Where Ares loves war for its violence, Athena loves it for its cunning. She is the goddess of strategy, weaving, olive trees, and ideas — the patron of any mortal who solves problems with their head before their hands.
Odysseus is her favourite. She petitions Zeus to release him from Calypso. She steers Telemachus’s coming-of-age. She greets Odysseus on the beach of Ithaca, disguised as a young shepherd, and the two of them swap lies for the joy of it before she reveals herself, laughing — we are alike, you and I, you in mortal cunning and I in divine.
She is everywhere in the second half of the poem. The bow-string contest, the slaughter of the suitors, the truce that ends the cycle of revenge — all bear her fingerprints.