Erechtheus (Ἐρεχθεύς) in Greek mythology was the name of an archaic king of Athens, the re-founder of the polis and a double at Athens for Poseidon, as "Poseidon Erechtheus". A mythic Erechtheus and an Erechtheus given a human genealogy and set in a historicizing context— if they ever were really distinguished by Athenians— were harmonized as one in Euripides' lost tragedy Erechtheus, (423/22 BCE) . The name Erichthonius is carried by a son of Erechtheus, but Plutarch conflated the two names in the myth of the begetting of Erechtheus.[1]
Athenians thought of themselves as Erechtheidai, the "sons of Erechtheus".[2] In Homer's Iliad (2. 547-48) he is the son of "grain-giving Earth", reared by Athena.[3] The earth-born son was sired by Hephaestus, whose semen Athena wiped from her thigh with a fillet of wool cast to earth, by which Gaia was made pregnant.
In the contest for patronship of Athens between Poseidon and Athena, the salt spring on the Acropolis where Poseidon's trident struck was known as the sea of Erechtheus.[4]
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The central gods of the Athenian acropolis were Poseidon Erechtheus and Athena Polias, "Athena patron-guardian of the city".[5] The Odyssey (VII.81) already records that Athena returned to Athens and "entered the house of Erechtheus". The archaic joint temple built upon the spot that was identified as the Kekropion, the hero-grave of the mythic founder-king Cecrops[6] and the serpent that embodied his spirit was destroyed by the Persian forces in 480 BC, during the Greco-Persian wars, and was replaced between 421 and 407 BCE by the famous present Erechtheum. Continuity of the site made sacred by the presence of Cecrops is inherent in the reference in Nonnus' Dionysiaca to "Erechtheion lamp as "the lamp of Cecrops".[7] Priests of the Erechtheum and the priestess of Athena jointly took part in the procession to Skira that inaugurated the Skira festival near the end of the Athenian year. Their object was the temenos at Skiron of the hero-seer Skiros, who had aided Eumolpus in the war between Athens and Eleusis in which Erechtheus II, the hero-king, was both triumphant and died.
That Poseidon and Erechtheus were two names at Athens for the same figure (see below) was demonstrated in the cult at the Erechtheum, where there was a single altar, a single priest and sacrifices were dedicated to Poseidon erechtheus, Walter Burkert observed,[8] adding "An historian would say that a Homeric, pan-Hellenic name has been superimposed on an autochthonous, non-Greek name."
The second Erechtheus was given a historicizing genealogy as son and heir to King Pandion I of Athens by Zeuxippe, this Pandion being son of Erichthonius. This later king Erechtheus may be distinguished as Erechtheus II. Erechtheus was father, by his wife Praxithea, of several daughters: Procris, Creusa, Chthonia and Oreithyia.
According to pseudo-Apollodorus, Erechtheus II had a twin brother named Butes who married Erechtheus' daughter Chthonia, the "earth-born". Erechtheus and Butes divided the royal power possessed by Pandion, Erechtheus taking the physical rule but Butes taking the priesthood of Athena and Poseidon, this right being passed on to his descendants. This late origin myth or aition justified and validated the descent of the hereditary priesthood.
His reign was marked by the war between Athens and Eleusis, when the Eleusinians were commanded by Eumolpus, coming from Thrace. An oracle declared that Athens' survival depended on the death one of the three daughters of Erechtheus. Perhaps three unmarried daughters is meant. But in one version it is Chthonia who is sacrificed. In another both Protogeneia and Pandora, the two eldest, offer themselves up. In any case the remaining sisters, or at least some of them, are said to kill themselves. These unfortunate daughters of Erechtheus became the Hyacinthides upon their death.
In the following battle between the forces of Athens and Eleusis, Erechtheus won the battle and slew Eumolpus, but then himself fell, struck down by Poseidon's trident;[9] according to fragments of Euripides' tragedy Erechtheus.Poseidon avenged his son Eumolpus' death by driving him into the earth with blows of his trident,[10]
The ending lines of Euripides' tragedy were recovered in 1965 from a papyrus fragment.[11] They demonstrate for Walter Burkert[12] that "the founding of the Erechtheum and the institution of the priestess of Athena coincide." Athena resolves the action by instructing Erichtheus' widow Praxithea:
...and for your husband I command a shrine to be constructed in the middle of the city; he will be known for him who killed him, under the name of 'sacred Poseidon'; but among the citizens, when the sacrificial cattle are slaughtered, he shall also be called 'Erechtheus'. To you, however, since you have rebuilt the city's foundations,[13] I grant the duty of bringing in the preliminary fire-sacrifices for the city, and to be called my priestess."[14]
In the Athenian king-list, Xuthus, the son-in-law of Erechtheus, was asked to choose his successor from among his many sons and chose Cecrops II, named for the mythic founder-king Cecrops. Thus Erechtheus is succeeded by Cecrops II, his brother, according to a fragment from the poet Castor but his son according to pseudo-Apollodorus (3.15.1).
Other sons of Erechtheus sometimes mentioned are Orneus, Metion, Pandorus, Thespius, and Eupalamus.
| Preceded by Pandion I |
King of Athens | Succeeded by Cecrops II |
ERECHTHEUS, in Greek legend, a mythical king of Athens, originally identified with Erichthonius, but in later times distinguished from him. According to Homer, who knows nothing of Erichthonius, he was the son of Aroura (Earth), brought up by Athena, with whom his story is closely connected. In the later story, Erichthonius (son of Hephaestus and Atthis or Athena herself) was handed over by Athena to the three daughters of Cecrops - Aglauros (or Agraulos), Hen and. Pandrosos - in a chest, which they were 'rbidden to open. Aglauros and Heise disobeyed the injufiction, an&when they saw the child (which had the form of a snake, or round which a snake was coiled) they went mad with fright, and threw themselves from the rock of the Acropolis (or ere killed by the snake). Athena herself then undertook the care of Erichthonius, who, when he grew up, drove out Amphictyon and took posse: n of the kingdom of Athens. Here he established the worst, of Athena, instituted the Panathenaea, and built an Erechtheum. The Erechtheus of later times was supposed to be the grandson of ErechtheusErichthonius, and was also king of Athens. When Athens was attacked by, the Thracian Eumolpus (or by the Eleusinians assisted by Eumolpus) victory was promised Erechtheus if he sacrificed one of his daughters. Eumolpus was slain and Erechtheus was victorious, but was himself killed by Poseidon, the father of Eumolpus, or by a thunderbolt from Zeus. The contest between Erechtheus and Eumolpus formed the subject of a lost tragedy by Euripides; Swinburne has utilized the legend in his Erechtheus. The scene of the opening of the chest is represented on a Greek vase in the British Museum. The name Erichthonius is connected with xecbv ("earth") and the representation of him as half-snake, like Cecrops, indicates that he was regarded as one of the autochthones, the ancestors of the Athenians who sprung from the soil.
See Apollodorus iii. 14.15; Euripides, Ion; Ovid, Metam. ii. 553 Hyginus, Poet. astron. ii. 13; Pausanias i. 2.5. 8; E. Ermatinger, Die attische Autochthonensage (1897); article by J. A. Hild in Daremberg and Saglio's Dictionnaire des antiquite's; B. Powell in Cornell Studies, xvii. (1906), who identifies Erechtheus, Erichthonius, Poseidon and Cecrops, all denoting the sacred serpent of Athena, whose cult she first contested, but then amalgamated with her own. The birth of Erichthonius (as a corn-spirit) is interpreted by Mannhardt as a mythical way of describing the growth of the corn, and by J. E. Harrison (Myths and Monuments of Ancient Athens, xxvii.- xxxvi.) as a fiction to explain the ceremony performed by the two maidens called Arrephori. See also Farnell, Cults of the Greek States, i. 270; and Frazer's Pausanias, ii. 169.
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