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In Greek mythology
Greek mythology

Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the Ancient Greece concerning their List of Greek mythological figures#Immortals and Greek hero cult, Cosmology#Metaphysical cosmology, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices....
, Metis (??t??) was of the Titan
Titan (mythology)

In Greek mythology, the Titans ; were a race of powerful deities that ruled during the legendary golden age. Their role as Elder Gods was overthrown by a race of younger gods, the Twelve Olympians, effected a mythological paradigm shift that the Greeks borrowed from the Ancient Near East....
 generation and, like several primordial figures, an Oceanid
Oceanid

In Greek Mythology and Roman mythology, the Oceanids were the three thousand daughters of the Titans Oceanus and Tethys . One of these many daughters was also said to have been the consort of the god Poseidon, typically named as Amphitrite....
, in the sense that Mètis was born of Oceanus
Oceanus

Oceanus was believed to be the World Ocean in classical antiquity, which the Ancient Rome and Ancient Greece considered to be an enormous river encircling the world....
 and Tethys
Tethys (mythology)

File:Tethys mosaic 83d40m Phillopolis mid4th century -p2fx.2.jpgIn Greek mythology, Tethys , daughter of Uranus and Gaia was an archaic Titan ess and Greek sea gods sea goddess, invoked in classical Greek poetry but no longer venerated in cult....
, of an earlier age than Zeus and his siblings. Mètis was the first great spouse of Zeus
Zeus

Zeus in Greek mythology is the king of the gods, the ruler of Mount Olympus and the god of the sky father and List of thunder gods. His symbols are the thunderbolt, eagle, bull , and oak....
, indeed his equal (Hesiod
Hesiod

Hesiod was a Greek language oral poet, his date is uncertain but leading scholars agree that Hesiod lived in the latter half of the Eighth-century BCE....
, Theogony 896) and the mother of Athena
Athena

In Greek mythology, Athena is the shrewd companion of Hero and the goddess of Hero endeavour. She is the virgin patron of Athens, which built the Parthenon to worship her....
, Zeus' first daughter, the goddess of the arts and wisdom. By the era of Greek philosophy Mètis had become the goddess of wisdom and deep thought, but her name originally connoted "magical cunning" and was as easily equated with the trickster
Trickster

In mythology, and in the study of folklore and religion, a trickster is a god, goddess, spiritual being, man, woman, or anthropomorphism animal who plays tricks or otherwise disobeys normal rules and norms of behavior....
 powers of Prometheus
Prometheus

In Greek mythology, Prometheus is a Titan known for his wily intelligence, who stole fire from Zeus and gave it to human beings for their use....
 as with the "royal metis" of Zeus
Zeus

Zeus in Greek mythology is the king of the gods, the ruler of Mount Olympus and the god of the sky father and List of thunder gods. His symbols are the thunderbolt, eagle, bull , and oak....
.






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In Greek mythology
Greek mythology

Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the Ancient Greece concerning their List of Greek mythological figures#Immortals and Greek hero cult, Cosmology#Metaphysical cosmology, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices....
, Metis (??t??) was of the Titan
Titan (mythology)

In Greek mythology, the Titans ; were a race of powerful deities that ruled during the legendary golden age. Their role as Elder Gods was overthrown by a race of younger gods, the Twelve Olympians, effected a mythological paradigm shift that the Greeks borrowed from the Ancient Near East....
 generation and, like several primordial figures, an Oceanid
Oceanid

In Greek Mythology and Roman mythology, the Oceanids were the three thousand daughters of the Titans Oceanus and Tethys . One of these many daughters was also said to have been the consort of the god Poseidon, typically named as Amphitrite....
, in the sense that Mètis was born of Oceanus
Oceanus

Oceanus was believed to be the World Ocean in classical antiquity, which the Ancient Rome and Ancient Greece considered to be an enormous river encircling the world....
 and Tethys
Tethys (mythology)

File:Tethys mosaic 83d40m Phillopolis mid4th century -p2fx.2.jpgIn Greek mythology, Tethys , daughter of Uranus and Gaia was an archaic Titan ess and Greek sea gods sea goddess, invoked in classical Greek poetry but no longer venerated in cult....
, of an earlier age than Zeus and his siblings. Mètis was the first great spouse of Zeus
Zeus

Zeus in Greek mythology is the king of the gods, the ruler of Mount Olympus and the god of the sky father and List of thunder gods. His symbols are the thunderbolt, eagle, bull , and oak....
, indeed his equal (Hesiod
Hesiod

Hesiod was a Greek language oral poet, his date is uncertain but leading scholars agree that Hesiod lived in the latter half of the Eighth-century BCE....
, Theogony 896) and the mother of Athena
Athena

In Greek mythology, Athena is the shrewd companion of Hero and the goddess of Hero endeavour. She is the virgin patron of Athens, which built the Parthenon to worship her....
, Zeus' first daughter, the goddess of the arts and wisdom. By the era of Greek philosophy Mètis had become the goddess of wisdom and deep thought, but her name originally connoted "magical cunning" and was as easily equated with the trickster
Trickster

In mythology, and in the study of folklore and religion, a trickster is a god, goddess, spiritual being, man, woman, or anthropomorphism animal who plays tricks or otherwise disobeys normal rules and norms of behavior....
 powers of Prometheus
Prometheus

In Greek mythology, Prometheus is a Titan known for his wily intelligence, who stole fire from Zeus and gave it to human beings for their use....
 as with the "royal metis" of Zeus
Zeus

Zeus in Greek mythology is the king of the gods, the ruler of Mount Olympus and the god of the sky father and List of thunder gods. His symbols are the thunderbolt, eagle, bull , and oak....
. The Stoic
STOIC

STOIC was a variant of Forth .It started out at the MIT and Harvard Biomedical Engineering Centre in Boston, and was written in February 1977 by Jonathan Sachs....
 commentators allegorized
Allegory

Allegory is generally treated as a figure of rhetoric, but an allegory does not have to be expressed in language: it may be addressed to the eye, and is often found in realistic painting, sculpture or some other form of Mimesis, or representative art....
 Metis as the embodiment of "wisdom" or "wise counsel", in which form she was inherited by the Renaissance
Renaissance

The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe....
.

Mètis was both a threat to Zeus and an indispensable aid (Brown 1952:133):
Zeus lay with Metis but immediately feared the consequences. It had been prophesied that Metis would bear extremely powerful children: the first, Athena and the second, a son more powerful than Zeus himself, who would eventually overthrow Zeus.


In order to forestall these dire consequences, Zeus tricked her into turning herself into a fly and promptly swallowed her. He was too late: Mètis had already conceived a child. In time she began making a helmet and robe for her fetal daughter. The hammering as she made the helmet caused Zeus great pain and Prometheus
Prometheus

In Greek mythology, Prometheus is a Titan known for his wily intelligence, who stole fire from Zeus and gave it to human beings for their use....
, Hephaestus
Hephaestus

Hephaestus was a Greek god whose Roman equivalent was Vulcan . He was the god of technology, blacksmiths, craftsmen, artisans, sculpture, metals, metallurgy, Fire and volcanoes....
, Hermes
Hermes

Hermes is the messenger of the gods in Greek mythology. An Twelve Olympians, he is also the patron of boundaries and of the travelers who cross them, of shepherds and cowherds, of thieves and road travelers, of orators and wit, of literature and poets, of athletics, of weights and measures, of invention, of general commerce, and of the cunni...
, or Palaemon
Palaemon

Palaemon may refer to*Palaemon , a genus of shrimp*An alternative name for the Greek hero Herakles*An alternative name for the Greek hero Melicertes...
 (depending on the sources examined) either cleaved Zeus's head with an axe, or hit it with a hammer at the river Triton, giving rise to Athena's epithet Tritogeneia. Athena leaped from Zeus's head, fully grown, armed, and armored, and Zeus was none the worse for the experience. The similarities between Zeus swallowing Mètis and Cronos swallowing his children have been noted by several scholars.

The second consort
Consort

A consort is a marriage or companion, often of royalty or a deity, sometimes slightly inferior in function/status.* Queen consort, wife of a reigning king...
 taken by Zeus, according to the Theogony was Themis
Themis

Themis is an Greek mythology. She is described as "of good counsel", and was the embodiment of divine order, law, and custom. Themis means "law of nature" rather than human ordinance, literally "that which is put in place", from the verb t?????, t?themi, to put....
, "right order".

Hesiod's account is followed by Acusilaus
Acusilaus

Acusilaus of Argos, son of Cabas or Scabras, was a Greece logographer and mythographer who lived in the latter half of the 6th century BC but whose work survives only in fragments and summaries of individual points....
 and the Orphic tradition, which enthroned Mètis side by side with Eros
EROS

EROS may refer to:* Center for Earth Resources Observation and Science, the Center for Earth Resources Observation and Science, the United States national archive of remotely sensed images of the Earth's land surface...
 as primal cosmogenic forces. Plato
Plato

Plato , was a Classical Greece Greeks philosopher, mathematician, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Platonic Academy in Ancient Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the western world....
 makes poros, or "creative ingenuity", the child of Mètis.

Metis in astronomy

  • The asteroid
    Asteroid

    Asteroids, sometimes called minor planets or planetoids, are small Solar System bodies in orbit around the Sun, smaller than planets but larger than meteoroids....
    , 9 Metis
    9 Metis

    '9 Metis' is one of the larger main belt asteroids. It is composed of silicates and metallic nickel-iron, and may be the core remnant of a large asteroid that was destroyed by an ancient collision....
    , named in 1848.
  • The minor moon
    Metis (moon)

    Metis , also known as , is the Jupiter's inner moons moon of Jupiter. It was discovered in 1979 in images taken by Voyager 1, and was named in 1983 after the first wife of Zeus, Metis ....
     of Jupiter, named in 1979.


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