The first king of Attica, a son of the soil whose body was compounded of man and serpent. He named the land Cecropia after himself, and when the gods contended for the country it was he who witnessed Athena's planting of the olive.1
Cecrops, a son of the soil with a twofold body of man and serpent, was the first king of Attica, and the land that had been called Acte he renamed Cecropia after himself. In his reign the gods resolved each to take possession of the cities where he would hold his own worship, and so the long quarrel over Athens began with its earliest king as its witness.2
Poseidon came first to Attica and, striking the middle of the acropolis with his trident, brought forth a sea-well, the Erechtheis. After him came Athena, and calling Cecrops to witness her act of possession she planted the olive that was still shown in the Pandrosium. When the two strove for the country, Zeus parted them and set the twelve gods as arbiters — not, as some have said, Cecrops and Cranaus, nor Erysichthon — and on Cecrops' testimony that Athena had been first to plant the olive the land was adjudged to her. She named the city Athens after herself, and Poseidon in his anger flooded the Thriasian plain.3
Ovid sets the same contention in stone and thread: on Minerva's tapestry the twelve celestial gods sit enthroned about Jupiter on the Hill of Mars where ancient Cecrops built his citadel, and the old strife for the city's name is shown again. He calls Cecrops double-natured, the two-formed king of the city that bears his memory.4
Cecrops married Agraulus, daughter of Actaeus, and had a son, Erysichthon, who departed this life childless, and three daughters — Agraulus, Herse, and Pandrosus. It was to Pandrosus that Athena would later entrust the chest holding the infant Erichthonius, and the curiosity of the other sisters that broke the goddess's command. When Cecrops died his son had left no heir, and the throne passed to Cranaus, another son of the soil.5
Pausanias tells the line otherwise. Actaeus, he says, was the first to reign over what is now Attica, and when he died Cecrops received the kingdom as his son-in-law — no soil-born first king at all, but the heir of an older throne. To him were born Herse, Aglaurus, and Pandrosus, and the son Erysichthon who died before his father; so the rule fell to Cranaus, the most powerful of the Athenians. Hyginus keeps him at the head of the Athenian king-list, but names him son of Earth.6
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the spine ignites as you read · hover a bond on the card — every mention of them lights in the story
