By a most happy chance, among the fragments of decorative sculpture left us is one on which is carved ‘the holy bloom of the olive,’ in three delicate sprays. The real sacred olive was old and stunted and crooked[120], but the artist went his own way. The fragments are grouped together in a conjectural restoration[121] in [Fig. 20]. All that is certain is that we have a Doric building and adjacent to it the wall of a precinct over which the olive is growing. Against the wall of the building is the figure of a woman in purple, wearing peplos and himation. Against the wall of the precinct once stood a man. Only one leg of him is left. The two figures might be part of a procession. The woman, standing full face, may belong to the same composition, but this is not certain. She wears a red chiton and bluish-green himation. On her head is a pad (τύλη), for she is carrying some burden. One of her arms is lifted to support it. We think instinctively of the Arrephoroi. The figure, though very rudely hewn, has something of the lovely seriousness of the other ‘maidens.’ The whole composition may have belonged to a pediment of the earlier Erechtheion, but its pictorial character makes it more probably a votive relief for dedication there, and representing some scene of worship at the ancient shrine.
Within the older Erechtheion we have further
(b) A cistern or ‘sea,’ called after Erechtheus. With it may be taken
(c) A trident-mark, sacred to Poseidon.
Fortunately about the position of these two sacred things there is no doubt. Underneath the pavement of the westernmost chamber (c) of the present Erechtheion is a large cistern[122] hewn in the rock, and at A in the North porch are the marks of the trident.
Fig. 20.
The two things together, the sea-water in the cistern and the trident-mark, were both associated with Poseidon. Pausanias[123] says they were said to be ‘the evidence produced by Poseidon in support of his claim to the country.’ Apollodorus[124] says, ‘Poseidon came first to Attica and smote with his trident in the middle of the Acropolis and produced the sea which they now call Erechtheïs.’