The Athenian queen wedded to Erechtheus: daughter of Phrasimus by Diogenia, herself a daughter of the river Cephisus, she bore the king the sons Cecrops, Pandorus, and Metion and the daughters Procris, Creusa, Chthonia, and Orithyia — the house whose youngest daughter was slaughtered to win the city its war, and whom Poseidon afterwards destroyed root and branch.1
Apollodorus alone of our authors names her line. When Pandion died and his sons divided the inheritance — Erechtheus taking the kingdom, Butes the priesthood of Athena and of Poseidon Erechtheus — Erechtheus married Praxithea, daughter of Phrasimus by Diogenia, daughter of the river Cephisus. By him she bore three sons, Cecrops, Pandorus, and Metion, and four daughters, Procris, Creusa, Chthonia, and that Orithyia whom Boreas carried off; and the daughters were bound in marriage — Chthonia to her husband's brother Butes, Creusa to Xuthus, Procris to Cephalus son of Deion.2
Her motherhood became a catastrophe in the war with Eleusis. Apollodorus tells that when Eumolpus came against Athens with a Thracian host and Erechtheus inquired of the oracle how the city might win, the god answered that victory would come if he slaughtered one of his daughters; and when Erechtheus slaughtered his youngest, the others slaughtered themselves as well, for, as some said, they had sworn an oath among themselves to perish together. Only then, in the battle that followed, did Erechtheus kill Eumolpus. So the queen's whole company of daughters was undone in a single vow.3
Hyginus orders the disaster differently and names the victim. In his telling the four daughters had promised one another that if one met death the rest would die also; Eumolpus, son of Neptune, attacked Athens claiming the land was his father's, and only after his army was defeated and he himself slain did Neptune demand that a daughter of Erechtheus be sacrificed, so the king should not rejoice in the god's son's death. Chthonia was sacrificed, and the other sisters, true to their oath, killed themselves; in his catalogue of fathers who slew their own children Hyginus repeats that Erechtheus killed Chthonia, in accordance with oracles, on behalf of the Athenians.4
Her house did not outlive the vengeance. Apollodorus says that Poseidon, having destroyed Erechtheus and his house, left the throne to Cecrops, eldest of the sons; Hyginus makes the ruin sharper still, that Erechtheus himself was smitten with a thunderbolt by Jove at Neptune's request. Either way the queen of Athens was left bereft of king and daughters together — the mother of the Erechtheid line at its breaking.5
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the spine ignites as you read · hover a bond on the card — every mention of them lights in the story
