Minerva

Minerva is the lady of intellect, of the useful arts (architecture, science, mathematics, and craftsmanship), and of righteous war. She gifted men the olive tree and the cart, and she taught them to weave. She is, in other words, the goddess who gave civilization as we know it today to human beings. She's part of the "Capitoline Triad," and she sits to the right of Jupiter, her father. In Achaia, she's called Athena. Minerva protects and favors scholasrs and those who earn their living with their intellect: writers, poets, and teachers. She's also the lady of medicine learned through study, and therefore she protects those who became doctors and surgeons via a formal education, rather than empiraical healers. She's a warrior goddess, but a merciful one. She's inflexible with those who defy her, but she takes to heart the circumstances of defeated innocents, just as Rome does. The poet Virgil described her attitude in the verse "parcere subiecti, debellare superbos." Minerva is portrayed as a young woman with short hair and a helm. Over her clothes, she wears armor adroned with the head of the monsterous Medusa. In her right hand she hoilds a spear, while in her other hand, on her open palm, there's often an owl, her sacred animal.