The close association between Athens and its patron is evident in three myths that taken together could be seen to constitute the principal ‘‘Athenian foundation myth.’’ Not only do the stories establish Athena’s relationship with the major gods and heroes of the Acropolis, but they also explain how the citizen body came into being, and set up a relationship so intimate that Athena could even be considered the mother of their ancestral hero.
Athena’s birth out of the head of Zeus was among the most widely represented of myths in Athens. It was a common scene on black-figure vases from around the middle of the sixth century for example, and the subject of the sculptures of the east pediment of the Parthenon. From this it may come as a surprise to learn that the myth is not set in Athens; indeed, Athena’s birth does not even take place in Greece, but beside the river Triton in Libya (whence her epithet Tritogeneia). The situation may seem more surprising still when we take account of the fact that there were other local traditions of Athena’s birth that represented her as indigenous. In Boeotia, for example, she was thought to have been born at the Alalkomeneion, one of her major sanctuaries in the region (see Deacy 1995:93-6), while Pausanias relates that, at Aliphera in Arcadia, there was an altar of Zeus Lecheates ‘‘In Childbed’’ (8.26.6). In short, Athens’ patron god does not have the natural association with the land that being indigenous would supply.
Instead, Athena’s close tie with Athens is established through another, and perhaps more effective, means. Rather than being born there, she chose to come to Athens to be its patron, even being willing to enter into a contest over it with a rival god, Poseidon (see, e. g., Apollodorus, Library 3.14.1). She won when the token she produced in support of her claim, the olive, was accepted over Poseidon’s, a salt spring. This story is among the most striking myths of a deity’s arrival. On the one hand, Athena chose Athens above all the cities of the Greek world, and her very first act was to produce the tree that was the staple crop of Attica. On the other hand, the Athenians chose her as well, with the result that her patronage was not only her choice, but something the Athenians likewise desired.
Athena’s relationship with her people is expressed further in the myth about Erichthonius, one of the early Athenian kings, and the ancestor of the Athenian citizenry. I will mostly follow in summary the version of the myth narrated in one of our sources, Apollodorus, Library 3.14.6, because it is itself a convenient summary of various facets of the myth. According to this version, Athena went to Hephaestus because she needed weapons, but having been rejected by Aphrodite the god fell in love with her, and attempted to rape her. When he launched his attack, she ran away. Presumably we are meant to understand here that she did not yet have the weapons with which she could defend herself. In other words, this is Athena before she has come into possession of her characteristic warrior attributes: a more girlish figure, vulnerable to male sexual attention. Her vulnerability without weapons is emphasized in the next stage of the story in that, though Hephaestus was lame ( en gar choolos), he managed to catch up with her. A struggle ensued in which she managed to resist rape, but Hephaestus ejaculated over her leg. She wiped the semen to the ground ‘‘in disgust,’’ but when the semen hit the ground, Ge (Mother Earth) became impregnated, and in time produced a child, Erichthonius, out of the ground.
We have here the Athenian version of a common pattern in local myth, namely for a foundation hero to be the autochthonous (‘‘earth-born’’) son of Ge. Indeed, Erichthonius’ name is an ideal name for such a hero, meaning as it does ‘‘very earthy.’’ But the Athenians are doing something very clever with autochthony myth in that they are making him the offspring of gods as well: Hephaestus, but also in a sense Athena, who retains her virginity yet plays a crucial role in the production ofthe child. The role elsewhere played by Ge alone is shared between two maternal figures, Ge and Athena.
This distribution of parental roles is demonstrated in Figure 14.1, an Attic stamnos from the second quarter of the fifth century BC. While Hephaestus looks on, Ge is emerging out of the ground handing the baby over to Athena. The child is reaching out to Athena, who is preparing to wrap him in her aegis. We are presented with a more feminine, nurturing Athena than the goddess as she normally appears in Attic (or any other) art. This is not the goddess in her guise of armed protectress, but a motherly figure, the nurturer of the ancestral hero.
According to the next stage in the myth, Athena wanted to make the child immortal so she shut him up in a chest and put a serpent or pair of serpents inside. These are ideal creatures in the circumstances because, like Erichthonius, they have associations that
Figure 14.1 The birth of Erichthonius. Attic stamnos, second quarter of the fifth century BC. Munich, Antikensammlungen 2413; redrawn by S. J. Deacy
Are both chthonic (because they live in holes in the ground) and immortal (because they shed their skins). While the immortalization process was taking place, she entrusted the chest and its contents to three girls, the daughters of King Kekrops, instructing them not to look inside. But as is the way when Greek mythological characters are instructed not to look inside a container, they disobey. One of the daughters, Pandrosus, remained obedient, but the others, Herse and Aglauros, opened the chest. What they saw terrified them and they leapt to their deaths off the Acropolis. Athena’s plan to make the child immortal was now thwarted. Quite why this is the case is unclear except that deification seems to have required conditions of secrecy. Certainly when Demeter was trying to make the Eleusinian child Demophoon immortal in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, she did so at night, and it was when another person (his mother Metaneira) intruded that the magic stopped working.
The Athenian foundation myth, then, hinges on failure. Although he was supposed to become immortal, Erichthonius had to remain human instead. But it is not all about failure. As a hero, Erichthonius still had an intimate relationship with Athena; indeed, he had a closeness to the goddess that exceeded that possessed by another hero of Greek myth, even Athena’s special protege, Heracles (see Deacy 2005). When the immortalization plan failed, Athena took Erichthonius into her temple on the Acropolis and reared him there. The maternal tendencies evident in earlier stages of the myth are taken further here in that she actually brought up the child.
As the ‘‘son’’ of Athena, Erichthonius is the foundation hero par excellence. On attaining adulthood, he performed two acts that enhanced Athena’s cult: the erection of the statue of Athena Polias, and the foundation of the Panathenaea. The story about Erichthonius is also the story of Athena, who is now established even more firmly as the major deity of the Athenian state. It is also the story of the origins of the Athenian citizenry, who as the descendants ofErichthonius are in a sense the descendants ofAthena. In mythic terms, the Athenians are not just the people of Athena, but her ‘‘children.’’
The myths take on an even deeper level of significance when we consider their connection with the cults of the Acropolis. The two major deities worshiped on the summit were Athena and Poseidon, the gods who fought to be Athens’ patron, and the tokens that they produced were visible on the rock. As for the myth of Erichthonius, the altar of Hephaestus was located on the north side of the rock, together with the statue of Athena. The precinct of the ‘‘good’’ daughter Pandrosus was also situated here. (As befits the girl who leapt to her death off the rock, Aglauros’ sanctuary, in contrast, was situated on the slopes.)
In the final decades of the fifth century, these and other cults were incorporated into the temple known to us (though not to the ancients) as the Erechtheum (see Figure 14.2). Its main function was to house the cult of Athena Polias, hence its ancient name, ‘‘the temple on the Acropolis in which the ancient image is,’’ although it also housed the cults of Poseidon, Hephaestus, Pandrosus, Kekrops, Boutes, and Zeus in his guises of Hypatos (‘‘most high’’) and Herkeios (‘‘of the fence’’), that is Zeus in dual guises as chief Olympian and as protector of the temple. The crevice of the guardian snake of the Acropolis was found here too, as were Poseidon’s salt spring and Athena’s olive tree.
A Greek temple is normally the home of the cult of a single deity. Why, then, was this curious multi-function building constructed? To address this question we need to consider the context in which it was built. It was part of the great Acropolis
Figure 14.2 Plan of the Periclean Acropolis. Drawn by Jim McCartney; reproduced from Todd 1996:21, with permission. © Stephen Todd
Rebuilding program of the second half of the fifth century, which took place under the leadership of Pericles. This at once beautified the city and gave renewed importance and visibility to the cult of Athena. Above all, the splendid Parthenon on the south side of the summit came to dominate the rock, while the sanctuary of Athena Nike just outside the Acropolis walls gained a richly decorated little temple.
With the construction of the Erechtheum, the numerous cult objects that once cluttered the north side of the rock were collected together in one place. They were at once duly honored, and hidden from view. In short, the Erechtheum does in a cultic way what the stories we have looked at do from a mythic perspective. They draw together a range of religious beings with a particular figure linking them: Athena. This enables us to restate one of the central points made above, that Athenian religion was at once highly diverse and uniquely focused. It also lets us underline another point, namely that the Athenians’ relationship with their gods was always evolving. As Athens was becoming a great power in the fifth century, so Athena’s cult was enhanced. We will consider this evolution further in the next section via an examination of the Panathenaea, Athena’s major festival and the greatest celebration in the religious calendar.
World History
