Cecrops (Ancient Greek: Κέκροψ, Kekrops) was a legendary king of Attica, which derived from him its name Cecropia. He founded and served as the first king of Athens proper, succeeding the earth-born king Actaeus. According to tradition he was an autochthon, born from the earth itself, and was depicted with a dual form—the upper half a man and the lower half a serpent or fish-tail. As a culture hero, Cecrops was credited with teaching the Athenians marriage, reading and writing, and ceremonial burial practices, and with presiding over the contest of Athena and Poseidon for the city.
Adapted from Wikipedia, "Cecrops I" · CC BY-SA 4.0
I.Etymology and form
According to Strabo, the name of Cecrops is not of Greek origin. Ancient sources describe him as born from the earth itself—an autochthon—and for this reason he was called "gēgenḗs" (native).
His appearance was distinctive: the upper half resembled a man while the lower half took serpent or fish-tail form, earning him the epithet "diphuḗs" ("of two natures"). Diodorus offered a rationalization, holding that his dual form represented his double citizenship—Greek and barbarian. Some ancients instead connected the epithet to marriage, which tradition credited him with founding.
II.Family
Cecrops married Aglaurus, daughter of Actaeus, the previous king whom he succeeded. Sources dispute whether Aglaurus mothered his son Erysichthon, who predeceased him. His successor was Cranaus, described as exceptionally wealthy for his era.
Cecrops fathered three daughters: Herse, Pandrosus, and Aglaurus. They were entrusted with guarding an unseen box containing the infant Erichthonius. Upon opening it and seeing the guardian serpents placed by Athena, they fled in terror and leapt from the Acropolis to their deaths. Some accounts claim that one sister was instead transformed to stone.
III.Mythology
In Attic legend, Cecrops appears as the architect of civilization. He instituted the first elements of cultured life: marriage, the political division of Attica, and new worship practices. He is said to have first deified Zeus and ordained sacrifices to him as supreme deity, established altars, erected statues of the gods, and instituted marriage among the Athenians, who before his time were said to have lived promiscuously.
Pausanias records that Cecrops prohibited animal sacrifices and other offerings, permitting only cakes formed into the shape of an ox with horns. He taught navigation and, for the administration of justice, divided the people into four tribes called Cecropis, Autochthon, Actea, and Paralia. Some traditions make him the founder of the Areopagus. The Acropolis became known as Cecropia in his honor, and the Athenians called themselves Cecropidae through five subsequent reigns.
During Cecrops's fifty-year reign, the gods determined which cities would receive their worship. Athena and Poseidon competed for the patronage of Athens, with Cecrops as judge. Poseidon arrived first and struck the acropolis with his trident, creating a salt sea (later called the Erechthean well); Athena arrived afterward and planted an olive tree on the acropolis hill, which continued to be shown in the Pandrosium down to later times.
When the divine conflict persisted, Zeus appointed twelve gods as arbiters. The country was awarded to Athena because Cecrops bore witness that she had been the first to plant the olive, and Athens was named after her. Poseidon, enraged, flooded the Thriasian plain and laid Attica under the sea.
The Roman antiquary Varro offered a rationalistic version: the olive suddenly appeared in Attica while water erupted elsewhere, and King Cecrops consulted the oracle of Apollo at Delphi, which identified these as symbols of Athena and Poseidon and left the people free to choose their patron. In assembly all the men voted for the god and all the women for the goddess; with one more woman than men, the goddess prevailed. Poseidon retaliated by flooding the country with sea water, and to appease his wrath the women lost their voting rights and children ceased to bear their mothers' names.
IV.Multiple Cecrops
The name Cecrops appears throughout Greece, particularly in towns named Athenae. In Boeotia he was said to have founded the ancient Athenae and Eleusis on the Triton River, with a heroön at Haliartus, and there tradition called him a son of Pandion. In Euboea, which also possessed a town called Athenae, Cecrops was identified as the son of Erechtheus and Praxithea and a grandson of Pandion.
These traditions suggest that Cecrops represented a hero of the Pelasgian race, with the later versions likely being multiplications of the one original hero transplanted to other regions. Later Greek writers described Cecrops as immigrating to Greece with colonists from Sais in Egypt—a claim that modern scholars and some ancient sources reject.