Nike

Victory chooses a side

Zeus, at war with the Titans, the older generation of gods, called for allies. He promised that those who fought with him would keep their honours. The goddess Styx came first. She brought her four children: Zelus, Nike, Cratos and Bia. Their names mean rivalry, victory, strength and force.

The early Greek poet Hesiod says that from then on the four had no house or path apart from Zeus. Their place beside him was a reward for siding with him early. It also describes the kind of rule he set up. Victory and force do not visit the ruler of Olympus now and then. They stay with him.

So Nike is both a goddess with parents and the condition that keeps Zeus in power. Her story is not a string of adventures. It answers a political question: who stood with the future king before the result was certain?

When Nike belongs to Athena

On the Acropolis, the rocky hill above Athens, the name Nike does not mean a separate goddess with a home of her own. A small temple in the Ionic style of building stands beside the gateway. It honours Athena Nike, the goddess Athena as the giver of victory. The Greek traveller Pausanias calls it the temple of Wingless Victory. He does not say why its cult image, the statue people worshipped, had no wings. A later story says the Athenians removed them to stop Victory from leaving, but his passage does not support it.

The temple of the Classical period is credited to Kallikrates and dated to around 427 to 424 BC. It stands above an earlier shrine. A wooden image of Athena from that earlier shrine survived the Persian destruction of 480 BC. Worship carried on even when the building changed.

At Athens, victory belongs to Athena as goddess of the city’s defence and strategy. Victory is a result, and she supplies the method. Success in war becomes part of the ordered city’s divine identity, instead of a force loose on its own.

A building taken apart and rebuilt

The Temple of Athena Nike has survived by being taken apart as well as by lasting. In 1686 Ottoman forces pulled it down to its base and reused the marble to strengthen the entrance to the Acropolis. After Greek independence, the stones were recovered and the temple was rebuilt. Later projects took it apart again, to correct earlier work and to protect the stone. The most recent ran from 2000 to 2010.

The temple standing today is neither wholly ancient nor a modern copy. Ancient blocks, later repairs and modern scholarship are all present in it. This memorial to victory has lasted because people kept preserving it.

A defeated enemy left unnamed

At Olympia, Nike appears on her own in the great statue by Paionios of Mende. The winged goddess came down toward the viewer from a tall three-sided pillar. Her clothes were carved as if the wind pressed them against her body. The Messenians of Naupactus paid for the statue from spoils taken from an enemy.

The inscription named the people who gave the statue and its sculptor, but not the enemy they had beaten. Pausanias believed the spoils came from fighting the Acarnanians and the people of Oeniadae. The Messenians told him the statue marked their action with Athens at Sphacteria, and that fear of Sparta was why they left the enemy out. They added that they were not afraid of the Acarnanians.

Two places, two claims

Filling in the missing name today would not settle the disagreement. The disagreement shows how monuments to victory manage memory. The statue announced success where the whole sanctuary could see it, while the missing enemy kept the exact boast open to argument.

Nike’s two best-known settings in Greece make different claims. Athens ties victory to Athena and to the city’s defence. Olympia lets the goddess come down alone, but leaves the loser out of the public words. In both places, the monuments raise the same question of who may name a victory, own it and keep it standing.