Myths derive their strength from being repeatedly retold. Before devoting himself to science, Rudolf's contemporary Bacon had been an astute diplomat at court, and he used Minerva's masculine birth to symbolise the interdependence of kings and their councillors. In Bacon's version, Zeus devours his pregnant wife and then produces their baby, Pallas Athene, from his own brain: Bacon was allegorically recommending that female advice should be absorbed by a king in order to be recreated as wisdom that is female at heart, but delivered with a man's weapons.3 The anatomist Thomas Willis interpreted the tale rather differently, reinforcing the view that force is needed to wrench out nature's deeply buried secrets. In the introduction to his book on the brain, Willis portrayed himself as a scalpel-bearing Vulcan, the god of fire and patron of metal workers: `Minerva was born from the Brain, Vulcan with his Instruments playing the Midwife: For either by this way, by Wounds and Death, by Anatomy, and a Caesarean Birth, Truth will be brought to Light, or for ever lye hid'.4 Women adopted Minervan symbolism to promote themselves. Like Rudolf, the Swedish Queen Christina attracted scholars to her intellectual court from all over Europe, and she circulated black-and-white engravings of herself sporting a helmet and accompanied by an owl. Figure 2 shows how the Enlightenment writer Elizabeth Carter was advertised as an exemplar of learning and virtue. Whereas Rudolf had delighted in the goddess's sexual appeal, in Britain Minerva became a moral as well as an intellectual role model, described as representing `the Understanding of the noblest Arts, the best Accomplishments of the Mind, together with all Virtues, but most especially that of Chastity.'5
...MoreDescription On 17th-century uses of the Minerva/Athene mythology.
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