THE MAGIC CHARIOT AND THE THIRD OPTION OF THE GODS
Athena is not the Virgin Goddess that she was proclaimed to be by Gods and mortals alike.
Not long after she’d sprung fully formed from the forehead of her father Zeus, before she knew any better, she’d married her very own Adonisman who at first seemed nobler than his immortal namesake. He wore the mask of sanity and success and persuaded others into giving him their gold and precious treasures for safekeeping. His meteoric rise to power allowed him to accompany his God mates to the Underworld, strictly forbidden for mortals unless they were already crossing the River Styx. In the Underworld gambling caves he threw away all the coins and promissory notes that had been entrusted to him even those of his kin the lowly widow Laila.
When he had nothing left he gambled his chariot, the pride of his life and the envy of the soldiers,
charioteers and slaves who fawned on him.
Charioteer with Magic Chariot
Athena had given him this magic invisible chariot
which had belonged to Achilles and which Odysseus
had rescued after Achilles fell during the Battle for Troy.
Its magic had enabled Adonisman to attract the trust
of so many high born heroes and philosophers of Archaia.
And while his wife Athena was delivering their girl baby he was with his concubines including the tall blond Thelia whom he’d bought from an Arabic slave trader and who had secretly born him a son. When her son’s fate was foretold by the seer Tiresias, Thelia sent him away with her trusted eunuch Phallis over the mountains of Macedonia to be with her own family but on the way the baby was captured by the very same slavers who had once owned Thelia.
Athena remembered how the Greek Gods had met at her temple in Delphi
Athena's Temple Delphi
to discuss the fate of Adonisman arguing back and forth.
Should he be struck down and like Hector
have his body tied to his chariot and dragged over alien plains
spiked with spinifex and hard red rocks or should he be destined to ride for ever with his pursuers
hot on his helmet?
Achilles of course, favoured the Hector option
while her father Zeus thought endless pursuit matched his crimes.
Immortal Athena at first favoured her father’s option imagining Adonisman riding his chariot across the plains of Centralia,
an ancient land with Rainbow Serpent Deities who were much older, wiser and trickier than the Mt Olympus mob.
The All-Mother Rainbow God would look down on him with disdain as he was pursued by the huge army of charioteers bigger than the one that had needed a wooden horse to defeat the tragic Trojans and bigger than the one that had routed the pesky Persians at Marathon. 
Athena liked the idea of him being dragged across the red rocks of Centralia but then she realised there was the third option.
‘We shall allow him to continue as a mortal and return him to the Assembly of Athens to decide his fate,’ she commanded.
Immortal Achilles cast scorn on this idea.
‘The Assembly is full of endless rhetoric and puffed up bloody philosophers. They will take longer than the 20 years Odysseus took to return to his precious Ithaca, even with your help, noble Athena.’
Bloody Philosopher Athens
‘
And if they do that I’ll be there to throw a
thunderbolt in the works,’ Zeus roared.
Athena replied wise as ever: ‘And if somehow he escapes the justice of the Assembly (remember wily Sophocles couldn’t escape) I will use his heel of weakness to pursue him for the rest of his mortal days and that will consign him to a punishment even worse than the ever spinning Tartalus in Hades.’
And how will you do that my daughter?’ asked Zeus proud of her valour and her cunning.
‘I’ll magnify his greed for wealth and power and he’ll build a kingdom that will blind him with its magnificence so he sees nothing but gold wherever he looks. Thelia his favourite concubine will descend into madness through the grief of losing her son and to try to appease her he will reject Athena’s daughter.
His daughter will thrive and become a woman fair of face, wise of mind and compassionate of heart and she’ll marry a man who’ll become famous in the Assembly for his logic, his modesty and wise rhetoric taught to him by his wife. Together they will build their own dynasty ensuring their wealth and wisdom is used for the good of kin and far beyond. That shall be his punishment.’
Aphrodite
Achilles still grumbled but Aphrodite came to Athena’s side
to declare she would ensure that all the female descendants of Athena
would be fair of form and sweet of nature.
Athena would make sure they were smart and brave as well.
Zeus was becoming bored with the debate and interrupted this womanly chatter.
‘I will leave him with the mortals to decide. No more immortal meddling.
Let’s wait and see if the mortals know anything about justice,’ Zeus declared as he turned his attention to writing the history of the Battle of the Titans.
Athena agreed but she knew eventually she would get her way.
