Fortunately about the position of these two sacred things there is no doubt. Underneath the pavement of the westernmost chamber (c) of the present Erechtheion is a large cistern[122] hewn in the rock, and at A in the North porch are the marks of the trident.

The two things together, the sea-water in the cistern and the trident-mark, were both associated with Poseidon. Pausanias[123] says they were said to be ‘the evidence produced by Poseidon in support of his claim to the country.’ Apollodorus[124] says, ‘Poseidon came first to Attica and smote with his trident in the middle of the Acropolis and produced the sea which they now call Erechtheïs.’

Athena produced the olive-tree, Poseidon the salt well and the trident-mark as ‘tokens’ or evidence of their claim. This is manifest aetiology. There had been on the Acropolis from time immemorial certain things reputed sacred, a gnarled olive-tree, a brackish well, three holes in a rock. It was the obvious policy of any divinity who wished to be worshipped at Athens to annex these tokens. Pandrosos had the olive-tree before Athena. The name of the well Erechtheïs shows that it was a ‘token’ of Erechtheus rather than of Poseidon.

Such sacred trees, such ‘seas,’ such curious marks existed elsewhere; Pausanias[125] himself notes in another inland place, Aphrodisias in Caria, there was a sea-well. What impressed him as noteworthy about the well at Athens was that when the South wind was blowing it gave forth the sound of waves, but then as he does not say if he waited for a South wind, the ‘sound of waves’ may have been a detail supplied by the guides.

The trident-mark belongs to a class of sacred things that will repay somewhat closer attention. Fresh light has been thrown upon it by a recent discovery. In examining the roof of the North Porch, with a view to repairs, it was observed that immediately above the trident-mark an opening in the roof had been purposely left. The object is clear; the sacred token had to be left open to the sky; it had to be sub divo. This is manifestly more appropriate to a sky-god than to a sea-god.

Our best analogies are drawn from Roman sources. Ovid[126] tells us that when the new Capitol was being built a whole multitude of divinities were consulted by augury as to whether they would withdraw to make place for Jupiter. They tactfully consented, all but old Terminus. He stood fast, remaining in his shrine, and still possesses a temple in common with mighty Jupiter:

When place was wanted for an Olympian, be he Zeus or Poseidon or Athena, the elder divinities were not always so courteously consulted. We do not even know whose open air token Poseidon seized.

Servius[127], commenting on ‘the steadfast stone of the Capitol,’ tells the same story. There was a time when there was no temple of Jupiter, that is there was no Jupiter. Augury said that the Tarpeian mount was the place to build one, but on it were already a number of shrines of other divinities. Ceremonies were performed to ‘call out’ by means of sacrifice the other divinities to other temples. They all willingly migrated, only Terminus declined to move: this was taken as a sign that the Roman empire would be for all eternity, and hence in the Capitoline temple the part of the roof immediately above, which looks down on the very stone of Terminus, was open, for to Terminus it is not allowable to sacrifice save in the open air. Terminus was just a sacred stone or herm, incidentally to the practical Romans a boundary god. Another Roman god, Fidius[128], had in his temple a roof with a hole in it (perforatum tectum), and Fulgur, Caelum, Sol and Luna had all to dwell in hypaethral temples[129]. Wherever the lightning struck was in Greece holy ground, to be fenced in but open always above to the god who had sanctified it, to the ‘descender,’ Kataibates[130]. Kataibates became Zeus Kataibates, Fulgur Jupiter Fulgur, but the lightning and the ‘descender’ were there before the coming of the Olympian, and the threefold mark preceded Poseidon.

In picturing to ourselves therefore the ancient sanctities of the Acropolis, we have to begin with certain natural holy things that were there from time immemorial, that were holy in themselves, not because they were consecrated to this or that divinity. Such were the olive-tree, the salt sea-well, the trident-mark—we are back in a time rather of holy things than divine persons. Successive heroic families, in possessing themselves of the kingship, take possession of these sanctities; they are as it were the regalia. In the time of the Kekropidae, Pandrosos, daughter and paredros of Kekrops, owns the olive-tree; in the time of the Erechtheidae the well is called Erechtheïs, and all the sacred things are included in an Erechtheion. It is worth noting that though Poseidon claimed the well and the trident-mark he never gave his name to either, and though Athena boasted of the olive-tree and snake, neither was ever called after her.

The name of Erechtheus or Erechthonios marks a stage definitely later than that of Kekrops. In the reign of Kekrops we hear nothing of foreign policy. He is engaged in civilizing his people, in marrying them, in teaching them to offer bloodless sacrifice. But the reign of Erechtheus is marked by a great war. He fought with and conquered Eumolpos, king of the neighbouring burgh Eleusis. Kekropia has taken the first step towards that hegemony she was to obtain under Theseus.

Erechtheus, not Kekrops, is the king-hero known to Homer; the two passages in which he and his city are mentioned are significant. In the Odyssey[131], Athena, having counselled Odysseus, leaves him to make his entrance alone into the house of Alkinoös, while she betakes herself home. ‘Therewith grey-eyed Athene departed over the unharvested seas and left pleasant Scheria and came to Marathon and wide-wayed Athens, and entered the good house of Erechtheus.’ Here manifestly Athena has no temple, she has to shelter herself in the good house of Erechtheus (Ἐρεχθῆος πυκινὸν δόμον). That is how it used to be in the old kingly days, the king was divine, his palace a sanctuary.

But in the Catalogue of the Ships[132]—allowed on all hands to be a later document—things are quite otherwise. Among the captains of the ships were ‘they that possessed the goodly citadel of Athens, the domain of Erechtheus the high-hearted, whom erst Athene, daughter of Zeus, fostered, when Earth, the grain-giver, brought him to birth;—and she gave him a resting-place in Athens, in her own rich sanctuary; and there the sons of the Athenians worship him with bulls and rams as the years turn in their courses.’

The passage is a notable one. The singer is manifestly in some difficulty. Athena by his time is supreme; she has a goodly temple: it is she who offers hospitality to Erechtheus, not Erechtheus to her. Yet the singer knows the early tradition that the goodly citadel belongs to the king Erechtheus, he also knows the ritual fact that annual sacrifice was offered to him. This ritual fact of the sacrifice to Erechtheus is attested by Herodotus[133]. He tells us that the Epidaurians were allowed to cut down sacred olive-trees to make statues from, on the express condition that they annually sacrificed victims to Athena Polias and Erechtheus. Here the goddess joins in the honours, a fact not expressly stated in Homer, though probably understood.

So far we have Erechtheus, hero-king, snake-king, like the earlier Kekrops and Athena. Athena, it is evident, is the later intruder, but we have had no evidence of Poseidon. Poseidon’s position at Athens is a very peculiar one. Unlike Erechtheus, he has no temple called after him, he cannot give his name even to a salt sea-well, his trident-mark is probably to begin with a thunder-smitten rock; unlike Athena he never gets the people called after him, and yet, spite of all this, his worship is ancient and deep-rooted, and from him rather than from Zeus or Athena the old nobility of Athens claimed to be descended.

We are so accustomed to regard Athena as the Alpha and well-nigh the Omega of Athenian religion that the priority of Poseidon, one of the ‘other gods,’ needs emphasis. The Athenians themselves, however, at least the more conservative[134] among them, recognized it. Poseidon they knew was son of Kronos, and Athena daughter only of the younger Zeus.

exclaims the youth in the Plutus when he holds the torch to the wrinkles in the old woman’s withered face. When, in the Frogs, Euripides is made to utter what is taken to be a fine old conservative sentiment, Dionysos answers ‘Good by Poseidon, that!’ When in the Knights Nicias the household slave—conservative after the manner of his class—hears that the new demagogue is a black-pudding chandler, he exclaims in horror,

The choice of Poseidon by the conservative party was no mere chance; they believed in him, they swore by him, because they thought they were descended from him. In the case of one noble family, the Butadae, this descent was no mere chance tradition; their family tree was written up in the Erechtheion itself, and they claimed to be descended from a certain Butes, son of Poseidon and brother of Erechtheus. When Pausanias[135] entered the later Erechtheion he saw in the first chamber three altars, ‘one sacred to Poseidon on which sacrifices are offered to Erechtheus in accordance with the command of an oracle, one to the hero Butes, and one to Hephaestos; the paintings on the wall represent the family of the Butadae.’ It is often said that Erechtheus is merely a ‘title’ of Poseidon; this was the view of the lexicographers. Hesychius[136] explains Erechtheus as ‘Poseidon at Athens.’ But the statement about the altar shows that they were not originally the same, the command of an oracle was needed to affiliate them. It is a noticeable point moreover that Poseidon has no temple of his own, only an altar in the ‘dwelling’ (οἴκημα) called the Erechtheion. This sanctuary bearing the kingly name, remains his ‘steadfast house’ and is an eternal remembrance of the days when the king was priest and the god’s vicegerent on earth.

But there came a time when kings ceased to be in the old full sense incarnate gods, and then the kingly function was split into two offices, secular and spiritual. Of this at Athens we have traces in the narrative of Apollodorus[137]. He says ‘on the death of Pandion his sons divided the paternal estate and Erechtheus took the kingship, but Butes took the priesthood of Athena and of Poseidon the son of Erechthonios.’ It was the family tree of the royal priest Butes that was religiously preserved in the Erechtheion. The ‘paintings’ on the wall could of course only go back to the rebuilding of those walls in 409 B.C., but the genealogical tree would go back to time immemorial. In the Lives of the Ten Orators[138] we hear of Lycurgus, the Eteobutad, as follows. His ancestors derived from Erechtheus, son of Ge and Hephaestos, but his immediate ancestors were Lycomedes and Lycurgus, whom the people had honoured with a public funeral. And the descent of his family from those who held office as priests of Poseidon is on a complete tablet in the Erechtheion written up by Ismenios son of Chalcideus and there are wooden images of Lycurgos and his sons, of Habron, Lycurgos and Lycophron made by Timarchos and Cephisodotos the son of Praxiteles. And Habron dedicated the tablet to his son, and coming in succession to the priesthood he resigned in favour of his brother Lycophron. Hence Habron is represented handing over the trident to him.

By such family trees, by the genealogies and successive priesthoods of royal priestly families, was ancient chronology kept. Argive chronology it will be remembered was reckoned by the years of the consecration of the successive priestesses of Hera[139]. The record was kept in the ancient sanctuary of the Heraion and the statues of the priestesses were set up in front of the temple[140].

With the question of the cult of Athena we have not to deal, but as Poseidon is emphatically one of the ‘other gods’ a word must be said about the subordinate position he comes to occupy. This position is remarkable. To the conservative party as we have seen he was a god of the first importance; it is very noticeable that the chorus of Knights[141] sing first to ‘Poseidon lord of horses’ and only second to ‘Pallas, She of the Citadel.’ Their normal orthodox relation, Athena first, Poseidon second, is reflected in the hymn at Colonos. Yet when we come to examine the ritual of the two divinities we find that their priesthood was conjoint; the Butadae held the priesthood not only of Poseidon but of Athena[142].

These difficulties, these incongruities in tradition, would no doubt be easily solved did we fully know the origin of the cults of Poseidon and Athena. This at present is hidden from our eyes. Kekrops, Pandrosos, Erechtheus, are obviously local. Their worship never spread beyond the hill of Athens, but Poseidon and Athena were worshipped over the whole of Hellas, and whether in Athens they were indigenous or imported cannot at present be certainly said. Herodotus[143] emphatically states that Poseidon originated in Libya, ‘for none except the Libyans originally possessed the name of Poseidon and they have always worshipped him.’ It is in Libya also that this same Herodotus[144] notes that the dwellers round lake Tritonis sacrifice principally to Athena and next to Triton and Poseidon, and from the Libyan women the Greeks obtained the dress and the aegis of the statues of Athena.

If we may hazard a glimpse into things remote or dark, it may be conjectured that the worship of Poseidon and Athena came from Libya to Attica from a people geographically remote, but with racial affinities[145]. That in Libya Athena was, as Herodotus notes, the more important of the two. An old matriarchal goddess, transplanted to Athens in the days of king Erechtheus, she fell when social conditions were patriarchal rather than matriarchal to a subordinate place. Poseidon rather than Athena stood at the head of the Athenian family trees. He headed the conservative aristocratic party. But at some time of political upheaval, possibly even as late as the time of Peisistratos[146], the tide turned, and the ancient matriarchal goddess, as patron of the tyrants and the democracy, reasserted herself. It is Athena not Poseidon who brings Peisistratos back in her chariot to Athens. All this, the prior supremacy of Poseidon, the resurgence of Athena, is reflected in the myth of the Eris, the rivalry, the contest of the two divinities for the land, in the aetiological myth of the planting of the olive-tree and the smiting of the rock with the trident.

To resume, among the ‘other deities’ are first and foremost Kekrops and Erechtheus, ancient eponymous kings, Pandrosos the daughter and paredros of Kekrops and later affiliated to these the immigrant Poseidon. Their ‘sacred things’ are the tomb of Kekrops, the olive, the ‘sea,’ the trident-mark. The list does not exhaust the ‘other deities’ worshipped on the Acropolis; Zeus had altars, Artemis perhaps from early days a precinct. Herakles, though probably an oriental immigrant, was worshipped on the Acropolis at a very early date. It has been one of the sudden corrections sometimes so sharply administered by archaeology to our prejudice that, among the ancient poros sculptures of which so many remains have come to light, Herakles is prominent, Theseus conspicuously absent. But the group of deities and sanctities that cluster round the Erechtheion are sufficient for our purpose, and for that of Thucydides. They show that the Acropolis was the polis for the simple reason that ‘there are sanctuaries in the citadel itself, those of other deities as well’ (as the Goddess).