Primitive Athens as described by Thucydides

by Jane Ellen Harrison

We begin with Kekrops because, by almost uniform tradition, with Kekrops Athens began. The Parian Chronicle[68] sets him at the head of the kings of Athens, and the date assigned to him is 1582 B.C., before Kranaus, before Amphictyon, before Erechtheus. Thucydides[69] names him as the typical early Athenian king. ‘Under Kekrops and the first kings,’ he writes; Apollodorus[70] says definitely, ‘the indigenous Kekrops, whose body was compounded of man and snake, first reigned over Attica, and the country which before was called Attica was from him named Kekropia.’ Herodotus[71] looked back to a day before Athens was Athens and when there were no Athenians at all: ‘The Athenians,’ he says, ‘at the time when the Pelasgians held that which is now called Hellas, were Pelasgians and they were called Kranai; under the rule of Kekrops they were called Kekropidae; but when Erechtheus succeeded they changed their name for that of Athenians, and when Ion, son of Xuthus, became general, they took from him the name of Ionians.’

Herodotus touches the truth. Kekrops was not the first king of Athens, he was king before there was any Athens, long before. He was the ancestor of the clan of the Kekropidae. At some very early date—the Parian marble may very likely be roughly right—the Kekropidae got possession of the Acropolis and called it Kekropia. Kekropis was the name not only of one of the four original Attic tribes but also of one of the later ten[72]. But though the clan kept its old name it lost the headship of Kekropia. Kekrops had only one son, Erysichthon[73], and he died childless; that is the mythological way of saying that the kingship changed families. Then came the time when the leading clan were Erechtheidae, descendants not of Kekrops, but of Erechtheus. These are Homer’s days. He knows nothing of Kekrops and Kekropia, only of ‘the people of Erechtheus[74].’ Then still later came another change; those who once were the people of Erechtheus became the people of Athena, Athenians. But Kekrops and Kekropia were first, probably long first. Kekrops is the hero-founder, the typical old-world king. It is Kekrops whom Bdelycleon[75], tormented by modernity, invokes:

‘Kekrops, oh my king and hero, thou that hast the dragon’s feet.’

Kekrops was half man, half snake. His ‘double nature’ gave logographers and even philosophers much trouble. Was it because he had the understanding of a man and the strength of a dragon, was it because, at first a good king, he later became a tyrant, or because he knew two languages (Egyptian and Greek), or because he instituted marriage? The curious will find it all in Tzetzes[76]. Eager anthropologists have seized on Kekrops as a totem-snake, but the average orthodox mythologist is content to see in his snake-tail the symbol of the ‘earth-born’ Athenians. This interpretation grazes the truth, but just misses the point. The hybrid form is of course transitional. Kekrops is sloughing off his snake form[77] in deference to the inveterate anthropomorphism of the Greek. He was once a complete snake, not because he was a totem-snake, not because he was an ‘autochthonous hero,’ but because he was a dead man and all dead persons of importance, all heroes, become snakes.

No one has done so much to obscure the early history of Athenian religion as Athena herself, by her constant habit of taking over the attributes of other divinities[78]. The eponymous hero of each victorious tribe, Kekrops and Erechtheus in turn, is a home-keeping, home-guarding snake (οἰκουρὸς ὄφις). But by the time of Herodotus[79] the sacred snake supposed to live on and guard the Acropolis lives in the sanctuary of Athena, and is almost the embodiment of the goddess herself; when the snake refused the honey-cake it was taken as an omen that ‘the goddess had deserted the Acropolis.’ By the time of Pheidias the snake is just an attribute of the Parthenos, and was set to crouch beneath her shield. But Pausanias[80] has an inkling of the truth; he says, ‘close beside the spear is a snake: this snake is probably Erichthonios.’ The real relation of goddess and snake was simply this: the original pair of divinities worshipped in many local cults were a matriarchal goddess, a local form of earth-goddess, and the local hero of the place in snake form as her male correlative; such a pair were Demeter and the snake-king Kenchreus at Eleusis[81], such were Chryse and her home-keeping nameless guardian snake on Lemnos[82], such were Eileithyia and Sosipolis at Olympia[83], such were ‘the goddess’ and her successive heroes Kekrops and Erichthonios or Erechtheus; only, as will later be seen, in this last pair another goddess preceded Athena.

Kekrops then was a dead, divinized hero embodied as a snake; the natural place for his worship was his tomb, probably the earliest sanctuary of the Acropolis. Clement[84] of Alexandria says, ‘the tomb of Kekrops is at Athens on the Acropolis,’ and Theodoretus[85], quoting Antiochos, adds that it is ‘by the Poliouchos herself,’ the goddess of the city. We might safely assume that a hero-tomb was a sanctuary, but we have express evidence: in an honorary decree[86] respecting the ‘ephebi’ of the deme of Kekrops it is ordered that the decree shall be set up ‘in the sanctuary of Kekrops,’ and from another decree[87] we learn the name of a ‘priest of Kekrops.’

But our most definite evidence as to where the tomb of Kekrops lay comes from the famous Chandler inscription[88] now in the British Museum. This inscription is exactly dated by the archonship of Diokles (409-408 B.C.). It is a statement of the exact condition in which the overseers of the unfinished temple took over the work, what part was half finished, what unwrought and unchannelled (i.e. columns), and what were completely finished but not set up in their place. The various parts of the temple are described as near or opposite to such and such an ancient shrine, and fortunately among these descriptions occur more than one mention of the Kekropion. The following[89] is decisive: ‘Concerning the porch beside the Kekropion the roof stones above the Korae must be....’ The porch of the Karyatids, or to call it by its ancient[90] name, the porch of the Korae, the Maidens, was beside, close to, the Kekropion.

So far all is certain. The tomb of Kekrops was close to the porch of the Maidens; but in which direction? We should expect it to be north-west, because in that direction, as will be immediately ([p. 48]) shown, lay the precinct of Pandrosos, daughter of Kekrops. Professor Dörpfeld[91] places it conjecturally at D ([Fig. 16]), and the site is almost certain. It has been already noted that the west wall of the present Erechtheion was set back a short distance within its original plan. It may have been to avoid trenching on the tomb of Kekrops. Moreover, at the south end of this wall there is a great gap in the ancient masonry of about 10 ft. long by 10 high. The gap is evident, though it was filled up by modern masonry. It is spanned by an enormous ancient block of stone, 15 ft. by 5. Here probably was buried the serpent king.