Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Erechtheus.
The gallery
Riace Bronze A (Statue A)
Unknown (Greek, Severe Style), c. 460-450 BC
One of the two life-size Greek bronze warriors recovered from the sea off Riace, Calabria, in 1972, now in the National Archaeological Museum of Reggio Calabria. The nude, bearded fighter once held a spear and shield, his weight poised in the balanced contrapposto of the Severe Style. The bronzes carry no inscription, so their identity is debated; among the proposed readings, Salvatore Settis and Vinzenz Brinkmann argue that Statue A is Erechtheus, the autochthonous king of Athens, paired in a lost Athenian monument with his adversary Eumolpus, son of Poseidon. The identification remains uncertain, but it is the depiction cited on Erechtheus's own entry, making this commanding warrior the figure's most prominent possible likeness.
Riace Bronze A, Museo Nazionale della Magna Grecia
Unknown (Greek, Severe Style), c. 460-450 BC
A second view of the great Riace warrior on display in the National Museum of Magna Grecia in Reggio Calabria, where the two bronzes are the centerpiece of the collection. The figure's anatomical naturalism, inlaid copper lips and nipples, and silver teeth mark the technical peak of fifth-century Athenian bronze-casting. Catalogued in the Erechtheus image group on the strength of the scholarly proposal that this heroic spearman embodies the Athenian king who fell to Poseidon's trident after slaying Eumolpus, the photograph lets the viewer study the statue's poise and gaze from a different angle than the standard frontal portrait.
The Birth of Erichthonios (Erechtheus) - Attic Red-Figure Stamnos
Hermonax (Attic red-figure painter), c. 470-460 BC
On this red-figure stamnos by the painter Hermonax, the goddess Gaia (Earth) rises from the ground to hand the newborn Athenian child up to a waiting Athena, while Hephaestus looks on. The infant is the earth-born first king of Athens, named Erichthonios on the vase but repeatedly identified or merged with Erechtheus in the ancient tradition; Homer's Iliad (2.547) already calls the autochthonous king reared by Athena 'Erechtheus,' and later authors treat the two as the same Earth-born ruler. Now in the Staatliche Antikensammlungen, Munich (inv. 2413), the scene fixes the moment that gives Erechtheus his defining myth: a child of the soil itself, raised on the Acropolis under the protection of the city's patron goddess.