Themis, a study of the social origins of Greek ... - Warburg Institute

264 Daimon and Hero [CH.
It is at the birth of Erichthonios, the second great Athenian
hero, that Cecrops is mostly represented in art, as on the terra-
cotta in Fig. 63. Gaia herself rises in human shape from the
earth ; she is a massive figure with long heavy hair. She holds
the child in her arms, handing him to Athena his foster-mother,
to whom he stretches out his eager hands. This birth of the
child from the earth symbolizes, we are told, that the race of
Erechtheus, the Erechtheidae, ancestors of the Athenians, are
autochthonous, home-grown; so it does, but it 'symbolizes,' or
rather we prefer to say represents, something much more. This
we shall see in the sequel shown in Figs. 64 a and b.
When the child is born from Earth, Athena his foster-mother
gives him into the care of the three daughters of Cecrops.
Strange daughters these for a human king, the Dew-Sisters and
the bright Spring Water, three reflections as we have seen 1
the maidens of the Hersephoria. They hide the child in a sacred
cista. Two of the sisters in disobedience open the cista. The
cista
scene is given in Fig. 64 a from a red-figured pelike 2 . The
Fig. 64.
stands on piled rocks indicating no doubt the Acropolis. The
deed is done, the sacred cista is open. Its lid, it should be noted,
is olive-wreathed. From the cista springs up a human child,
Athena approaches and the two disobedient sisters 3 hurry away.
1 Supra, p. 174, note 1.
2 British Museum Cat. E. 418, and see my Prolegomena, p. 133.
3 The figures on the reverse are actually those of two epheboi, but the vase is
almost certainly a copy from some drawing in which Herse and Aglauros are
represented.
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