When Achilles was nine years old, Calchas declared that Troy could not be taken without him; so Thetis, foreseeing that it was fated he should perish if he went to the war, disguised him in female garb and entrusted him as a maiden to Lycomedes.[*](As to Achilles disguised as a girl at the court of Lycomedes in Scyros, see Bion ii.5ff.; Philostratus Junior, Im. 1; Scholiast on Hom. Il. ix.668; Hyginus, Fab. 96; Statius, Achill. i.207ff. The subject was painted by Polygnotus in a chamber at the entrance to the acropolis of Athens (Paus. 1.22.6). Euripides wrote a play called The Scyrians on the same theme. See TGF (Nauck 2nd ed.), pp. 574ff. Sophocles composed a tragedy under the same title, which has sometimes been thought to have dealt with the same subject, but more probably it was concerned with Neoptolemus in Scyros and the mission of Ulysses and Phoenix to carry him off to Troy. See The Fragments of Sophocles, ed. A. C. Pearson, vol. ii. pp. 191ff. The youthful Dionysus, like the youthful Achilles, is said to have been brought up as a maiden. See above, Apollod. 3.4.3, with the note. One of the questions which the emperor Tiberius used solemnly to propound to the antiquaries of his court was: What was the name of Achilles when he lived as a girl among girls? See Suetonius Tiberius, 70. The question was solemnly answered by learned men in various ways: some said that the stripling's female name was Cercysera, others that it was Issa, and others that it was Pyrrha. See Ptolemy Hephaest., Nov. Hist. i. in Westermann's Mythographi Graeci, p. 183.) Bred at
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his court, Achilles had an intrigue with Deidamia, daughter of Lycomedes, and a son Pyrrhus was born to him, who was afterwards called Neoptolemus. But the secret of Achilles was betrayed, and Ulysses, seeking him at the court of Lycomedes, discovered him by the blast of a trumpet.
[*](The usual story was that the crafty Ulysses spread out baskets and women's gear, mingled with arms, before the disguised Achilles and his girlish companions in Scyros; and that while the real girls pounced eagerly on the feminine gauds, Achilles betrayed his sex by snatching at the arms. See Philostratus Junior, Im. i; Scholiast on Hom. Il. xix.326; Ov. Met. 13.162ff. Apollodorus tells us that Achilles was detected by the sound of a trumpet. This is explained by Hyginus, Fab. 96, who says that while Achilles was surveying the mingled trumpery and weapons, Ulysses caused a bugle to sound and a clash of arms to be heard, whereupon Achilles, imagining that an enemy was at hand, tore off his maidenly attire and seized spear and shield. Statius gives a similar account of the detection (Statius, Achill. ii.167ff.).) And in that way Achilles went to Troy. He was accompanied by Phoenix, son of Amyntor. This Phoenix had been blinded by his father on the strength of a false accusation of seduction preferred against him by his father's concubine Phthia. But Peleus brought him to Chiron, who restored his sight, and thereupon Peleus made him king of the Dolopians.
[*](See Hom. Il. 9.437-484, with the Scholiast on Hom. Il. 9.448. But Homer says nothing about the blinding of Phoenix by his angry father or his cure by Chiron; and according to Homer the accusation of having debauched his father's concubine was not false but true, Phoenix having been instigated to the deed by his mother, who was jealous of the concubine. But variations from the Homeric narrative were introduced into the story by the tragedians who handled the theme (Scholiast on Hom. Il. 9.437-484). Sophocles and Euripides both wrote tragedies on the subject under the same title of Phoenix; the tragedy of Euripides seems to have been famous. See TGF (Nauck 2nd ed.), pp. 286, 621ff.; The Fragments of Sophocles, ed. A. C. Pearson, vol. ii.320ff. The blinding of Phoenix by his father Amyntor is alluded to by a poet of the Greek anthology (Anth. Pal. iii.3). Both the poet and Apollodorus probably drew on Euripides, who from an allusion in Aristoph. Acharn. 421 is known to have represented Phoenix as blind. Both the blinding and the healing of Phoenix are related by Tzetzes (Scholiast on Lycophron 421), who may have followed Apollodorus. According to the Scholiast on Hom. Il. 9.437-484, the name of the concubine was Clytia; according to Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron 421, it was Clytia or Phthia. Apollodorus calls her Phthia. The Scholiast on Plato (Laws, xi. p. 931 B), gives a version of the story which agrees entirely with that of Apollodorus, and may have been copied from it. The healing of Phoenix's eyes by Chiron is mentioned by Prop. ii.1.60.) Achilles was also accompanied by Patroclus, son of
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Menoetius
[*](Compare Hom. Il. 11.785ff. Homer does not mention the name of Patroclus's mother.) and Sthenele, daughter of Acastus; or the mother of Patroclus was Periopis, daughter of Pheres, or, as Philocrates says, she was Polymele, daughter of Peleus. At Opus, in a quarrel over a game of dice, Patroclus killed the boy Clitonymus, son of Amphidamas, and flying with his father he dwelt at the house of Peleus
[*](See Hom. Il. 23.84-90; compare Scholiast on Hom. Il. xii.1; Strab. 9.4.2; Ovid, Ex Ponto i.3.73ff. The name of the slain lad was variously given as Clisonymus (Scholiast, l.c.) or Aeanes (Strabo and Scholiast, ll.cc.)) and became a minion of Achilles.
--- Cecrops, a son of the soil, with a body compounded of man and serpent, was the first king of Attica, and the country which was formerly called Acte he named Cecropia after himself.[*](According to the Parian Chronicle (Marmor Parium 2-4), with which Apollodorus is in general agreement, the first king of Attica was Cecrops, and the country was named Cecropia after him, whereas it had formerly been called Actice (sic) after an aboriginal named Actaeus. Pausanias (Paus. 1.2.6) represents this Actaeus as the first king of Attica, and says that Cecrops succeeded him on the throne by marrying his daughter. But Pausanias, like Apollod. 3.15.5, distinguishes this first Cecrops from a later Cecrops, son of Erechtheus (Apollod. 1.5.3). Apollodorus is at one with Pausanias in saying that the first Cecrops married the daughter of Actaeus, and he names her Agraulus (see below, Apollod. 3.14.2). Philochorus said, with great probability, that there never was any such person as Actaeus; according to him, Attica lay waste and depopulated from the deluge in the time of Ogyges down to the reign of Cecrops. See Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelii, x.10. Tzetzes (Chiliades v.637) and Hyginus, Fab. 48 agree in representing Cecrops as the first king of Attica; Hyginus calls him a son of the earth. As to his double form, the upper part of him being human and the lower part serpentine, see Aristoph. Wasps 438, with the Scholiast; Eur. Ion 1163ff.; Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron 111; Tzetzes, Chiliades v.638ff.; Scholiast on Aristoph. Plutus 773; Diod. 1.28.7, who rationalizes the fable after his usual fashion.) In his time, they say, the gods resolved to take possession of
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cities in which each of them should receive his own peculiar worship. So Poseidon was the first that came to Attica, and with a blow of his trident on the middle of the acropolis, he produced a sea which they now call Erechtheis.
[*](As to the contest between Poseidon and Athena for possession of Attica, see Hdt. 8.55; Plut. Them. 19; Paus. 1.24.5; Paus. 1.26.5; Ov. Met. 6.70ff.; Hyginus, Fab. 164; Serv. Verg. G. 1.12; Lactantius Placidus on Statius, Theb. vii.185; Scriptores rerum mythicarum Latini, ed. Bode, i. pp. 1, 115 (First Vatican Mythographer 2; Second Vatican Mythographer 119). A rationalistic explanation of the fable was propounded by the eminent Roman antiquary Varro. According to him, the olive-tree suddenly appeared in Attica, and at the same time there was an eruption of water in another part of the country. So king Cecrops sent to inquire of Apollo at Delphi what these portents might signify. The oracle answered that the olive and the water were the symbols of Athena and Poseidon respectively, and that the people of Attica were free to choose which of these deities they would worship. Accordingly the question was submitted to a general assembly of the citizens and citizenesses; for in these days women had the vote as well as men. All the men voted for the god, and all the women voted for the goddess; and as there was one more woman than there were men, the goddess appeared at the head of the poll. Chagrined at the loss of the election, the male candidate flooded the country with the water of the sea, and to appease his wrath it was decided to deprive women of the vote and to forbid children to bear their mother's names for the future. See Augustine, De civitate Dei xviii.9. The print of Poseidon's trident on the rock of the acropolis at Athens was shown down to late times. See Strab. 9.1.16; Paus. 1.26.5. The “sea,” which the god was supposed to have produced as evidence of his right to the country was also to be seen within the Erechtheum on the acropolis; Pausanias calls it a well of sea water, and says that, when the south wind blew, the well gave forth a sound of waves. See Hdt. 8.55; Paus. 1.26.5; Paus. 8.10.4. According to the late Latin mythographers (see the references above), Poseidon produced a horse from the rock in support of his claim, and this version of the story seems to have been accepted by Virgil (Geo. i.12ff.), but it is not countenanced by Greek writers. The Athenians said that the contest between Poseidon and Athena took place on the second of the month Boedromion, and hence they omitted that day from the calendar. See Plut. De fraterno amore 11; Plut. Quaest. Conviv. ix.6. The unlucky Poseidon also contested the possession of Argos with Hera, and when the judges gave a verdict against him and in favour of the goddess, he took his revenge, as in Attica, by flooding the country. See Paus. 2.22.4; compare Paus. 2.15.5; Polemo, Greek History, cited by the Scholiast on Aristides, vol. iii. p. 322, ed. Dindorf.) After him came Athena, and, having called on Cecrops to witness her act of taking possession, she planted an olive tree, which is still shown in the Pandrosium.
[*](The olive-tree seems to have survived down to the second century of our era. See Hdt. 8.55; Dionysius of Halicarnassus, De Dinarcho Judicium 3; Paus. 1.27.3; Cicero, De legibus, i.1.2; Hyginus, Fab. 164; Pliny, Nat. Hist. xvi.240. Dionysius agrees with Apollodorus in representing the tree as growing in the Pandrosium, which is proved by inscriptions to have been an enclosure to the west of the Erechtheum. See Frazer, commentary on Pausanias, vol. ii. p. 337.) But when the two strove for possession of the country, Zeus parted
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them and appointed arbiters, not, as some have affirmed, Cecrops and Cranaus, nor yet Erysichthon, but the twelve gods.
[*](Compare Ov. Met. 6.72ff. ) And in accordance with their verdict the country was adjudged to Athena, because Cecrops bore witness that she had been the first to plant the olive. Athena, therefore, called the city Athens after herself, and Poseidon in hot anger flooded the Thriasian plain and laid Attica under the sea.
[*](As to this flood, see Varro, in Augustine, De civitate Dei xviii.9; Hyginus, Fab. 164. The Thriasian plain is the plain in which Eleusis stands. See Strab. 9.1.6 Strab. 9.1.13.) Cecrops married Agraulus, daughter of Actaeus, and had a son Erysichthon, who departed this life childless; and Cecrops had daughters, Agraulus, Herse, and Pandrosus.[*](Compare Paus. 1.2.6; Hyginus, Fab. 146; Ov. Met. 2.737ff. All these writers call the first of the daughters Aglaurus instead of Agraulus, and the form Aglaurus is confirmed by inscriptions on two Greek vases (Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum, vol. iv. p. 146, Nos. 7716, 7718).) Agraulus had a daughter Alcippe by Ares. In attempting to violate Alcippe, Halirrhothius, son of Poseidon and a nymph Euryte, was detected and killed by Ares.[*](Compare Paus. 1.21.4; Stephanus Byzantius and Suidas, s.v. Ἄρειος πάγος in Bekker's Anecdota Graeca, vol. i. p. 444, lines 8ff. From the three latter writers we learn that the story was told by the historians Philochorus and Hellanicus, whom Apollodorus may here be following.) Impeached by Poseidon, Ares was tried in the Areopagus before the twelve gods, and was acquitted.[*](See Eur. Ion 1258ff.; Eur. IT 945ff.; Dem. 23.66; Marmor Parium 5ff.; Paus. 1.28.5; Scholiast on Eur. Or. 1648, 1651. The name Areopagus was commonly supposed to mean “the hill of Ares” and explained by the tradition that Ares was the first to be tried for murder before the august tribunal. But more probably, perhaps, the name meant “the hill of curses.” See Frazer, note on Pausanias. i.28.5 (vol. ii. pp. 363ff.). For other legendary or mythical trials in the court of the Areopagus, see below, Apollod. 3.15.1; Apollod. 3.15.8.)
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Herse had by Hermes a son Cephalus, whom Dawn loved and carried off,[*](See above, Frazer on Apollod. 1.9.4, where Cephalus is said to have been a son of Deion by Diomede; compare Apollod. 2.4.7; Apollod. 3.15.1. Pausanias also calls Cephalus a son of Deion (Paus. 1.37.6; Paus. 10.29.6), and so does Ant. Lib. 41. The Scholiast on Hom. (Od. xi.321) calls his father Deioneus. Hyginus in two passages (Hyginus, Fab. 189, 270) describes Cephalus as a son of Deion, and in another passage (Hyginus, Fab. 160) as a son of Hermes (Mercury) by Creusa, daughter of Erechtheus. Euripides tells how “Dawn with her lovely light once snatched up Cephalus to the gods, all for love”( Eur. Hipp.454ff.).) and consorting with him in Syria bore a son Tithonus, who had a son Phaethon,[*](According to Hes. Th. 986ff. and Paus. 1.3.1, Phaethon was a son of Cephalus and the Dawn or Day. According to another and seemingly more usual account the father of Phaethon was the Sun. See Diod. 5.23; Paus. 1.4.1; Paus. 2.3.2; Lucian, Dial. Deorum xxv.1; Tzetzes, Chiliades iv.357ff.; Eustathius on Hom. Od. xi.325, p. 1689; Scholiast on Hom. Od. xvii.208; Ov. Met. 2.19ff.; Hyginus, Fab. 152, 156; Lactantius Placidus on Statius, Theb. i.221; Scholia in Caesaris Germanici Aratea, p. 421, ed. Fr. Eyssenhardt, in his edition of Martianus Capella; Scriptores rerum mythicarum Latini, ed. Bode, i. pp. 37, 93, 208 (First Vatican Mythographer 118; Second Vatican Mythographer 57; Third Vatican Mythographer iii.8.14); Serv. Verg. A. 10.189. The mother who bore him to the Sun is usually called Clymene (so Lucian, Tzetzes, Eustathius, Ovid, Hyginus, Lactantius Placidus, the Vatican mythographers, and Servius); but the Scholiast on Hom. Od. xvii.208 calls her Rhode, daughter of Asopus. Clymene herself, the mother of Phaethon, is said to have been a daughter of Ocean and Tethys (Tzetzes, Chiliades iv.359; Ov. Met. 2.156) or of Iphys or Minyas (Eustathius). Apollodorus passes over in silence the famous story how Phaethon borrowed the chariot of the Sun for a day, and driving too near the earth set it on fire, and how in his wild career he was struck dead by Zeus with a thunderbolt and fell into the river Eridanus, where his sisters mourned for him till they were turned into poplar trees, their tears being changed into drops of amber which exuded from the trees. The story is told at great length and with many picturesque details by Ovid, (Metamorph. ii.1ff.). Compare Lucretius v.396ff.; Diodorus Siculus, Lucian, the Scholiast on Homer, Hyginus, and the Latin Mythographers. Euripides wrote a tragedy on the subject, of which some considerable fragments survive. See TGF (Nauck 2nd ed.), pp. 599ff. For some similar stories, see Frazer's Appendix on Apollodorus, “Phaethon and the Chariot of the Sun.”) who had a son Astynous, who had a son Sandocus, who passed from Syria to Cilicia and founded a city Celenderis, and having married Pharnace, daughter of Megassares, king of Hyria, begat Cinyras.[*](According to Hyginus, Fab. 142, Cinyras was a son of Paphus.) This Cinyras in Cyprus, whither he had come with
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some people, founded Paphos; and having there married Metharme, daughter of Pygmalion, king of Cyprus, he begat Oxyporus and Adonis,
[*](A different and apparently more prevalent tradition represented Adonis as the son of Cinyras by incestuous intercourse with his daughter Myrrha or Smyrna. See Scholiast on Theocritus i.107; Plut. Parallela 22; Ant. Lib. 34 (who, however, differs as to the name of Smyrna's father); Ov. Met. 10.298ff.; Hyginus, Fab. 58, 164; Fulgentius, Mytholog. iii.8; Lactantius Placidus, Narrat. Fabul. x.9; Serv. Verg. Ecl. 10.18, and Serv. Verg. A. 5.72; Scriptores rerum mythicarum Latini, ed. Bode, i. p. 60 (First Vatican Mythographer 200). Similar cases of incest with a daughter are frequently reported of royal houses in antiquity. They perhaps originated in a rule of transmitting the crown through women instead of through men; for under such a rule a widowed king would be under a strong temptation to marry his own daughter as the only means of maintaining himself legitimately on the throne after the death of his wife. See Adonis, Attis, Osiris, 3rd ed., i.43ff. The legend of the incestuous origin of Adonis is mentioned, on the authority of Panyasis, by Apollodorus himself a little lower down.) and besides them daughters, Orsedice, Laogore, and Braesia. These by reason of the wrath of Aphrodite cohabited with foreigners, and ended their life in Egypt.
And Adonis, while still a boy, was wounded and killed in hunting by a boar through the anger of Artemis.[*](Compare Bion i; Cornutus, Theologiae Graecae Compendium 28; Plut. Quaest. Conviv. iv.5.3, 8; Athenaeus ii.80, p. 69 B; Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron 831; Aristides, Apology, ed. J. Rendel Harris (Cambridge, 1891), pp. 44, 106ff.; Prop. iii.4(5) 53ff., ed. F. A. Paley; Ov. Met. 10.710ff.; Hyginus, Fab. 248; Macrobius, Sat. i.21.4; Lactantius, Divin. Inst. i.17; Firmicus Maternus, De errore profanarum religionum 9; Augustine, De civitate Dei vi.7. There are some grounds for thinking that formerly Adonis and his Babylonian prototype Tammuz were conceived in the form of a boar, and that the story of his death by a boar was only a misinterpretation of this older conception. See Spirits of the Corn and of the Wild, ii.22f.; C. F. Burney, The Book of Judges (London, 1918), pp. xviiff., who refers to “the brilliant discovery of Ball (PSBA. xvi.1894, pp. 195ff.) that the Sumerian name of Tammuz, DUMU.ZI (Bab. Du' ûzu, Dûzu) is identical with the Turkish dōmūz ‘pig,’ and that there is thus an ‘original identity of the god with the wild boar that slays him in the developed legend.’” W. Robertson Smith, as Professor Burney points out, had many years ago expressed the view that “the Cyprian Adonis was originally the Swine-god, and in this as in many other cases the sacred victim has been changed by false interpretation into the enemy of the god” (Religion of the Semites, New Edition, London, 1894, p. 411, note). The view is confirmed by the observation that the worshippers of Adonis would seem to have abstained from eating swine's flesh. See W. W. Baudissin, Adonis und Esmun (Leipsig, 1911), p. 142, quoting SS. Cyri et Joannis Miracula, in Migne's Patrologia Graeca, lxxxvii.3, col. 3624.) Hesiod, however, affirms that he was a son of Phoenix and Alphesiboea; and Panyasis says that he was a son
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of Thias, king of Assyria,
[*](According to Ant. Lib. 34, Smyrna, the mother of Adonis, was a daughter of Belus by a nymph Orithyia. Tzetzes mentions, but afterwards rejects, the view that Myrrha, the mother of Adonis, was a daughter of Thias (Scholiast on Lycophron 829, 831). Hyginus says that Cinyras, the father of Adonis, was king of Assyria (Hyginus, Fab. 58). This traditional connexion of Adonis with Assyria may well be due to a well-founded belief that the religion of Adonis, though best known to the Greeks in Syria and Cyprus, had originated in Assyria or rather in Babylonia, where he was worshipped under the name of Dumuzi or Tammuz. See Adonis, Attis, Osiris, 3rd ed., i.6ff. ) who had a daughter Smyrna. In consequence of the wrath of Aphrodite, for she did not honor the goddess, this Smyrna conceived a passion for her father, and with the complicity of her nurse she shared her father's bed without his knowledge for twelve nights. But when he was aware of it, he drew his sword and pursued her, and being overtaken she prayed to the gods that she might be invisible; so the gods in compassion turned her into the tree which they call smyrna ( myrrh).
[*](As to the transformation of the mother of Adonis into a myrrh-tree, see Scholiast on Theocritus i.107; Plut. Parallela 22; Ant. Lib. 34; Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron 829; Ov. Met. 10.476ff.; Hyginus, Fab. 58, 164; Fulgentius, Mytholog. iii.8; Lactantius Placidus, Narrat. Fabul. x.9; Serv. Verg. Ecl. 10.18 and Aen. v.72; Scriptores rerum mythicarum Latini, ed. Bode, i. p. 60 (First Vatican Mythographer 200). The drops of gum which oozed from the myrrh-tree were thought to be the tears shed by the transformed Myrrha for her sad fate (Ov. Met. 10.500ff.).) Ten months afterwards the tree burst and Adonis, as he is called, was born, whom for the sake of his beauty, while he was still an infant, Aphrodite hid in a chest unknown to the gods and entrusted to Persephone. But when Persephone beheld him, she would not give him back. The case being tried before Zeus, the year was divided into three parts, and the god ordained that Adonis should stay by himself for one part of the year, with Persephone for one part, and with Aphrodite for the remainder.
[*](According to another version of the story, Aphrodite and Persephone referred their dispute about Adonis to the judgment of Zeus, and he appointed the Muse Calliope to act as arbitrator between them. She decided that Adonis should spend half the year with each of them; but the decision so enraged Aphrodite that in revenge she instigated the Thracian women to rend in pieces Calliope's son, the musician Orpheus. See Hyginus, Ast. ii.6. A Scholiast on Theocritus (Id. iii.48) reports the common saying that the dead Adonis spends six months of the year in the arms of Persephone, and six months in the arms of Aphrodite; and he explains the saying as a mythical description of the corn, which after sowing is six months in the earth and six months above ground.) 89
However Adonis made over to Aphrodite his own share in addition; but afterwards in hunting he was gored and killed by a boar.
When Cecrops died, Cranaus came to the throne[*](Compare Paus. 1.2.6.); he was a son of the soil, and it was in his time that the flood in the age of Deucalion is said to have taken place.[*](According to the Parian Chronicle (Marmor Parium 4-7), Deucalion reigned at Lycorea on Mount Parnassus, and when the flood, following on heavy rains, took place in that district, he fled for safety to king Cranaus at Athens, where he founded a sanctuary of Rainy Zeus and offered thank-offerings for his escape. Compare Eusebius, Chronic. vol. ii. p. 26, ed. A. Schoene. We have seen that, according to Apollod. 3.8.2, the flood happened in the reign of Nyctimus, king of Arcadia.) He married a Lacedaemonian wife, Pedias, daughter of Mynes, and begat Cranae, Menaechme, and Atthis; and when Atthis died a maid, Cranaus called the country Atthis.[*](Compare Paus. 1.2.6; Eusebius, Chronic. vol. ii. p. 28, ed. A. Schoene.)
Cranaus was expelled by Amphictyon, who reigned in his stead;[*](Compare the Parian Chronicle, Marmor Parium 8-10; Paus. 1.2.6; Eusebius, Chronic. vol. ii. p. 30, ed. A. Schoene. The Parian Chronicle represents Amphictyon as a son of Deucalion and as reigning, first at Thermopylae, and then at Athens; but it records nothing as to his revolt against Cranaus. Pausanias says that Amphictyon deposed Cranaus, although he had the daughter of Cranaus to wife. Eusebius says that Amphictyon was a son of Deucalion and in-law of Cranaus.) some say that Amphictyon was a son of Deucalion, others that he was a son of the soil; and when he had reigned twelve years he was expelled by Erichthonius.[*](Compare Paus. 1.2.6.) Some say that this Erichthonius was a son of Hephaestus and Atthis, daughter of Cranaus, and some that he was a son of Hephaestus and Athena, as follows: Athena came to Hephaestus, desirous of fashioning arms. But he, being forsaken by Aphrodite, fell in love with Athena, and began to pursue
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her; but she fled. When he got near her with much ado ( for he was lame), he attempted to embrace her; but she, being a chaste virgin, would not submit to him, and he dropped his seed on the leg of the goddess. In disgust, she wiped off the seed with wool and threw it on the ground; and as she fled and the seed fell on the ground, Erichthonius was produced.
[*](With this story of the birth of Erichthonius compare Scholiast on Hom. Il. 2.547 (who agrees to a great extent verbally with Apollodorus); Eur. Ion 20ff.; Eur. Ion 266ff.; Eratosthenes, Cat. 13; Nonnus, in Westermann's Mythographi Graeci, Appendix Narrationum, 3, pp. 359ff.; Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron 111; Antigonus Carystius, Hist. Mirab. 12; Etymologicum Magnum, s.v. Ἐρεχθεύς, p. 371.29; Hyginus, Fab. 166; Hyginus, Ast. ii.13; Serv. Verg. G. 3.113; Fulgentius, Mytholog. ii.14; Lactantius, Divin. Inst. ii.17; Augustine, De civitate Dei xviii.12; Scholia in Caesaris Germanici Aratea, p. 394, ed. Fr. Eyssenhardt (in his edition of Martianus Capella); Scriptores rerum mythicarum Latini, ed. Bode, i. pp. 41, 86ff., 88 (First Vatican Mythographer 128; Second Vatican Mythographer 37, 40). The story of the birth of Erichthonius was told by Euripides, according to Eratosthenes, Cat. 13 and by Callimachus, according to the Scholiast on Hom. Il. 2.547. Pausanias was plainly acquainted with the fable, though he contents himself with saying that Erichthonius was reported to be a son of Hephaestus and Earth (Paus. 1.2.6; Paus. 1.14.6). As C. G. Heyne long ago observed, the story is clearly an etymological myth invented to explain the meaning of the name Erichthonius, which some people derived from ἔρις, “strife,” and χθών, the ground,” while others derived it from ἔριον, “wool,” and χθών, “the ground.” The former derivation of “eri” in Erichthonius seems to have been the more popular. Mythologists have perhaps not sufficiently reckoned with the extent to which false etymology has been operative in the creation of myths. “Disease of language” is one source of myths, though it is very far from being the only one.) Him Athena brought up unknown to the other gods, wishing to make him immortal; and having put him in a chest, she committed it to Pandrosus, daughter of Cecrops, forbidding her to open the chest. But the sisters of Pandrosus opened it out of curiosity, and beheld a serpent coiled about the babe; and, as some say, they were destroyed by the serpent, but according to others they were driven mad by reason of the anger of Athena and threw themselves down from the acropolis.
[*](With this story of the discovery of Erichthonius in the chest compare Eur. Ion 20ff.; Eur. Ion 266ff.; Paus. 1.18.2; Antigonus Carystius, Hist. Mirab. 12; Ov. Met. 2.552ff.; Hyginus, Fab. 166; Hyginus, Ast. ii.13; Fulgentius, Mytholog. ii.14; Lactantius, Divin. Inst. i.17; Scriptores rerum mythicarum Latini, ed. Bode, i. pp. 41, 86ff., 88 (First Vatican Mythographer 128; Second Vatican Mythographer 37, 40). Apollodorus apparently describes the infant Erichthonius in the chest as a purely human babe with a serpent coiled about him. The serpent was said to have been set by Athena to guard the infant; according to Eur. Ion 20ff., there were two such guardian serpents. But according to a common tradition Erichthonius was serpent-footed, that is, his legs ended in serpents. See Nonnus, in Westermann's Mythographi Graeci, Appendix Narrationum 3, p. 360; Etymologicum Magnum, s.v. Ἐρεχθεύς, p. 371.47; Hyginus, Fab. 166; Serv. Verg. A. 3.113; Scriptores rerum mythicarum Latini, ed. Bode, i. pp. 41, 87 (First Vatican Mythographer 128, Second Vatican Mythographer 37). Indeed, in one passage (Astronom. ii.13) Hyginus affirms that Erichthonius was born a serpent, and that when the box was opened and the maidens saw the serpent in it, they went mad and threw themselves from the acropolis, while the serpent took refuge under the shield of Athena and was reared by the goddess. This view of the identity of Erichthonius with the serpent was recognized, if not accepted, by Pausanias; for in describing the famous statue of the Virgin Athena on the acropolis of Athens, he notices the serpent coiled at her feet behind the shield, and adds that the serpent “may be Erichthonius” (Paus. 1.24.7). The sacred serpent which lived in the Erechtheum on the acropolis of Athens and was fed with honey-cakes once a month, may have been Erichthonius himself in his original form of a worshipful serpent. See Hdt. 8.41; Aristoph. Lys. 758ff., with the Scholiast; Plut. Them. 10; Philostratus, Im. ii.17.6; Hesychius, s.vv. δράκαυλος and οἰκουρὸν ὄφιν ; Suidas, s.v. Δράκαυλος ; Etymologicum Magnum, s.v. δράκαυλος, p. 287; Photius, Lexicon, s.v. οἰκουρὸν ὄφιν ; Eustathius on Hom. Od. i.357, p. 1422, lines 7ff. According to some, there were two such sacred serpents in the Erechtheum (Hesychius, s.v. οἰκουρὸν ὄφιν ). When we remember that Cecrops, the ancestor of Erichthonius, was said, like his descendant, to be half-man, half-serpent (above, Apollod. 3.14.1), we may conjecture that the old kings of Athens claimed kinship with the sacred serpents on the acropolis, into which they may have professed to transmigrate at death. Compare The Dying God, pp. 86ff.; and Frazer on Paus. 1.18.2 (vol. ii. pp. 168ff.). The Erechtheids, or descendants of Erechtheus, by whom are meant the Athenians in general, used to put golden serpents round the necks or bodies of their infants, nominally in memory of the serpents which guarded the infant Erechthonius, but probably in reality as amulets to protect the children. See Eur. Ion 20-26, Eur. Ion 1426-1431. Erechtheus and Erichthonius may have been originally identical. See Scholiast on Hom. Il. 2.547; Etymologicum Magnum, s.v. Ἐρεχθεύς, p. 371.29; C. F. Clinton, Fasti Hellenici, vol. i. p. 61 note (n).) Having been brought up by Athena
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herself in the precinct,
[*](“The precinct” is the Erechtheum on the acropolis of Athens. It was in the Erechtheum that the sacred serpent dwelt, which seems to have been originally identical with Erichthonius. See the preceding note.) Erichthonius expelled Amphictyon and became king of Athens; and he set up the wooden image of Athena in the acropolis,
[*](That is, the ancient image of Athena, made of olive-wood, which stood in the Erechtheum. See my note on Paus. 1.26.6 (vol. ii. pp. 340ff.).) and instituted the festival of the Panathenaea,
[*](Compare the Parian Chronicle, Marmor Parium 18; Harpocration, s.v. Παναθήναια ; Eratosthenes, Cat. 13; Hyginus, Ast. ii.13, who says that Erichthonius competed at the games in a four-horse car. Indeed, Erichthonius was reputed to have invented the chariot, or, at all events, the four-horse chariot. See the Parian Chronicle, Marmor Parium 18, 21; Eusebius, Chronic. vol. ii. p. 32, ed. A. Schoene; Verg. G. 3.113ff.; Fulgentius, Mytholog. ii.14. According to some, he invented the chariot for the purpose of concealing his serpent feet. See Serv. Verg. G. 3.113; Scriptores rerum mythicarum Latini, ed. Bode, i. pp. 41, 87 (First Vatican Mythographer 127; Second Vatican Mythographer 37). The institution of the Panathenaic festival was by some attributed to Theseus (Plut. Thes. 24), but the Parian Chronicle (Marmor Parium 18), in agreement with Apollodorus, ascribes it to Erichthonius; and from Harpocration, s.v. Παναθήναια we learn that this ascription was supported by the authority of the historians Hellanicus and Androtion in their works on Attica. Here, therefore, as usual, Apollodorus seems to have drawn on the best sources.) and
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married Praxithea, a Naiad nymph, by whom he had a son Pandion.