Cecrops

Cecrops was born from the earth itself, an autochthon, one of the original beings who sprang from the soil of Attica without father or mother. The Greeks called him γηγενής, earth-born, and they believed that his serpent lower half was the mark of his primordial origin, a bridge between the chthonic powers of the deep earth and the human civilisation that would rise above it. He was not a god but something older than ordinary mortality, a king who belonged to the land he ruled. When he emerged from the soil of the Acropolis, the rocky hill that would become the heart of Athens, he gathered the people of Attica and founded the first city, building his palace on the summit and naming the citadel Cecropia after himself. Under his rule, the Athenians learned to bury their dead, to recognise the bonds of marriage, and to worship the gods with ordered rites. He was the first to call Zeus the Highest, the king of the gods who ruled from Olympus, and to establish altars to the deities of the city.

The most famous moment of his reign came when Athena and Poseidon both desired to become the patron deity of the newly founded city. Poseidon, the god of the sea whose trident could shatter rock, struck the ground of the Acropolis with his weapon and produced a salt spring, a marvel that demonstrated his power but offered little practical use. Athena, the grey-eyed goddess of wisdom and war, planted an olive tree on the same spot, a gift that would provide oil, wood, and food for generations. The two gods could not agree, and they called upon Cecrops to judge between them. The king considered the gifts. The salt spring was impressive but bitter, useful only to remind the people of the sea god's might. The olive tree was modest but enduring, a source of sustenance and light. Cecrops ruled in favour of Athena, and the city took her name, becoming Athens. Poseidon was enraged, and in some accounts he flooded the plain of Attica in punishment, but the people held to Cecrops's judgement and the olive tree remained.

Cecrops had three daughters: Aglaurus, Herse, and Pandrosos, known as the Cecropides, the children of the snake-legged king. Their fate became entangled with one of the strangest births in Greek mythology. Hephaestus, the crippled smith god whom Hera, the queen of Olympus, had cast from heaven, had once pursued Athena, desiring the virgin goddess. She rejected him, but his semen fell upon the earth, and from it was born Erichthonius, a child who was part human and part serpent, like Cecrops himself. Athena placed the infant in a wicker basket and entrusted it to the three daughters with a strict command: they must not open it. The sisters swore to obey, but curiosity overcame two of them. Aglaurus and Herse opened the basket and looked inside. What they saw drove them instantly mad. Some say they saw the child entwined with a serpent; others say the divine radiance was too terrible for mortal eyes. They fled in frenzy to the edge of the Acropolis and threw themselves from the rocky cliff. Only Pandrosos kept her oath, and she alone survived.

Cecrops ruled for fifty years, and when he died he was buried on the Acropolis itself, a rare honour that marked him as more than mortal. The Athenians showed his tomb to visitors for centuries, and they claimed that his serpent form had returned to the earth from which it came. He was succeeded by Cranaus, another autochthonous king, and later by Erechtheus, the very child whose birth had destroyed his daughters. The Erechtheion, the temple that stood on the north side of the Acropolis, honoured both Athena and the earth-born kings, and within it the Athenians maintained the olive tree that Athena had given and the salt mark of Poseidon's trident. Cecrops remained the symbol of the city's indigenous identity, the proof that the Athenians were not immigrants but children of the soil. Every claim to autochthony, every assertion that Athens was the most ancient and civilised city in Greece, rested upon the memory of the snake-legged king.