Earth-born king of Athens whom Athena fostered after the grain-giving earth brought him forth, and whom she settled in her own rich Athenian sanctuary, where the youths of Athens honor him with bulls and rams as the years roll round.1
Homer sets him at the head of the Athenian people as a son of the soil. In the Catalogue of Ships those who hold Athens are called the folk of great-hearted Erechtheus, whom the grain-giving earth bore and Athena reared; she settled him in Athens in her own rich temple, and there the young men of the Athenians seek his favor with bulls and rams as the seasons come round. Here he is less a king than a fostered hearth-spirit of the citadel, bound from the first to the goddess and her sanctuary.2
Apollodorus fixes him in the royal line. Pandion married Zeuxippe, his mother's sister, and begat the daughters Procne and Philomela and the twin sons Erechtheus and Butes; when Pandion died the brothers divided the inheritance, and Erechtheus got the kingdom while Butes got the priesthood of Athena and Poseidon Erechtheus. He married Praxithea, daughter of Phrasimus by Diogenia daughter of Cephisus, and had sons — Cecrops, Pandorus, and Metion — and daughters: Procris, Creusa, Chthonia, and Orithyia, who was carried off by Boreas. Through these children the house spread, Procris wed to Cephalus son of Deion and Creusa to Xuthus.3
His signature trial was the war with Eleusis, and its price was his own blood. When war broke out between the Athenians and the Eleusinians, Eumolpus came to the Eleusinians' aid with a great force of Thracians; Erechtheus inquired of the oracle how Athens might win, and the god answered that victory would come if he slaughtered one of his daughters. When he killed his youngest, the others slew themselves also, for they had sworn an oath to perish together; then Erechtheus killed Eumolpus in the battle. But Poseidon, father of the slain Eumolpus, destroyed Erechtheus and his house, and Cecrops the eldest son succeeded to the throne.4
Hyginus tells the sacrifice as a sworn compact and names the victim. Erechtheus, son of Pandion, had four daughters who promised one another that if one met death the rest would kill themselves; when Eumolpus, son of Neptune, came to claim the Attic land as his father's, Erechtheus sacrificed his daughter Chthonia in accordance with the oracles for the safety of Athens, and her sisters took their own lives as they had vowed. So where Apollodorus leaves the slain girl unnamed as merely the youngest, Hyginus gives her the name Chthonia.5
Pausanias preserves a rival account of whom the king actually slew. Among the eponymous heroes of Athens stands Erechtheus, who conquered the Eleusinians in battle and killed their general Immaradus, the son of Eumolpus — and Pausanias insists that those acquainted with antiquity know this victim of Erechtheus was Immaradus, not Eumolpus himself. He records too that Erechtheus belonged to the line as son of Pandion son of Erichthonius, and elsewhere names him father of that Procris to whom Artemis gave the unfailing hound.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
