Cecrops- Greek HeroHero · Hybrid"First King of Athens"

Born from the Earth

Cecrops rose from the soil of Attica with the upper body of a man and the tail of a serpent. On the great rock that would bear his name, the Cecropia, he built the city's first citadel and became its first king. Before him, men and women lived without law of marriage. Cecrops bound them: one man to one woman. He ended blood sacrifice to Zeus and set offerings of barley cakes on the altars instead.

The Contest for Athens

Athena and Poseidon both wanted the city. They climbed the Acropolis, and each offered a gift. Poseidon drove his trident into the rock. Salt water gushed from the wound. Athena knelt and planted an olive tree. In Apollodorus, the judgment was Cecrops's alone: he chose the olive. In Varro's account, the Athenians voted, and the women chose Athena while the men chose Poseidon. The women won by one. Poseidon flooded the Thriasian Plain. The city took its new patron's name.

The Daughters and the Chest

Cecrops married Aglauros, daughter of Actaeus, and had three daughters: Aglauros the younger, Herse, and Pandrosos. Athena brought the three sisters a sealed chest and commanded them never to open it. Inside was the infant Erichthonius, born from the earth when Hephaestus's seed fell on Gaia. Aglauros and Herse opened the chest. They found the child wrapped in a serpent's coils. The sight drove them mad. They threw themselves from the Acropolis. Only Pandrosos obeyed, and Athena honored her with a shrine, the Pandroseion, beside the Erechtheion on the sacred rock.