The Mark Of Athena

“Some part of Annabeth’s mind registered how beautiful the city was—the smells from the bakeries, the gurgling fountains, the flowers blooming in the gardens. And the architecture…gods, the architecture—gilded marble columns, dazzling mosaics, monumental arches, and terraced villas.”

Rome was famed for its architecture, a quality that Riordan incorporates in his depiction of New Rome. Here, Annabeth, who has a particular interested in and love for architecture struggles with herself. Being loyal to Camp Half-Blood, she does not want to admire this city but cannot help but appreciate its beauty and planning.

“Octavian sighed. ‘Seven half-bloods shall answer the call. To storm or fire the world must fall—’

‘An oath to keep with a final breath,’ Annabeth continued. ‘And foes bear arms to the Doors of Death.’”

In this excerpt, the Greek and Roman demigods have sat together for a feast, and Annabeth is pondering the meaning of the Prophecy of Seven, the words in italics that Octavian and Annabeth recite. Prophecies are notoriously difficult to interpret, allowing multiple and/or layered meanings. Throughout the novel, the demigods will try to figure out what the prophecy is asking of them, applying lines as they realize their potential meaning.

“‘The Mark of Athena burns through Rome,’ Ella continued, cupping her hands over her ears and raising her voice. ‘Twins snuff out the angel’s breath, Who holds the key to endless death. Giants’ bane stands gold and pale, Won through pain from a woven jail.’”

Ella is a harpy with oracular knowledge who features prominently in other books in the series. Her access to prophecies follows from her having read the Sibylline Books, a legendary lost book of prophecies that were consulted at various points during the Roman republic and empire. Riordan often incorporates legends along with myths. Ella’s prophecy here concerns the two quests achieved in The Mark of Athena: finding Nico and the Athena Parthenos.

“My point, Annabeth, is that it isn’t Rome’s nature to cooperate with other powers.”

Before the eidolons possess Leo and compel him to fire on Camp Jupiter, Reyna and Annabeth are having a personal conversation, one war goddess’ daughter to another. Annabeth is trying to convince Reyna that the Greeks and Romans need to work together to stop Gaea since both are threatened by her plans. Reyna, however, informs Annabeth that Romans do not cooperate; they subdue and control because they believe “that offense is the best defense” (35). Learning to cooperate, and thus restore harmony, is the arc of the larger series.

“One thing might bring unity to Olympus again—an old wrong finally avenged. Ah, that would be sweet indeed, the scales finally balanced! But it will not happen unless you accept my help.”

This passage is spoken by Nemesis to Leo and Hazel. As events in the novel unfold, it becomes clear she is referring to the recovery of the Athena Parthenos: By returning the stolen statue to the Greeks, the Romans will correct an old wrong and balance the scales, a reference to the scales of justice associated with Zeus and Themis, the Greek goddess of justice who is often depicted holding scales. Exactly how the scales function in ancient texts is debated, but in Homer, when the scales are balanced, two opponents are equally matched, with neither able to take the upper hand. This meaning resonates with what Nemesis seems to be referring to: by balancing the scales, Greeks and Romans will stand together equally.

“He was determined never to forget Echo’s face. She deserved at least one person who saw her and knew how good she was. Leo closed his eyes, but the memory of her smile was already fading.”

In this passage, Leo reflects on Echo and her selfless love of Narcissus. Nemesis had suggested Echo and Narcissus might have a lesson for Leo. He had assumed the lesson concerned Narcissus’s fatal self-absorption, but as he leaves Echo behind, Leo believes the lesson is her sacrificial love. Though she is cursed to be unheard and unseen by the one she loves, Echo remains steadfast in her devotion. Leo wants to remember her, but the lesson about selflessness is that it does not need to be seen, only practiced.

“‘I fought side by side with the gods and some other demigod…Harry Cleese, I think.’

‘Heracles?’ Piper suggested politely.

‘Whatever,’ Bacchus said. ‘Anyway, I killed the giant Ephialtes and his brother Otis. Horrible boors, those two. Pinecone in the face for both of them.’”

In this excerpt from Piper, Jason, and Percy’s first encounter with Bacchus, the god is explaining the role he played when he was still a hero. Bacchus/Dionysus is a son of Zeus and Semele. Like his half-brother Heracles/Hercules, he was immortalized and became part of the pantheon. Though he initially seems unhelpful, he provides valuable information about the identity of the twins in the prophecy. Knowing that Bacchus has defeated them alerts the demigods to fact that they will need a god to kill the giants.

“It had to be possible to belong in two different worlds at once. After all, that’s what being a demigod was all about—not quite belonging in the mortal world or on Mount Olympus but trying to make peace with both sides of their nature.”

After Percy and Annabeth are reunited, Annabeth struggles with feelings of resentment for Camp Jupiter. Percy’s time in the Roman camp taught him to appreciate the opportunities New Rome offers to demigods, especially to live as themselves while going to university, marrying, and raising families. Annabeth worries that the war brewing between the Greek and Roman camps has eliminated New Rome as an option for Percy and her. In this passage, Percy expresses his hope that the Greeks and Romans can reconcile with each other in the same way that demigods must reconcile to parts of their nature that can conflict with each other—divine and mortal.

“Replaced. Sacked. Looted like a trophy and carted off—away from my beloved homeland. I lost so much. I swore I would never forgive. Neither would my children.”

In the novel, Athena could be said to symbolize the Roman conquest of the Greek-speaking world. The Romans stripped the goddess of her military associations, creating their own war goddess who was closer in form to Ares and transforming Athena into Minerva, a craft goddess. Athena’s association with wisdom, war, and crafts epitomize the Greek tendency to interconnect seemingly paradoxical elements. Athena is a war goddess but also a goddess who oversees creative products and strategic thinking. In this excerpt from her meeting with Annabeth, Athena expresses her desire for vengeance, which Annabeth cannot square with Athena’s domains of wisdom and strategy. Annabeth understands that while she needs to recover the statue, the goal is reconciliation, not vengeance.

“Annabeth shivered. She loved the architecture here. The houses and the gardens were very beautiful, very Roman. But she wondered why beautiful things had to be wrapped up with evil history. Or was it the other way around? Maybe the evil history made it necessary to build beautiful things, to mask the darker aspects.”

Annabeth both admires the beauty of Charleston and is horrified by its sinister history. This doubleness is characteristic of the Greek mindset and the way it conceptualizes opposites as interdependent. Annabeth is trying to make sense of why beauty and horror can be so tangled up in each other and proposes beauty in this case not as an antidote but distraction.

“‘Well, I can’t take credit for all your troubles,’ the goddess said. ‘But I do love twists and turns in a love story. Oh, all of you are such excellent stories—I mean, girls. You do me proud!’”

Aphrodite/Venus is having tea with Hazel, Piper, and Annabeth in Charleston and questioning them about their love lives. This portrayal of Aphrodite reinforces the idea that immortals struggle to relate to and feel empathy for mortal suffering. Aphrodite objectifies the girls’ troubles as “excellent stories” with “twists and turns” (171).

“To break the Greeks’ spirit, the Romans carted off the Athena Parthenos when they took over the city of Athens. They hid it in an underground shrine in Rome. The Roman demigods swore it would never see the light of day. They literally stole Athena, so she could no longer be the symbol of Greek military power. She became Minerva, a much tamer goddess.”

While the demigods speculate about the Athena Parthenos, Jason shares what he knows of it from his time at Camp Jupiter. His account of what happened to Athena and her famous cult statue mirrors what Athena told Annabeth: The taming of Athena reflects the conquest of Greek powers. Unlike Athena, however, Jason has slightly more specific knowledge to offer about the statue’s whereabouts: It is hidden in Rome.

“When it came to work and duty, Jason was Roman to the core.”

Here, Greek demigod Piper reflects on her Roman boyfriend’s virtues. The idea of duty being his gift exemplifies the Roman concept of excellence: pietas. Pietas literally translates as “piety” and “dutifulness.” When applied to heroes, pietas connote respectful fulfillment of responsibilities to duty, fate, and family (parents in particular). This value is exemplified in the hero Aeneas in Virgil’s Aeneid. Piper’s characterization here associates Jason with the Roman hero.

“Frank’s Vancouver Winter Olympics shirt was inside out. Percy wore pajama pants and a bronze breastplate, which was an interesting fashion statement. Hazel’s hair was all blown to one side, as though she’d walked through a cyclone; and Leo had accidentally set himself on fire. His T-shirt was in charred tatters. His arms were smoking.”

In this passage, the demigods have been startled out of sleep by the sound of a bellowing horn. Afraid they are being attacked again, the demigods rush out of bed, but it is a cruise ship horn. The description exemplifies Riordan’s style of humor writing, combining the heroic imagery of the ancient world (Percy’s “bronze breastplate” and the references to Leo accidentally bursting into flames) with familiar elements from the contemporary world.

“He was a son of Zeus, but when he died, he became a god. You can never be sure with gods.”

When the demigods arrive at the Pillars of Hercules and see the demigod-turned-full-god standing guard, they are not sure whether he will be friendly or not. Piper hopes that Hercules will side with them since he, like Jason, is a son of Jupiter. Jason’s response here reflects that the gods are always inscrutable. In a Greek view, this would be because their plans and intentions remain hidden from mortals, who are only permitted partial access.

“‘You understand nothing,’ Heracles said coldly. ‘My first family: dead. My life wasted on ridiculous quests. My second wife dead, after being tricked into poisoning me and leaving me to a painful demise. And my compensation? I got to become a minor god. Immortal, so I can never forget my pain. Stuck here as a gatekeeper, a doorman, a…butler for the Olympians. The only god who understands me even a little bit is Dionysus. And at least he invented something useful. I have nothing to show except bad film adaptations of my life.’”

Here, Hercules replies to Jason’s claim to understand his anger at Hera. Hercules’s response is to list his grievances not only against Hera, who affected his mental health and caused him to kill his family, but also against his immortality, which has rendered him a servant of the gods for all time, left alone with his painful memories. Heracles exemplifies the way anger can give way to a desire for vengeance, which leads one to commit harmful acts, which fuels the cycle of anger-vengeance-violence. As gods often do, Hercules takes his anger out on mortals who he perceives as less powerful than he is, as Athena punishes Medusa because she is angry at Poseidon.

“A hero couldn’t control the gods, but he should be able to control himself.”

Jason is referring to the way Hercules takes his anger at Hera out on the demigods. The idea of heroes being able to control themselves speaks more to a Roman sense of discipline and duty than to the Greek hero cult figure. For the Greeks, heroes’ excesses led them into disaster. At the end of the novel, Annabeth will exemplify this when she cannot resist rubbing Arachne’s face in her failure rather than remaining silent. It could be argued that Jason’s statement and Annabeth’s mistake exemplify two elements of Roman vs. Greek hero concepts.

“Intelligence…like Athena’s favorite hero, Odysseus. He’d won the Trojan War with cleverness, not strength. He had overcome all sorts of monsters and hardships with his quick wits. That’s what Athena valued.

Wisdom’s daughter walks alone.

That didn’t just mean without other people, Annabeth realized. It meant without any special powers.”

As Annabeth gets closer to inevitable confrontation with whatever forces are guarding the statue, she begins to feel vulnerable. She does not have the ability to summon fire like Leo or control the winds or water like Jason and Percy respectively. In this moment, Annabeth embraces intelligence as a special gift that can help her achieve her goals, as it helped Odysseus achieve his. Through Annabeth’s realization, Riordan illustrates that heroism takes many forms, in ancient myths and his modern retellings.

“Annabeth thought she knew pain. She had fallen off the lava wall at Camp Half-Blood. She’d been stabbed in the arm with a poison blade on the Williamsburg Bridge. She had even held the weight of the sky on her shoulders.”

Annabeth has fallen and broken her ankle and is ruminating on her many past experiences with pain, including briefly holding the weight of the sky, Atlas style. Riordan incorporates many such moments across the novel, illustrating how myths are “woven” together to create a larger narrative. Everything Annabeth has been through in the previous books becomes part of her experience in this moment, as readers of Riordan’s previous books and series will understand.

“‘Cursed by your mother,’ she said. ‘Scorned by all and made into a hideous thing…because I was the better weaver.’

‘But you lost the contest,’ Annabeth said.

‘That’s the story written by the winner!’ cried Arachne. ‘Look on my work! See for yourself!’”

Arachne expresses her rage and frustration at having been punished for her talent. Annabeth has been taking her mother’s narrative at face value: Arachne lost the contest; thus, she must have been the less skilled weaver. Arachne’s frustrated cry that winners shape the story and her request for Annabeth to look at the tapestries and judge for herself begin to awaken in Annabeth a realization that the story is not as clear-cut as she had believed. Beyond the world of the story, the scene reminds readers that stories are told from specific perspectives.

“Look, I’ve read all about Archimedes. He’s a hero to Cabin Nine. The dude was Greek, right? He lived in the Greek colonies in southern Italy, back before Rome got all huge and took over. Finally, the Romans moved in and destroyed his city. The Roman general wanted to spare Archimedes, because he was so valuable—sort of like the Einstein of the ancient world—but some stupid Roman soldier killed him.”

Leo is thrilled to realize that he, Frank, and Hazel have discovered Archimedes’s workshop and promptly explains how the workshop ended up in Rome. Presumably, the Romans brought it after conquering Sicily (where Archimedes was from) and killing Archimedes, “the most famous son of Hephaestus who ever lived” (332). Leo’s response here adds another dimension to the Greek-Roman conflict, showing another aspect of Roman appropriation of Greek civilizations, building on the narrative revolving around the Athena Parthenos. Hazel then scolds him that ‘Stupid and Roman don’t always go together” (332).

“Leo felt bad about ruining all these ancient inventions, but this was life or death. Frank had accused him of caring more for machines than people, but if it came down to saving old spheres or his friends, there was no choice.”

Leo’s character growth across the series is demonstrated in this scene. Discovering Archimedes’s spheres means Leo can experiment with new and more sophisticated machinery, possibly upgrade the Argo, and restore its bronze head, Festus, to his full form. Yet he is willing to sacrifice the machines to save his friends, both of whom are Roman demigods. This indicates not only has Leo grown to the point that he can connect with and care for people the way he does with machines but also that he sees Frank and Hazel as valued friends worth sacrificing for.

“‘You have to work together,’ Piper cried, hoping she was right. ‘Both of you think of clean water—a storm of water. Don’t hold anything back. Picture all your power, all your strength leaving you.’”

For Jason, Percy, and Piper escape the Nymphaeum, they must stop wanting to escape and instead focus on clearing the nymphs’ environment of poisons. The strategy has a parallel in the Chinese handcuffs in that the counterintuitive move is the one that springs the trap. In addition, Piper recognizes in this moment that, as Nemesis advised early in the novel, “[t]rue success requires sacrifice” (58). If she wants to succeed, she must subordinate everything to that and channel all her power and potential into making the nymphaeum right, rather than trying to benefit herself.