67 pages • 2 hours read
Rick RiordanThe Mark Of Athena
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2012A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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BetaChapters 25-28Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 25 Summary: “Piper”
When her three friends disappeared, Piper felt useless. She stared at her knife, Katoptris, hoping for a useful vision, but all she saw was demigods driving towards Camp Half-Blood. She and Annabeth sent a dream vision to warn Chiron. When Frank, Hazel, and Leo finally appear, Leo tells the group they will arrive in the Mediterranean the next morning. Piper feels a sense of foreboding.
Annabeth removes the disk from her bag, but it is blank. It only reveals the map when she is alone, just as the Mark of Athena only reveals itself to her. She admits that she will have to embark on her mission alone once they are in Rome. Jason shares what he knows about the statue. 40 feet tall, it once graced the Parthenon and may have been stolen by the Romans when they conquered the city to break the Athenians’ spirit. If she can find it, Annabeth says, it may help heal the rift. Piper notes the spirit of teamwork that Annabeth and Jason share and feels hopeful that Annabeth finding the statue could end Greek-Roman hostilities and help defeat Gaea, but she worries that Annabeth must work alone. Frank recites a line from the prophecy—“Won through pain from a woven jail”—and wonders what it means, but Piper defers the question for when they get to Rome (229, italics in original).
Later, as Piper and Jason clean the lower deck, she reflects on her conversation with her mother in Charleston, the resentment she felt that her mother seemed more interested in her friends’ troubled love lives than Piper’s with Jason. She admires Jason’s discipline and leadership but does not always know how to interpret him. She wonders about how her Greek and his Roman qualities will coexist.
Chapter 26 Summary: “Piper”
The next morning, the demigods are woken by a massive cruise ship’s horn. They see the Rock of Gibraltar, the area known in antiquity as “the pillars of Hercules”: the Rock on one side, the African mountains on the other (235). They are about to enter the Mediterranean. An island shimmers into existence; Hercules, guarding the straits, watches them from the shoreline. They will have to meet him to pass into the Mediterranean. The demigods decide to send Jason and Piper.
Initially, their meeting is friendly. He is obliged to set them a quest but assures them it will be simple, until they reveal Hera’s role in their journey. Cooling towards them, he tells them that if they wish to pass, they will have to go the river on the other side of the hills, where the aged river god Achelous lives, “break off his other horn,” and bring it to Hercules (241). If they retrieve it before sundown, they can pass. If not, Achelous will kill them, and Hercules will smash their ship and kill their friends.
Chapter 27 Summary: “Piper”
Piper and Jason head off to find Achelous, who had once fought Hercules for the hand of Deianeira. During the battle, Hercules broke off one of his horns, which became the first cornucopia. As they get to the river, Piper’s thoughts drift. She wants to drink the water, soak her feet, and float on the surface with Jason. She realizes the river is creating these feelings, effectively charmspeaking her. It is obviously having the same effect on Jason. She yells at the river to stop, and Achelous appears.
He introduces himself as “the spirit of the mightiest river in Greece,” who now lives opposite his enemy, Hercules (246). Their enmity arose over a woman, Deianeira, who Achelous claims was promised to him. Hercules wanted her for himself and demanded they fight for her hand, which he won. Eventually, she became jealous of Hercules’s many affairs and believed a centaur called Nessus who claimed his blood was a love potion. Instead, it poisoned and killed Hercules, after which Deianeira killed herself. “Beware the sons of Zeus,” Achelous tells Piper, lamenting Deianeira’s sad end (250).
Hercules had broken Achelous’s horn during their first battle and wants to have the second one, Achelous believes, to humiliate him. Piper and Jason both feel sorry for him but must secure the horn to save their friends. Achelous understands but mournfully shares that he must stop them. The river covers Piper in a wall of water.
Chapter 28 Summary: “Piper”
Piper surfaces trapped in a whirlpool with Jason. Achelous apologizes, but he cannot allow Hercules to have his other horn. The river pulls Jason under. Piper begs him to release Jason and promises they will not allow Hercules to get the horn. Achelous believes she is offering herself as a compensatory bride and pulls her out of the whirlpool. She puts him in a chokehold, pressing her dagger to his chin, and commands him to release Jason. The water expels him. Piper slashes off Achelous’s horn, promising that she, not Hercules, will get it. Jason unleashes a lightning bolt, and the two escape.
Jason comforts a remorseful Piper, who is determined to keep the horn from Hercules. She sets her plan before returning to him. Seeing the horn, Hercules agrees to let them go but becomes angry when Piper refuses to hand it over. She points the horn at him, fills her mind with positive thoughts, and unleashes a blast of food “as powerful as Achelous’ river” (257). Jason grabs her and rides a gust of wind to bring them back to the ship. Leo has set it to flight mode so Percy can send a giant wave to knock down Hercules. The ship heads into the skies over the Mediterranean.
Chapters 25-28 Analysis
In these chapters, the Greek-Roman conflict manifests in Piper’s struggle to relate to and interpret Jason. His time in the Greek camp brought them together, but she worries that the larger conflicts will play out in their relationship with each other. His loyalty to Camp Jupiter and his intuitive discipline are qualities that mark him as Roman and cause Piper to question to what extent they can understand each other. Her personal concerns add urgency to the quest to reconcile the two camps, easing some of the tension in Piper and Jason’s personal relationship.
Annabeth’s disappearing map make it clear that she will have to search for the Mark of Athena alone, as her divine half-siblings have presumably done so before her. The lines of the prophecy referring to a “woven jail” are beginning to make sense, given the significance of Arachne and spiders, but their alarming nature causes Piper to shelve the discussion, building tension (229, italics in original).
The significant event in this section is Piper and Jason’s meeting with Hercules. The demigods send Jason since he, too, is a son of Zeus/Jupiter, but the strategy does not entirely succeed once Hercules discovers the central role Hera/Juno has played in setting up the quest. In ancient Greek versions of the myth, paradox is a defining feature of the relationship between hero and divine antagonist. In the case of Hercules, he cannot have fame without also suffering. By causing him to suffer, Hera creates the condition for him to perform the labors that bring him fame. In some versions of the ancient myth, Hercules and Hera are reconciled, and the hero experiences a kind of rebirth through Hera, transforming her into a maternal figure for him.
Riordan's portrayal of Hercules subverts these aspects of his myth. His Hercules denies that any reconciliation with Hera/Juno took place and holds onto his resentment for his stepmother into eternity, taking it out on the demigods, though they are not responsible. Drawing on the story of Hercules’s battle against Achelous and Deianeira’s accidental poisoning of her husband, Riordan incorporates aspects of Hercules’s myths that portray him as unstable and petulant, eliminating the complicating role of Hera in provoking his madness. This allows his Hercules to serve as foil for Jason and Piper, who feels justified in keeping Achelous’s horn from Heracles. In the process, she acquires a weapon for her future battles, though one that is not destructive but generative.
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