Nike (Greek goddess)

God or goddess information

• Symbols: Flying chariot; golden sandals; wings; laurel wreath
• Country or culture: Ancient Greece
• Mother: Styx
• Father: Pallas
• Siblings: Bia; Zelus; Kratos

Nike (pronounced "NIKE–ee") was the ancient Greek goddess of victory. A classical Olympian deity, she dwelt on Mount Olympus, and with her sister and two brothers was a companion of Zeus, chief among Greek gods. The siblings were brought to Olympus by their mother, Styx, to assist Zeus in mustering an army to wage the Titan War against an earlier, turbulent generation of gods. As the most celebrated winged goddess in the Greek pantheon of deities, Nike represented victory not only in military conflicts but also in sports. She was often depicted as a charioteer, rewarding victors with laurel wreaths, or pouring libations (victory draughts) in their honor. Nike was associated with Athena, the goddess of justice, wisdom, bravery, skill, and war-craft.

Nike's legacy has proved enduring. Hers is the origin of personal names, such as Nicholas and Veronica, and place names, such as Nice in the South of France. In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, multiple businesses and companies used her image—and, in the case of one major multinational sportswear company, her name—to make a link with all that the Greeks had admired as her principal attributes: vigor, energy, and the will to win.

In Mythology

Nike was a personifying goddess who embodied all the elements constituting victory: challenge, struggle, and final triumph. The word Nike itself meant "victory" in ancient Greek. The goddess's siblings also had names equating to their defining qualities: Bia meant "energy" or "life-force"; Zelus signified "zeal" or "rivalry"; and Kratos meant "power". Nike's mother Styx was a river goddess of the Underworld. Her father was the Titan god Pallas. Much of Nike's mythic story is supplied by the poet Hesiod's Theogony (c. seventh–eighth centuries BCE), a chronicle of the gods and their origins. Hesiod writes that the "slim-ankled" goddess and her siblings became Zeus's four sentinels, with Nike his charioteer. Zeus was so pleased with their dynamism and readiness to assist him in fighting the Titan War that he allowed them to live with him ever after. Further conflicts followed. The Dionysiaca, an epic by the poet Nonnus (c. fourth–fifth centuries CE) recounts how the giant Typhoeus launched an attack on the Olympian gods. They all fled except Zeus and Nike, who roused the god to victorious battle against the monster.

Nike was invoked as an object of veneration in the Homeric Hymns (written anonymously in the sixth–seventh centuries BCE) and the mystical anthology of the same period known as the Orphic Hymns. She was commemorated as the bridesmaid of Harmonia at her wedding to Cadmus, mythical King of Thebes, and her presentation of trophies to the victorious was described by the fifth-century BCE lyric poets Simonides and Bacchylides. Nike's affinity with both Zeus and Athena was publicly recognized in many of the devotional memorials depicting her. A series of images of Nike (known collectively as Nikaia) adorns the parapet of the Temple of Athena Nike on the Acropolis in Athens, Greece (fifth century BCE). A figurine of Nike, noted by the geographer Pausanias (in his Description of Greece, 2nd century CE), stood in Athena's palm on the statue of Athena erected within the Temple and was subsequently destroyed. The massive statue of Zeus constructed by the sculptor Phidias at Olympia in the same century also featured a statuette of Nike held in the god's right hand. This work is also lost, although the statue had been one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Nike's association with Athena has sometimes led scholars to ask whether she was an alter ego of Athena, but Nike's wings and laurel wreath clearly distinguished her in imagery, bestowing a unique identity.

Nike was not only a player in the cosmic battles of the gods, she was also involved in the human world, as a granter of victory, and awarder of laurels, called upon as a mediator between gods and mortals to guarantee success in trials of bravery and prowess. King Alexander of Macedon (Alexander the Great: fourth century BCE) built an altar to Nike in Athens, acknowledging her role in his military victories. Nike's Roman equivalent was the goddess Victoria, described by the poet Ovid in Metamorphoses (first century CE) and figuring widely in art, famously, for example, in a mosaic at Pompeii.

Origins & Cults

Nike was a popular subject for devotional representation. Numerous statues, mosaics and vase paintings were made in the ancient world, and she regularly appeared on coins. The earliest known sculpture, found on the island of Delos, and probably by Archermus, dates from around 550 BCE. In addition to describing the figures of Nike accompanying the monumental statues of Athena and Zeus, which once stood in the Acropolis and at Olympia respectively, Pausanias also recounts a bronze image of Nike at Piraeus (again being held by Zeus) and representations at Sparta, Thespiae, and Syracuse (in Sicily). Images of Nike were simultaneously memorials to particular conflicts or heroes. A huge statue on the Acropolis commemorates Nike herself along with the general Callimachus, vanquisher of the Persians at the Battle of Marathon (490 BCE). The Winged Victory of Samothrace, a marble sculpture dating from the second century BCE, housed in the Louvre, Paris, was probably the commemoration of a sea battle. On pottery, Nike is often shown next to an altar or sacrificial bull.

Images of Nike are not confined to the ancient world, however. Many newer statues depicting her are to be found in Europe and the United State, for example, at Gettysburg National Military Park in Pennsylvania, and at Syracuse University in New York. The FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association) World Cup soccer trophy was based on classical representations of the goddess, and every Olympic medal awarded since 1928 has pictured Nike on the front. Millennia after her earliest portrayal, Nike has continued to motivate, encourage and inspire in the twenty-first century.

Bibliography

Grant, Michael, and John Hazel. Who's Who in Classical Mythology. 3rd ed., Routledge, 2001.

Hornblower, Simon, et al., eds. The Oxford Classical Dictionary: The Ultimate Reference Work on the Classical World. 4th ed., Oxford UP, 2012.

Mikalson, Jon D. Ancient Greek Religion. 2nd ed., Wiley-Blackwell, 2010.

"Nike: Greek Goddess of Victory." Theoi project, NK "http://www.Theoi.com/Daimon/Nike.html" www.Theoi.com/Daimon/Nike.html. Accessed 5 Nov. 2016.

Töpfer, Kai Michael. "The Goddess of Victory in Greek and Roman Art." Spirits in Transcultural Skies, edited by Niels Gutschow and Katharina Weiler, Springer, 2015, pp. 1–18.

Young, Yael. "Binding, Loosening, or Adjusting Her Sandal? On Nike from the Parapet of the Athena Nike Temple." Source: Notes in the History of Art, vol. 34, no. 4, Summer 2015, pp. 2–9.