Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/553

Rh version Athene becomes his mother when she goes to Hephaistos to chap. ask for a suit of armour, the fire-fashioned raiment of the morning. ' ^ — - When the child is born she nourishes it, as Demeter nursed Demo- phoon, Avith the design of rendering it immortal ; and, placing it in a chest, she gave the child to Pandrosos, Herse, and Agraulos, charging them not to raise the lid.^ They disobey, and finding that the coils of a snake are folded round the body of the child, are either slain by Athene or throw themselves down the precipice of the Akropolis. Henceforth the dragon-bodied or snake-bound Erichthonios dwells in the shrine of Athene, and under her special protection.

There were other stories of Erichthonios or Erechtheus ^ which Erech- some mythographers assign to a grandson of the supposed child of Hephaistos and Athene. Of this latter Erechtheus, the son of Pan- dion, it is said that he was killed by the thunderbolts of Zeus, after his daughters had been sacrificed to atone for the slaughter of Eumolpos by the Athenians — a tale manifestly akin to the punishment of Tantalos after the crime committed on his son Pelops.

But the legend of Erichthonios is merely a repetition of the myth Kekrops. of the dragon-bodied Kekrops, who gave his name to the land which had till then been called Akte, and who became the father not only of Erysichthon but of the three sisters who proved faithless in the charge of Erichthonios. To the time of Kekrops is assigned one version of the story which relates the rivalry of Poseidon and Athene ; but here Poseidon produces not a horse, but a well on the Akropolis, a work for which he is careless enough to produce no witness, while Athene makes her olive tree grow up beneath the eye of Kekrops, who gives judgment that the city shall bear the name of the dawn- goddess.'

' The names Pandrosos and Herse which regards the name as a compound translate each other : the addition of of x^'^''> the earth, seems to become at Agraulos merely states that the dew least doubtful. There is, however, no covers the fields. ground for upholding a double person-

^ Of the name Erichthonios, Preller ality. " The Homeric Scholiast treated (Gr. Myth. i. I59)says, "Der Name. . . Erechtheus and Erichthonios as the same recht eigentlich einen Genius der frucht- person under two names ; and since in baren Erdbodcns bedeutet, " and com- regard to such mythical persons there pares it with epiovpris, ipifia>os, and exists no other test of identity of the other words. Benfey (rpLToovls 'Mi-vt. subject exxept perfect similarity of attri-

25) traces it to a supposed form, eper- butes, this seems the reasonable conclu- X^ews, "von ep = op in ctpor^p, und be- sion." — Gxoit, IJistory of Greece, i. 264.

deutet die Erde (x^oi/ urspriinglich x^^M The case is, however, altered when we = Sanskr. ksham) bcackcrnd." 6i>, he find the names in the mythology of other adds, is a strong form of u, and the theme nations, in which the origin of the word

-xQv is in close analogy with Sanskr. no longer remains, open to doubt. — gn koxn gam, -ko koinkam. If Ercch- Preller, Gr. Mytli. ii. 136. theus and Erichthonios are names for * The meaning of the myth of one and the same person, the explanation Kekrops is sufficiently clear, whether