophecy could have been hindered in easier ways, and it is likely that this reason was borrowed from other myths, as, for example, the Cronos story. The above explanation, Farnell says, is, of course, only a hypothesis, but it has the advantage over the others of being suggested by the most ancient form of the legend and the most ancient ideas concerning the goddess. He adds that the appearance of Prometheus and Hephæstus in later accounts would only strengthen his interpretation, the association of these divine artists with the goddess of wisdom and of the arts of life. This was a favorite subject with the artists from the earliest times as old vase paintings bear witness. But the famous representation was that in the east pediment of the Parthenon, the work of Phidias. Only fragments of this remain to-day. The central group is entirely lost except for the torso of one god, supposed by some to be Hephæstus, but more probably it is that of Prometheus. So the fragments are of the side groups and not so helpful in recalling the original, but still conjectures and reproductions have been innumerable. In Madrid a Roman puteal has been found which is believed to present the central group of the east pediment. Upon this Zeus is seated, before him Athena flees away, Victory flies after her to place a crown upon her head and behind Zeus Prometheus with the ax in his hand draws back in fright and turns away. This group of Phidias was, of course, the culmination of this story in art. The later representations are few and supposed to be merely copies of this. [Illustration: FROM COL. CHI. ACAD. SCIENCES. WHIPPOORWILL. 3/4 Life-size. COPYRIGHT 1899, NATURE STUDY PUB. CO., CHICAGO.] THE WHIPPOORWILL.