Metis — Goddess of Wisdom

What Hesiod actually says

The core of the Metis story is a short passage in Hesiod's Theogony. Hesiod calls Metis the first wife of Zeus, "wisest of gods and mortal men". When she was about to give birth to Athena, Zeus "deceived her with crafty words" and put her into his belly. He did so on the advice of Gaia and Ouranos, who warned that Metis was destined to bear first a daughter, grey-eyed Athena, equal to her father in strength and wise counsel, and then a son with an overbearing heart who would become king of gods and men. Hesiod gives the reason in so many words: Zeus swallowed her "so that the goddess might advise him of both good and evil". In this version, absorbing Metis is how Zeus came to have metis himself.

Elsewhere in the Theogony, Hesiod includes Metis in his catalogue of the daughters of Oceanus and Tethys. Strictly speaking, that makes her an Oceanid, one generation after the Titans, not a Titaness in her own right. Modern summaries often call her a Titaness because of her parentage and her early place in the story. The ancient label is "Oceanid".

Variant versions

A fragment attributed to Hesiod, preserved because the philosopher Chrysippus quoted it and Galen quoted Chrysippus, gives a fuller and somewhat different account. It links the episode to a quarrel between Zeus and Hera. Hera, angry, produces Hephaestus without Zeus. Zeus in turn has Athena without Hera, by way of Metis, whom he swallows. In this fragment it is Metis, still inside him, who makes the aegis for Athena, which links her directly to the goddess's armour.

Apollodorus adds two details found nowhere in Hesiod. First, Metis tried to escape Zeus' advances by changing into many shapes. Shape-shifting is typical of sea divinities like Thetis, Proteus and Nereus, which fits her descent from Oceanus. Second, as the existing account says, it was Metis who gave Cronus the drug that made him vomit up his swallowed children. That story comes from Apollodorus. Hesiod says only that Cronus was tricked by "the cunning of Gaia" into bringing them back up. So there are two different traditions about who freed the Olympians.

In the Orphic theogonies, a group of poems later than Hesiod and only partly preserved, "Metis" also appears as a name or aspect of the creator-god Phanes, the first-born being who came out of the cosmic egg. Here metis means a cosmic intelligence and has little to do with a wife of Zeus. Plato makes a passing reference in the Symposium. In Diotima's myth, Poros ("Resource"), the son of Metis, gets drunk at the feast for Aphrodite's birth and becomes the father of Eros by Penia ("Poverty").

Metis as an idea

The Greek word metis was an everyday term long before it was a goddess's name. It meant practical, adaptable cunning, the kind of intelligence that wins by trickery or timing when strength is not enough. In Iliad Book 23, Nestor advises his son before the chariot race that a woodcutter, a helmsman and a charioteer succeed through metis more than through force. Homer's favourite epithet for Odysseus is polymetis, "of many wiles". The Odyssey even builds a pun on it: in the Cyclops' cave, Odysseus calls himself "Nobody" (outis), and the Cyclops' neighbours answer "if no one (me tis) is harming you", which sounds like metis.

Modern scholarship has paid a lot of attention to this. The French classicists Marcel Detienne and Jean-Pierre Vernant's Cunning Intelligence in Greek Culture and Society (first published in French in 1974) traces metis through hunting, fishing, navigation, medicine and politics. It argues that the swallowing myth shows the sovereign god permanently taking over the very quality that could otherwise overthrow him. That reading also explains why the dangerous son is never born. Once Metis is inside Zeus, the cycle of succession that ran from Ouranos to Cronus (see the Titanomachy) comes to an end. For the daughter who emerged, see the birth of Athena.

Ancient sources

• Hesiod, Theogony 886–900 and 924–926: Metis as Zeus' first wife, the prophecy of Gaia and Ouranos, the swallowing, and Athena's birth from his head.
• Hesiod, Theogony (catalogue of Oceanids): Metis listed among the daughters of Oceanus and Tethys.
• Hesiodic fragment preserved by Galen (quoting Chrysippus): Metis swallowed after Hera bears Hephaestus alone, and makes the aegis for Athena inside Zeus.
• Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 1.2.1 and 1.3.6: Metis gives Cronus the emetic, changes shape to escape Zeus, and is swallowed when pregnant.
• Plato, Symposium 203b: Poros, son of Metis, as father of Eros.

Frequently asked questions

Was Metis a Titan?

Not strictly. Hesiod makes her an Oceanid, a daughter of the Titans Oceanus and Tethys. She is often grouped with the Titans because she belongs to the older generation of gods before the Olympians.

Is Metis Athena's mother?

Yes, in Hesiod and most later authors. Athena was conceived by Metis but born from Zeus' head after Zeus swallowed her mother.

Did Metis really free the Olympians from Cronus?

That is Apollodorus' version, in which she gives Cronus an emetic. Hesiod gives the credit to Gaia's cunning instead.

What does "metis" mean?

Practical cunning or crafty intelligence: the ability to find a clever way out of a hard situation. It is the quality the Odyssey praises in Odysseus.

Books to read next

• Stephen Fry, Mythos
• Natalie Haynes, Pandora's Jar: Women in the Greek Myths
• Edith Hamilton, Mythology

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