The doubt has probably long lurked in the reader’s mind, whether two of the three, Hera and Aphrodite, have any claim to the title maiden. Happily in the case of Athene no such difficulty arises. She is _the_ Parthenos, _the_ maiden; her temple is the maiden-chamber, the Parthenon; natural motherhood she steadfastly refuses, she is the foster-mother of heroes after the old matriarchal fashion; Ge, the real mother, bears Erichthonios, and Athene nurtures him to manhood; she bears the like relationship to Herakles, she is the maiden of Herakles (Ἡρακλέους κόρη[778]). Moreover it has been frequently observed that the early form of her name _Athenaia_ is purely adjectival[779], she is the Athenian one, the Athenian Maid, Pallas, our Lady of Athens. Plato[780] in the _Laws_ sees clearly that Athenaia is but the local Kore, the incarnation of Athens, though, after the fashion of his day, he inverts cause and effect; he makes the worshipper in the image of the worshipped. Speaking of the armed Athene, he says, ‘and methinks our Kore and Mistress who dwells among us, joying her in the sport of dancing, was not minded to play with empty hands, but adorned her with her panoply, and thus accomplished her dance, and it is fitting that in this our youths and our maidens should imitate her.’ It was she who imitated her youths and maidens, she who was the very incarnation of their life and being, dancing in armour as they danced, fighting when they fought, born of her father’s head when they were reborn as the children of Reason and Light. Athene’s other name, Pallas, tells the same tale. If Athene is the Kore of the local clan of the Athenians, Pallas is the Kore of the clan of the Pallantidae, the foes of Athenian Theseus; later their male eponym was Pallas[781]: ‘Pallas had for lot The southern land, rough Pallas, he who rears A brood of giants.’ The very name Pallas means, it would seem, like Kore, the maiden. Suidas in defining the word says, ‘a great maiden, and it is an epithet of Athene.’ More expressly Strabo[782], in discussing the cults of Egyptian Thebes, says, ‘To Zeus, whom they worship above all other divinities, a maiden of peculiar beauty and illustrious family is dedicated; _such maidens the Greeks call Pallades_.’ This local Pallas had for her dominion the ancient court of the Palladium; her image as Pallas, not as Athene, was carried in procession by the epheboi[783]; but with the subjection of her clan her figure waned, effaced by that of Athenaia. Pallas became a mere adjectival _praenomen_ to Athene, as Phoebus to Apollo. It may be conjectured that this ancient image of Pallas was resident on the Areopagos, home of the ancient Semnae, a place probably of sacred association to a local clan long before the dominance of the Acropolis; it is by her name of Pallas that the Semnae[784] hail the goddess: ‘I welcome Pallas’ fellowship.’