AthenaPoseidon. Athena (Minerva) competed with Poseidon (Neptune) for control of Attica and the devotion of its people. When challenged to produce the most useful gift for these mortals, Poseidon struck a rock with his trident and created a salt spring (some say a horse), while Athena touched the soil with her spear and brought forth an olive tree. Her gift, representing peace (persisting in the phrase “bearing the olive branch”), was deemed to be the more useful, and it was her name that was given to the major city of the region, Athens. The contest was judged by the mythical first king of Athens, Cecrops (sometimes confused with his descendant Erichthonius), with the twelve Olympians sitting on the Areopagus (Hill of Ares) to oversee the outcome. In her later contest with Arachne, Athena wove this episode into her tapestry.
The most important antique representation of this episode, of which only two or three fragmentary figures survive today, was on the west pediment of the Parthenon.

Classical Sources. Herodotus, History 8.55. Virgil, Georgies 1.12—18. Ovid, Metamorphoses 6.70—82. Apollodorus, Biblioteca 3.14.1. Pausanias, Description of Greece 1.27.2.