The Parthenon Enigma

by Joan Breton Connelly

  Still, it remains that Erechtheus is the first Athenian king to be mentioned in Greek literature, present already in Homer at the turn of the eighth to the seventh century B.C. His rise to prominence in mid-fifth-century Athens, a reawakening of the sleeping hero, so to speak, seems intricately bound up with the vision of Perikles and his efforts to renew the Acropolis temples. In the wake of the Persian Wars and the collective trauma suffered by the Athenians, what better than to go back to the very beginning, to the oldest founding father and the founding principles upon which the city had been built. Erechtheus was the man for the moment, a hero whose family tragedy embodied the very spirit of self-sacrifice so emphatically projected by the Periklean democracy.

  Of irreducible significance is that, without Athena, Hephaistos’s seed would never have been spilled upon the earth and Erechtheus would never have been born. Indeed, while Athena remains a virgin goddess, she is, in a very real sense, the genitor of Erechtheus and, therefore, of all Athenians. In this sense, Erechtheus can and must be understood as later championing the cause of his “mother,” Athena, just as Eumolpos avenges the defeat of his father, Poseidon.

  After Athena wins the primordial contest for patronage of Athens, tensions with Poseidon persist. The gods’ mortal issues, Erechtheus and Eumolpos, continue the rivalries of their respective parents, Eumolpos reigniting hostilities when he bands an army of Thracians from northeastern Greece to settle the score for his father.40 Thucydides tells us that in days of old when towns were independent of the Athenian king, they sometimes made war upon him “as did Eumolpos and the Eleusinians against Erechtheus.”41

  Hearing of the impending siege, King Erechtheus consults the oracle at Delphi to learn how he can stop Eumolpos. The answer is devastating: the king must sacrifice his daughter to save the city. Erechtheus shares the bad news with his wife, Praxithea, asking her leave to let their daughter die. The queen answers with that rousing, patriotic speech we examined in chapter 3. Lykourgos is clearly confident of the power of those lines to stir the Athenian heart even a hundred years after they were first performed, advising the gentlemen of the jury: “You will find in them a greatness of spirit and a nobility worthy of Athens and a daughter of the Kephisos.”

  Emboldened by his wife’s ardor, Erechtheus sacrifices their youngest daughter, a nameless girl simply called “Parthenos,” or “Maiden,” throughout the play. The names of the daughters of Erechtheus and Praxithea are greatly confused in the ancient sources, with conflicting lists given by various authors over several hundred years.42 Later authors speak of four and even six daughters of Erechtheus, as well as several sons. Phanodemos names Protogeneia and Pandora as the sisters who died (to save Athens from Boiotian, not Thracian, attack) while giving the names Prokris, Kreousa, Oreithyia, and Chthonia for the surviving daughters.43 Apollodoros names Prokris, Kreousa, Oreithyia, and Chthonia and, interestingly, lists a son named Pandoros as well as two others named Kekrops and Metion II. He has Chthonia as a survivor who goes on to marry Boutes.44 But Hyginus says that Chthonia is the girl who was sacrificed (to Poseidon) and that the other girls killed themselves.45 Yet he also names Aglauros as a son of Erechtheus by another of his daughters, Prokris—never mind that Aglauros is regularly identified as the daughter of Kekrops.46 In the great tangled web that is Attic myth, the most potent configurations replicate themselves: in the three daughters of Erechtheus we see the same pattern evident in chapter 1 with the three daughters of Deukalion and the three daughters of Kekrops.47 And there are of course connections: both Deukalion and Erechtheus have a daughter named Pandora, while Kekrops has a daughter named Pandrosos. More than likely we are seeing a Pandora/Pandrosos substitution in the same manner as Erechtheus/Erichthonios.48

  The battle ensues, and as promised by the oracle, the Athenians are victorious. But, in a turn of events that Praxithea did not anticipate, Erechtheus is killed, swallowed up in an earthquake caused by Poseidon. As for the two older daughters, we learn that they kept their oath that if one of them should die, the others would die as well. The surviving fragments of the Erechtheus do not explicity tell us how the sisters die, but there may be some suggestion that they leaped off the Acropolis in a suicide pact. Though the text is very uncertain here, lines apparently spoken by Praxithea seem to address the two daughters whose bodies may lie before her.49 This would concur with the account given in Apollodoros which says that following the sacrifice of the youngest daughter, the two remaining sisters killed themselves.50

  It should be remembered that later writers, including Apollodoros, ascribe death by suicidal leap to another pair of royal daughters, those of King Kekrops, who ruled a generation before Erechtheus.51 Having looked into a forbidden box containing the baby Erichthonios and a snake, the sisters Aglauros and Herse were driven mad and jumped from the Acropolis or, in an alternative account, into the sea.52

  Aspects of Athenian myth are thus transferred between different sets of royal sisters so that even within the corpus of a single author the same triad might be disposed of in different ways. In his play the Ion, first performed in 414–412 B.C., some years following the Erechtheus, Euripides clearly states that three daughters of Erechtheus were sacrificed.53 The boy Ion asks his mother, Kreousa (understood to be the youngest sister of three girls, apparently just a baby and too young to be killed when the others were sacrificed), “Is it true, or merely a tale, that your father killed your sisters in sacrifice?” Kreousa replies, “He dared to kill his maiden daughters as sacrifices [sphagia] for this land.”

  What is important here is that the two older daughters of Erechtheus kept their pledge and died, either by the hand of their father or by their own devices. While Queen Praxithea thought that she was giving just one child to die on behalf of all, she in fact loses all three daughters and her husband, a far greater sacrifice than she could have imagined.

  The discovery of the new fragments of the Erechtheus, peeled from the mummy brought to Paris by Pierre Jouguet, is nothing short of momentous for the clarity of understanding it brings to the temples standing on the Acropolis today. For the first time ever, we can read the words Euripides gives to Athena, as spoken to Queen Praxithea toward the very end of the play, when she stands alone on the Acropolis, having lost her entire family. The goddess delivers what can be described as a divine charter for the construction of the two great temples on the Sacred Rock: the Parthenon and the Erechtheion. Athena first instructs Praxithea to bury her daughters in the same tomb, over which she is to build a sanctuary, establishing sacred rites in their memory. She then directs the queen to bury her husband in the middle of the Acropolis and to erect a sacred precinct for him. Finally, Athena names Praxithea as her priestess and entrusts her with the care of these holy places. Only Praxithea will have the right to make burnt sacrifice on the altar of Athena that serves both tomb-shrines (this page). Fascinatingly, Athena’s speech employs language well known from sacred laws (leges sacrae), texts inscribed in stone to decree cult practice, including the construction of temples within Greek sanctuaries.54

  It now becomes clear just how aptly this naiad nymph, daughter of the Kephisos, is named. “Praxithea” is a compound of the roots prasso (“to perform”) and thea (“goddess”), and so the name means, quite literally, one who does things for the goddess. She is Athena’s ideal priestess: noble, selfless, and strong. It is relevant here that the historical priestess of Athena Polias who served on the Acropolis at exactly the time the Erechtheus was first performed was a woman of exceptional power and character. Her name was Lysimache, and she was daughter of Drakontides of Battae, sister of Lysikles, the treasurer of the Athenians. Lysimache held the priesthood of Athena Polias for an impressive sixty-four years (spanning the last decades of the fifth century as well as those of the early fourth). It is very possible that Euripides had this well-known city official in mind when he constructed the potent and patriotic character Praxithea for his Erechtheus.55 Aristophanes certainly had Lysimache in mind when he wrote the leading rol
e for the heroine Lysistrata in his famous comedy of that same name, first performed in 411 B.C.56

  The newly recovered fragments of the Erechtheus preserve for us the pivotal closing speech of Athena, in which she commands her old rival Poseidon to leave Athens in peace:57

  (55) I bid you to turn your trident away from this soil, sea-god Poseidon, and not to uproot this land and destroy my delightful city … Has not one victim given you your fill? Have you not torn my heart apart, (60) hiding away Erechtheus deep beneath the earth?

  Athena then turns and speaks directly to Queen Praxithea:

  Daughter of Kephisos, savior of this land. Now hear the words of motherless Athena. (65) First, I shall tell you about the girl whom your husband sacrificed for this land. Bury her where she breathed out her lamented life, and these sisters of hers in the same earth-tomb, because of their nobility (70) for they did not presume to abandon their oath to their dear sister. Their souls have not gone to Hades but I myself have brought their spirit [pneuma] to the uppermost reaches of heaven [aither] and I shall give them the name that mortals will call them all throughout Greece, “the Hyacinthian goddesses” (75)…brightness of the hyacinth, and saved the land. To my fellow citizens I say not to forget them over time but to honor them with annual sacrifices and bull-slaying slaughters, (80) celebrating them with holy maiden dancing choruses … enemy … to battle … spear army … make to these, first, a preliminary sacrifice before taking up the spear of war, not touching the wine-making grape nor pouring on the pyre anything other than the fruit of the hardworking bee [honey] together with river water. It is necessary that these daughters have a precinct that must not be entered [abaton], and no one of the enemies should be allowed to make secret sacrifice there, for their victory and the suffering of this land.

  (90) And I order you to construct a precinct for your husband in mid-city with stone enclosure. On account of his killer, he will be called, eponymously, Holy Poseidon-Erechtheus, by the citizens worshipping in cattle sacrifices.

  (95) And for you, [Praxithea], who re-erected the foundations of this city, I grant, being called priestess, the right to make burnt sacrifice on my altar on behalf of the whole city. You have heard what [must be] brought to pass in this land. Now I shall pronounce the judgment of Zeus, my father in heaven. Eumolpos, born from the Eumolpos who has died.

  Euripides, Erechtheus F 370.55–101 Kannicht58

  In the chapters that follow, we shall see how the goddess’s words have reverberated in the Athenian psyche, expressing the very essence of the people’s self-understanding, thereby forming a basis for our understanding of Acropolis temples, cults, and rituals. We have already noted that Athena’s speech reads like the text of so many sacred laws establishing cult places. Euripides’s play and, as we shall soon see, Pheidias’s Parthenon sculptures, vividly express Athenian core values while at the same time they instruct the citizenry on how things came to be as they are. For now, let us acknowledge how explicitly Euripides’s Athena explains the origins of the two temples that stand on the Acropolis: the Erechtheion and the Parthenon. Euripides etymologizes the names of these two cult places, one meaning “of Erechtheus” and the other “of the Maidens.” The special character of Acropolis cult practice, in which the Erechtheion and the Parthenon shared a single priestess and a single altar, can now be understood in relation to the myth in which Praxithea is charged with looking after the shrine of her husband (the Erechtheion) and that of her daughters (the Parthenon), both set within temples of Athena.

  Lykourgos’s lengthy quotation from the Erechtheus takes on heightened meaning when we consider that he himself was regarded as a direct descendant of the noble family of Erechtheus and Praxithea. His family clan, the Eteoboutadai, controlled the hereditary priesthoods of Poseidon-Erechtheus and Athena Polias, passing the sacred offices down through its generations for an astounding seven hundred years. Likely to have served as priest of Poseidon-Erechtheus himself, Lykourgos was highly knowledgeable about Acropolis cult and hierarchies. When he stands before the jury and recounts patriotic tales from the legendary past, he does so with the authority of his own birthright and experience.59

  As the consummate Athenian, Lykourgos closes his case with an invocation of the Attic landscape, the shrines, and the monuments that bound the citizenry together in a common identity:

  If you acquit Leokrates, you will vote for the betrayal of the city, of its temples, and its fleet. But if you kill him, you will be encouraging others to preserve your country and its prosperity. Imagine then, Athenians, that the country and its trees are appealing to you, that the harbors, dockyards, and walls of the city are begging you for protection, yes, and the temples and sanctuaries, too.

  Lykourgos, Against Leokrates 15060

  For all this effort and eloquence, the jury returned a split verdict: 250 voting to convict Leokrates, 250 to acquit. The man whose crime was presented as an affront to the very soul of the city walked free.

  The example of Erechtheus and his family continued nonetheless to loom large within Athenian consciousness, serving as a model for civic selflessness, even when the days of such fervor and of the democracy it enabled were numbered. The idea of sacrificing one’s life for the common good (to kalon) remained central to Athenian democratic ideology over the century separating Perikles and Lykourgos, as weariness over paying the ultimate price grew. Wars to maintain Athenian supremacy took their toll even before the city-state’s forces were crushed by Macedonian legions in 338 B.C. during Philip’s effort to unite Greece. After Chaironeia, Athenians no longer controlled even their own food supplies and, increasingly threatened by the whims of foreign generals and kings, found themselves gripped by anxiety and unease. Meanwhile, the story of Erechtheus and his daughters endured as a recurring theme in Attic funeral orations, which is no wonder, given how effectively Euripides’s play employed traditional Athenian language of the logos epitaphios.61 The myth is invoked in the Platonic dialogue called the Menexenus, as well as in Isokrates’s Panegyrikos and in his Panathenaikos.62 And when it comes time to eulogize the fallen from the Battle of Chaironeia in 338 B.C., Demosthenes praises the example of Erechtheus’s daughters as inspiration for the young men of the tribe Erechtheidai, who resisted the Macedonians.63 Later, the orator Demades will have to save his still-refractory fellow Athenians from the wrath of their conqueror Philip, but this same Demades will also hail the daughters of Erechtheus for their noble virtue and devotion to the land that reared them.64

  The esteem of the Athenians for the story of the sacrifice of Erechtheus’s daughter is as striking as it is long-lived. To realize its centrality to Athenian consciousness is to appreciate that the Parthenon’s most prominent puzzle has a solution hidden in plain sight. But before we come to that appreciation, let us reflect a bit upon the meaning and implications of this most definitive myth of Athenian belonging.

  WHAT ARE WE to make of such admiration for what is, essentially, an act of violence against a blameless maiden? In presenting virgin sacrifice as an inspiring example of selflessness, were the Athenians not simply whitewashing a tale of cruelty and misogyny? In answering this question, we must first make it clear that the examples of virgin sacrifice encountered in Greek literature are all set in the mythical past. Not one source attests to the actual killing of a maiden during historical times. Furthermore, archaeological evidence for human sacrifice, even in prehistoric Greece, is problematic, inconclusive, and slight.65

  Herodotos only once describes an instance of human sacrifice, and this drawn, again, from the realm of myth. He tells us that King Menelaos, bringing his wayward wife, Helen, back from Troy, was becalmed at a port in Egypt. Here, he was compelled to sacrifice two Egyptian boys to ensure that favorable winds would fill his sails and allow his ship to continue.66 Calling this measure an “unholy act,” Herodotos clearly finds human sacrifice repellent.

  Plutarch recounts the story of three captive Persian princes, the nephews of Xerxes, who were killed by Themistokles as
a preliminary sacrifice (sphagia), just before the Battle of Salamis.67 If true, this would constitute a rare historical instance of human sacrifice in Greece. But this act could equally be understood as the execution of enemy captives during time of war. It is far from clear whether Plutarch is recounting an actual event or is just invoking an old paradigm.68 The historicity of Plutarch’s account has been thrown into question by the fact that the sacrifice of the Persian boys is said to have been made to Dionysos Omestes, a god worshipped on Lesbos, home to Plutarch’s source for the story, Phainias.69 And, in a sense, Plutarch’s account presents a parallel to the deaths of the daughters of Erechtheus, three Attic princesses sacrificed as sphagia prior to the battle, just as are the three Persian princes.70 This symmetry may suggest a fictive rather than a historical occurrence.

  There is hardly a culture on earth that does not have some shadowy prehistory of human sacrifice practiced by certain groups under certain circumstances. While there is no evidence that fifth-century B.C. Athenians sacrificed maidens, they surely believed that virgin sacrifice occurred in the days of the heroic past. And, as we shall see, they might even have believed that the tomb of the daughters of Erechtheus rested beneath the western room of the Parthenon, a chamber they themselves called Παρθενών (“of the Maidens”). I shall argue in chapter 6 that the maidens in question are none other than the daughters of Erechtheus and Praxithea.