192 HISTORY OF GREECE. thcus : one of the family of the Butadae, chosen among themselves by lot, enjoyed the privilege and performed the functions of his hereditary priest. 1 Herodotus also assigns the same earth-born origin to Erechtheus : 2 but Pindar, the old poem called the Da- nais, Euripides and Apollodorus all name Erichthonius, son of Hephaestos and the Earth, as the being who was thus adopted and made the temple-companion of Athene, while Apollodorus in another place identifies Erichthonius with Poseidon. 3 The Ho- meric scholiast treated Erechtheus and Erichthonius as the same person under two names : 4 and since, in regard to such mythical persons, there exists no other test of identity of the subject ex- cept perfect similarity of the attributes, this seems the reasonable conclusion. We may presume, from the testimony of Homer, that the first and oldest conception of Athens and its sacred acropolis places it under the special protection, and represents it as the settlement and favorite abode of Athene, jointly with Poseidon ; the latter being the inferior, though the chosen companion of the former, and therefore exchanging his divine appellation for the cog- nomen of Erechtheus. But the country called Attica, which, during the historical ages, forms one social and political aggregate with Athens, was originally distributed into many independent 1 See the Life of Lykurgus, in Plutarch's (I call it by that name, as it is always printed with his works) Lives of the Ten Orators, torn. iv. p. 382- 384, Wytt. KaTTjyov 6e rb yevof airb TOVTUV nal 'Epe^i9euf TOV TV/f Kal 'HijtaiffTov ......... KO.I iariv O.VTJ) ij Karayuyr] TOV yevovt; TUV iepaaafiivuv TOV Hoaeidurof, etc. "Of rrjv lepuavvqv Hoaet6uvo 'Epe^tfccjf el^e (pp. 382, 383). Erechthcns Tlupetipo<; of Athene Aristides, Panathcnaic. p. 184, with the Scholia of Trommel. Butes, the eponymus of the Butadse, is the first priest of Poseidon Erich- thonius: Apollod. iii. 15, 1. So Kallais (Xenoph. Sympos. viii. 40), Herodot. viii. 55. Harpokration, v. Aiiro t?uv. 'O <5e Hiv6apof nai 6 rfv AavaWa ircnoujnui 'Eptx&oviov I!- 'H<j>aiarov Kal Tf/f ^avrjvai. Euripides, Ion. 21- Apollod. iii. 14, 6 ; 15, 1. Compare Plato, Timaeus, c. 6.
- Schol. ad Iliad. 5i. 546, where he cites also Kallimachus for the story of
Erichthonius. Etymologicon Magn. 'Epex&evc. Plato (Kritias, c. 4) em- ploys vague and general language to describe the agency of HSphPEStos and Athen6, which the old fable in Apollodorus (iii. 14, 6) details in coarser terms. See Ovid, Metam. ii. 757.
