Primitive Athens as described by Thucydides

by Jane Ellen Harrison

and on the well-known vase in the British museum[95] depicting the scene, two snakes appear. We need not say that the two snakes of the pediment are a duplicated Kekrops, but we may and do say that they are two hero-snakes, guardians of the city, and we may further conjecture that they were an old pair, male and female. This conjecture brings us to the woman counterpart of Kekrops, the snake king, his ‘daughter’ Pandrosos.

2. The Pandroseion.

Kekrops and his faithful daughter Pandrosos were not far sundered. The situation of the Pandroseion is, within narrow limits, certain. It was an enclosure to the west of the present Erechtheion. The invaluable Chandler inscription[96] speaks of ‘the pillars on the wall towards the Pandroseion.’ This must refer to the west wall, on which were four engaged pillars at a height of about 12 feet from the ground. In another inscription[97], found during the pulling down of the ‘Odysseus’ Bastion, mention is made of two pediments, one towards the east and the other ‘towards the Pandroseion.’

We know, then, certainly that the Pandroseion was west of the present Erechtheion. We know also that it was close to the ‘old temple of Athena.’ Pausanias[98], in passing from the one to the other, distinctly says: ‘The temple of Pandrosos adjoins the temple of Athena.’ As Pausanias distinctly says there was a temple (ναός), not merely a temenos or sanctuary (ἱερόν), it is disappointing that excavations have yielded no trace.

In actual cultus and topography we have found Kekrops side by side with one woman figure, Pandrosos. In current mythology he has three daughters, of whom is told the thrice familiar story of the child and the chest[99]. It will repay examination.

The child Erichthonios is born from the Earth in the presence of Kekrops. His real mother, Earth, gives him up to the tendance of Athena; such is the scene familiar on terra-cottas and vase-paintings. Athena places him in a chest or wicker-basket, and gives him to the three daughters of Kekrops, Pandrosos, Herse, Aglauros, with strict orders not to open the chest. The two sisters, Herse and Aglauros (or according to some versions all three), overcome by curiosity open the chest, and see the child with a snake or snakes coiled about him. In terror at the snake, who pursues them, and fearing the anger of Athena, they cast themselves down from the Acropolis.

The story is manifestly absurd, and in some of the elements plainly aetiological.

The suicide of the disobedient sisters is easily explicable. Half way down the Acropolis, below the steepest portion of the rock, were a number of shrines and tombs. Why were they there? Clearly because the persons after whom they were named had thrown themselves down, or been thrown down, from the top. Such a shrine was the tomb of Talos[100], near the Asklepieion. Daedalos was jealous of Talos, and threw him down from the rock. Such was also the shrine of Aegeus[101], below the temple of Nike Apteros, where Aegeus in despair at the sight of the black sail cast himself down. Such was the sanctuary of Aglauros[102] on the north side of the Acropolis. Somebody must have cast herself down to account for the situation. When one sister only is mentioned she is naturally Aglauros, but all three are often allowed to commit suicide for completeness sake.

Of the three sisters, Herse was not a real person[103]; she has no shrine, she is only a heroine invented to account for the ceremony of the Hersephoria. The cult of Aglauros is below the Acropolis and manifestly separate from that of Pandrosos, and Pandrosos alone for the present need be considered.

Pausanias, after stating that the temple of Pandrosos adjoins that of Athena, says that she was ‘the only one of the sisters who was blameless in the affair of the chest intrusted to them.’ As Pandrosos had a shrine so revered it would have been awkward to make her out guilty. He then, without telling us whether or no he perceives any connection, proceeds to describe ‘a thing which caused me the greatest astonishment and is not generally known.’ The thing that so astonished Pausanias was the ceremony of the Arrephoria[104]. Maidens called Arrephoroi bore upon their heads certain sacred things covered up; these they carried by night by a natural underground passage to a precinct near to that of Aphrodite in the Gardens. There they left what they had been carrying, and brought back other things also wrapped up and unknown. From the analogy of other mystery cults we may be sure that the objects carried were some sort of fertility-charms, and they would be carried in a chest or wicker basket, a cista or a liknon, veiled that the sacred thing might not be seen. The girl-Arrephoroi might not look into the sacred chests. Why? The answer was ready, the goddess they served, Pandrosos, had also her sacred chest into which she and she only had not looked.