But there came a time when kings ceased to be in the old full sense incarnate gods, and then the kingly function was split into two offices, secular and spiritual. Of this at Athens we have traces in the narrative of Apollodorus[137]. He says ‘on the death of Pandion his sons divided the paternal estate and Erechtheus took the kingship, but Butes took the priesthood of Athena and of Poseidon the son of Erechthonios.’ It was the family tree of the royal priest Butes that was religiously preserved in the Erechtheion. The ‘paintings’ on the wall could of course only go back to the rebuilding of those walls in 409 B.C., but the genealogical tree would go back to time immemorial. In the Lives of the Ten Orators[138] we hear of Lycurgus, the Eteobutad, as follows. His ancestors derived from Erechtheus, son of Ge and Hephaestos, but his immediate ancestors were Lycomedes and Lycurgus, whom the people had honoured with a public funeral. And the descent of his family from those who held office as priests of Poseidon is on a complete tablet in the Erechtheion written up by Ismenios son of Chalcideus and there are wooden images of Lycurgos and his sons, of Habron, Lycurgos and Lycophron made by Timarchos and Cephisodotos the son of Praxiteles. And Habron dedicated the tablet to his son, and coming in succession to the priesthood he resigned in favour of his brother Lycophron. Hence Habron is represented handing over the trident to him.
By such family trees, by the genealogies and successive priesthoods of royal priestly families, was ancient chronology kept. Argive chronology it will be remembered was reckoned by the years of the consecration of the successive priestesses of Hera[139]. The record was kept in the ancient sanctuary of the Heraion and the statues of the priestesses were set up in front of the temple[140].
With the question of the cult of Athena we have not to deal, but as Poseidon is emphatically one of the ‘other gods’ a word must be said about the subordinate position he comes to occupy. This position is remarkable. To the conservative party as we have seen he was a god of the first importance; it is very noticeable that the chorus of Knights[141] sing first to ‘Poseidon lord of horses’ and only second to ‘Pallas, She of the Citadel.’ Their normal orthodox relation, Athena first, Poseidon second, is reflected in the hymn at Colonos. Yet when we come to examine the ritual of the two divinities we find that their priesthood was conjoint; the Butadae held the priesthood not only of Poseidon but of Athena[142].
These difficulties, these incongruities in tradition, would no doubt be easily solved did we fully know the origin of the cults of Poseidon and Athena. This at present is hidden from our eyes. Kekrops, Pandrosos, Erechtheus, are obviously local. Their worship never spread beyond the hill of Athens, but Poseidon and Athena were worshipped over the whole of Hellas, and whether in Athens they were indigenous or imported cannot at present be certainly said. Herodotus[143] emphatically states that Poseidon originated in Libya, ‘for none except the Libyans originally possessed the name of Poseidon and they have always worshipped him.’ It is in Libya also that this same Herodotus[144] notes that the dwellers round lake Tritonis sacrifice principally to Athena and next to Triton and Poseidon, and from the Libyan women the Greeks obtained the dress and the aegis of the statues of Athena.
If we may hazard a glimpse into things remote or dark, it may be conjectured that the worship of Poseidon and Athena came from Libya to Attica from a people geographically remote, but with racial affinities[145]. That in Libya Athena was, as Herodotus notes, the more important of the two. An old matriarchal goddess, transplanted to Athens in the days of king Erechtheus, she fell when social conditions were patriarchal rather than matriarchal to a subordinate place. Poseidon rather than Athena stood at the head of the Athenian family trees. He headed the conservative aristocratic party. But at some time of political upheaval, possibly even as late as the time of Peisistratos[146], the tide turned, and the ancient matriarchal goddess, as patron of the tyrants and the democracy, reasserted herself. It is Athena not Poseidon who brings Peisistratos back in her chariot to Athens. All this, the prior supremacy of Poseidon, the resurgence of Athena, is reflected in the myth of the Eris, the rivalry, the contest of the two divinities for the land, in the aetiological myth of the planting of the olive-tree and the smiting of the rock with the trident.
To resume, among the ‘other deities’ are first and foremost Kekrops and Erechtheus, ancient eponymous kings, Pandrosos the daughter and paredros of Kekrops and later affiliated to these the immigrant Poseidon. Their ‘sacred things’ are the tomb of Kekrops, the olive, the ‘sea,’ the trident-mark. The list does not exhaust the ‘other deities’ worshipped on the Acropolis; Zeus had altars, Artemis perhaps from early days a precinct. Herakles, though probably an oriental immigrant, was worshipped on the Acropolis at a very early date. It has been one of the sudden corrections sometimes so sharply administered by archaeology to our prejudice that, among the ancient poros sculptures of which so many remains have come to light, Herakles is prominent, Theseus conspicuously absent. But the group of deities and sanctities that cluster round the Erechtheion are sufficient for our purpose, and for that of Thucydides. They show that the Acropolis was the polis for the simple reason that ‘there are sanctuaries in the citadel itself, those of other deities as well’ (as the Goddess).
CHAPTER III.
THE SANCTUARIES THAT ARE OUTSIDE THE CITADEL.
καὶ τὰ ἔξω πρὸς τοῦτο τὸ μέρος τῆς πόλεως μᾶλλον ἵδρυται, τό τε τοῦ Διὸς τοῦ Ὀλυμπίου καὶ τὸ Πύθιον καὶ τὸ τῆς Γῆς καὶ τὸ ἐν Λίμναις Διονύσου (ᾧ τὰ ἀρχαιότερα Διονύσια τῇ δωδεκάτῃ ποιεῖται ἐν μηνὶ Ἀνθεστηριῶνι) ὥσπερ καὶ οἱ ἀπ’ Ἀθηναίων Ἴωνες ἔτι καὶ νῦν νομίζουσιν, ἵδρυται δὲ καὶ ἄλλα ἱερὰ ταύτῃ ἀρχαῖα.
Thucyd. II. 15.