red figure aryballic lekythos with owl and olives

This pottery collection is produced in Greece in the workshop of the Lioulias family, with whom It's All Greek is privileged and proud to have been working since 2004. They also produce our lovely Minoan pottery and fresco pieces, and a small collection of bronzes.

Symbol of Athena, who was the goddess of wisdom, intelligence, strategic thought and resourcefulness. She was also the patron deity of Athens, the city to which she gave her name and the gift of the olive.

The specific owl associated with the goddess and her city is the wide-eyed 'glaux', the Little Owl - Athene noctua Athena of the night, which still thrives in Greece today. The relationship between this little bird, Athena, and her city permeates language, culture, coinage, pottery and history.

Homer describes Athena is 'glaukopis' - from 'glaukos' (gleaming, silvery, greyish-blue or pale green) and 'ops' (eye), namely 'bright-eyed' or even 'owl-eyed'. Owls too have exceptional vision, as does Athena, the goddess of intellectual depth and canny strategy, with an ability to see clearly through the darkness of confusion, and to see through deception.

Vigilance is the owl's defining quality. The Little Owl has an amazing ability to stay still with its massive forward-facing eyes fixed on its surroundings. The Athenians loved this symbolic state of military readiness, the guardian always alert and focused and on the lookout.

Athene noctua favours solitude and stillness, spending swathes of time perched in silence observing its environment In Greek philosophy, this trait is synonymous with hēsychia (quietness/stillness) and deep introspection, representing the wisdom that comes from quiet observation rather than loud, empty speech.

Athena was the goddess of strategic, defensive warfare (unlike Ares, who represented the bloody and chaotic aspects of warfare). Her owl perfectly embodies this tactical spirit. Athene noctua is a highly efficient ambush predator. It uses stealth, patience, strategic positioning and perfectly timed strikes. Victory is achieved through planning, timing, and using one's intellect to outwit a larger opponent— exactly how the outnumbered Greeks defeated the Persians at Salamis.

The Little Owl is resilient and adapts remarkably well to human environments, making its home in the stone walls of houses, temples, and agricultural buildings. Following the total destruction of Athens by the Persians in 480 BCE, the owl represented the resilient spirit of the Athenians, thriving amidst the stone and enduring hardship, then to emerge with renewed energy to rebuild their city.

During Classical times, Athene noctua had bred so prolifically around the Akropolis that Athens was practically overrun with them, hence Aristophanes' idiom 'bringing owls to Athens', which is like our phrase of 'carrying coals to Newcastle'!

The famous glaux tetradrachm coins of the second half of the 5th century BCE were minted in silver from the Attic silver mines at Laurium. Helmeted Athena is on the obverse, on the reverse a glaux with three olive leaves and the letters ΑΘΕ, ATHE, short for 'of the Athenians'. Often referred to simply as 'glaukes'/'owls', the coins weighed a reliable solid 17.2 grams of silver, and became the dominant trading currency across the Mediterranean (some were even found in India!) during this Golden Age of Athens under the leadership of Perikles.

The reverse of the Greece-issued 1 euro coin is an exact replica of the glaux tetradrachm. Dozens of academic institutions such as Bryn Mawr have chosen the glaux as their symbol, to denote high intellectual pursuit.

The term glaux also defined a specific style of Athenian pottery. A glaux cup is a type skyphos (a deep wine cup) with a distinctive asymmetric two-handle design: one horizontal, the other vertical, decorated with images of owls framed by olive sprigs, mimicking the look of the famous tetradrachm. They were mass produced in Athens and becoming pretty much standard as ubiquitous domestic drinking cups and as tourist souvenirs (a bit like commemoration mugs!). The design became so trendy that pottery workshops in Corinth, Lucania, Apulia, and Etruria eventually started producing their own copies, some of varying quality!

Examples of the glaux skyphos can be found in many museums across the world, including the British Museum, the Metropolitan Museum, the Akropolis Museum, the Louvre, and the Getty Museum and in Naples, Taranto, Palermo, Milan, and Rome.

In Greece today, the owl is a prestigious symbol within the Hellenic Armed Forces, particularly units dealing with intelligence, strategy and night surveillance - a tribute to Athena' glaukopis and her owl's ability to see clearly through the dark. It is also the emblem for the Greek Ministry of Education, reinforcing this little bird's ancient association with intellectual development.

When the father of modern taxonomy, Carl Linnaeus, formally classified the bird in 1758, he chose to immortalize its ancient roots in science, by naming the species Athene noctua. So every time a biologist or conservationist references the Little Owl, they are invoking the name of the goddess of ancient Athens! How good is that!!!

The olive was the trademark of Athena, multi-faceted goddess of wisdom, intelligence, strategic thought, and female crafts.

Athena defeated her uncle Poseidon in a contest which had been set up to establish which of them would become the protector deity of a hitherto unnamed city in Attica. Poseidon had offered the city a roaring saltwater spring, whereas Athena knelt on the Akropolis and planted a single olive tree, offering the citizens the gifts of oil, food, and light. Thereafter the city was named Athens. You can see an olive tree there today, next to the Erechtheion, the temple dedicated to the thwarted uncle and his shrewd niece.

The olive tree became a symbol of resilience. Herodotus wrote that it was assumed that when the Persians had sacked Athens and set fire to the Akropolis in 480 BCE, the sacred olive had been destroyed. Yet, the very next morning, a green shoot almost a meter long, had miraculously appeared! It became a powerful symbol of rebirth, renewal, and transformation, a reflection of the indomitable spirit of Athens and her citizens. Cuttings (moriai) from this tree, were then planted across Attica, so that every ancient Athenian olive-grove shared the DNA of the goddess’s original gift!

The olive appears on the famous Athenian owl tetradrachm coin, and is a recurrent motif in ancient Greek art, whenever Athena is depicted. Nike, the goddess of Victory, and a deity closely associated with Athena, is often depicted with an olive wreath, which she would place on the head of a victorious athlete.

The ultimate prize for champions at the ancient Olympic Games, held in honour of Zeus, was not gold, but a simple wreath woven from the wild olive (kotinos) —a tree said to have been ripped from the earth and planted at Olympia by Zeus' son, Herakles himself. The hero even fashioned his signature weapon, a mighty, unbreakable club, from raw wild olive wood.