sudo port install xorg-server
This installed many updates -- it had been awhile. I then did
sudo port uninstall demeter
sudo port install demeter
athena ran, but would not plot, in the way many had seen. The gnuplot program was set to "gnuplot", but terminal was "qt". Setting this to "wxt", plotting worked fine.
Not sure why that happened (I'm pretty sure it had been "wxt" previously), but it was easy to fix. And I'm still very impressed that the macports solution works so well!
--Matt