Page:History of Greece Vol I.djvu/87

Rh of Hêphæstos, patronizing handicraft, and expert at the loom and the spindle: the Athenian potters worshipped her along with Prometheus. Such traits of character do not square with the formidable ægis and the massive and crushing spear which Homer and most of the mythes assign to her. There probably were at first at least two different types of Athene, and their coalescence has partially obliterated the less marked of the two. Athênê is the constant and watchful protectress of Hêraklês: she is also locally identified with the soil and people of Athens, even in the Iliad: Erechtheus, the Athenian, is born of the earth, but Athênê brings him up, nourishes him, and lodges him in her own temple, where the Athenians annually worship him with sacrifice and solemnities. It was altogether impossible to make Erechtheus son of Athênê,—the type of the goddess forbade it; but the Athenian mythe-creators, though they found this barrier impassable, strove to approach to it as near as they could, and the description which they give of the birth of Erichthonios, at once un-Homeric and unseemly, presents something like the phantom of maternity.

The huntress Artemis, in Arcadia and in Greece proper generally, exhibits a well-defined type with which the legends respecting her are tolerably consistent. But the Ephesian as well as the Tauric Artemis partakes more of the Asiatic character, and has borrowed the attributes of the Lydian Great Mother as well as of an indigenous Tauric Virgin: this Ephesian