Athena
Part of The Encyclopedia of Southern Italy.
Athena: Greek goddess of Wisdom and warfare. Although best known as the patron goddess of Athens, Athena’s cult also had centers in Sicily and Southern Italy. According to Diodorus Siculus, both Athena and Artemis were raised together on Sicily and loved the island. Later, Zeus gave Athena a portion of Sicily, the area around Himera. That city was the center of her cult on Sicily.
Athena also had a presence on the Italian mainland. Pausanias (Guide to Greece 2.23.5) records the belief that Aeneas from the sacred image of Athena known as the Palladium from Troy to Italy. Strabo (Geography 6.1.14) records that Athena was worshiped at Rome, Lavinium, and in the Lucanian city of Siris. In this last mention place, the goddess was known as Athena Ilia (Athena of Ilion, i.e. Troy) and was so-called because of a legend that her cult was brought there by the ancient Trojans. In another city of Lucania, Luceria, there had been a great temple of Athena Ilia, built by the Daunii, but destroyed by Strabo’s time. This may be the same temple which Aelian (On Animals 11.5) mentions as having guard dogs which greet Greeks in friendship but bark at all others who approach.
In the same work, Strabo also mentions (7.1.5) a temple to Athena in the territory of the Salentines, whom he says were descendents of ancient Cretans. There was also said to have been a sanctuary of Athena near Surrentum (mod. Sorrento), on the coast of Campania, which was reputedly (Strabo Geography 5.4.8) founded by Odysseus. Odysseus is also said to have dedicated a bowl at an altar of Athena at Kirkaion, a little town in Latium (Strabo 5.3.6).
Although much of Athena’s aspect was absorbed into the Latin goddess Minerva, she still maintained enough of an independent presence under the Romans to chosen by the Emperor Domitian as his patron during the latter part of the 1st century AD (Philostratus, Life of Apollonius of Tyana 7.24 and 7.32).