Erichthonius of Athens

Birth of Erichthonius: Athena receives the baby Erichthonius from the hands of the earth mother Gaia, Attic red-figure stamnos, 470–460 BC, Staatliche Antikensammlungen (Inv. 2413)

King Erichthonius (/ərɪkˈθoʊnɪəs/; Greek: Ἐριχθόνιος Erichthonios)^[1] was a legendary early ruler of ancient Athens, Greece. According to some myths, he was autochthonous (born of the soil, or Earth) and raised by the goddess Athena. Early Greek texts do not distinguish between him and Erectheus,^[2] his grandson, but by the fourth century BC, during Classical times, they are distinct figures.

Birth

According to the Bibliotheca, Athena visited the smith-god Hephaestus to request some weapons, but Hephaestus was so overcome by desire that he tried to seduce her in his workshop. Determined to maintain her virginity, Athena fled, pursued by Hephaestus. He caught Athena and tried to rape her, but she fought him off. During the struggle, his semen fell on her thigh, and Athena, in disgust, wiped it away with a scrap of wool (ἔριον, erion) and flung it to the earth (χθών, chthôn). As she fled, Erichthonius was born from the semen that fell to the earth. Athena, wishing to raise the child in secret, placed him in a small box.

Athena gave the box to the three daughters (Herse, Pandrosus and Aglaurus) of Cecrops, the king of Athens, and warned them never to open it. Overcome with curiosity, Aglaurus and Herse opened the box, which contained the infant and future-king, Erichthonius ("troubles born from the earth," following another etymology). (Sources are unclear regarding how many sisters participated.) The sisters were terrified by what they saw in the box: either a snake coiled around an infant, or an infant that was half-man and half-serpent. They went insane and threw themselves off the Acropolis. Other accounts state that they were killed by the snake.

An alternative version of the story is that Athena left the box with the daughters of Cecrops while she went to fetch a limestone mountain from the Pallene peninsula to use in the Acropolis. While she was away, Aglaurus and Herse opened the box. A crow saw them open the box, and flew away to tell Athena, who fell into a rage and dropped the mountain she was carrying (now Mt. Lykabettos). As in the first version, Herse and Aglaurus went insane and threw themselves to their deaths off a cliff.

Reign

When he grew up, Erichthonius drove out Amphictyon, who had usurped the throne from Cranaus twelve years earlier, and became king of Athens. He married Praxithea, a naiad, and had a son, Pandion I. During this time, Athena frequently protected him. He founded the Panathenaic Festival in the honor of Athena, and set up a wooden statue of her on the Acropolis. According to the Parian Chronicle, he taught his people to yoke horses and use them to pull chariots, to smelt silver, and to till the earth with a plough. It was said that Erichthonius was lame of his feet and that he consequently invented the quadriga, or four-horse chariot, to get around more easily. He is said to have competed often as a chariot driver in games. Zeus was said to have been so impressed with his skill that he raised him to the heavens to become the constellation of the Charioteer (Auriga) after his death.

Erichthonius was succeeded by his son Pandion I. The snake is his symbol, and he is represented in the statue of Athena in the Parthenon as the snake hidden behind her shield.

Notes

1. R. S. P. Beekes has suggested a Pre-Greek proto-form *Erekt^yeu- (Etymological Dictionary of Greek, Brill, 2009, p. 460).
2. Homer, Iliad 2.546–551.

References

• Smith, William; Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, London (1873). "Erichtho'nius"

External links

• Images of Erichthonius in the Warburg Institute Iconographic Database