40. Fourthly, Athena is the air nourishing artificial light--unconsuming
fire. Therefore, a lamp was always kept burning in the Erechtheum; and
the torch-race belongs chiefly to her festival, of which the meaning is
to show the danger of the perishing of the light even by excess of the
air that nourishes it; and so that the race is not to the swift, but to
the wise. The household use of her constant light is symbolized in the
lovely passage in the Odyssey, where Ulysses and his son move the armor
while the servants are shut in their chambers, and there is no one to
hold the torches for them; but Athena herself, "having a golden lamp,"
fills all the rooms with light. Her presence in war-strength with her
favorite heroes is always shown by the "unwearied" fire hovering on their
helmets and shields; and the image gradually becomes constant and
accepted, both for the maintenance of household watchfulness, as in the
parable of the ten virgins, or as the symbol of direct inspiration, in
the rushing wind and divided flames of Pentecost; but together with this
thought of unconsuming and constant fire, there is always mingled in the
Greek mind the sense of the consuming by excess, as of the flame by the
air, so also of the inspired creature by its own fire (thus, again, "the
zeal of thine house hath eaten me up"--"my zeal hath consumed me, because
of thine enemies," and the like); and especially Athena has this aspect
towards the truly sensual and bodily strength; so that to Ares, who is
himself insane and consuming, the opposite wisdom seems to be insane and
consuming: "All we the other gods have thee against us, O Jove! when we
would give grace to men; for thou hast begotten the maid without a mind--
the mischievous creature, the doer of unseemly evil. All we obey thee,
and are ruled by thee. Her only thou wilt not resist in anything she
says or does, because thou didst bear her--consuming child as she is."

41. Lastly, Athena is the air conveying vibration of sound.