Cook, Arthur B.: Zeus: a study in ancient religion (Band 3,1): Zeus god of the dark sky (earthquake, clouds, wind, dew, rain, meteorits): Text and notes (Cambridge, 1940)

188 Hephaistos and Athena

his tongs. A couple of little Victories, hovering in the air, offer
wreaths to father and son; for it is as father of Erichthonios that
Hephaistos has at length wholly dispossessed Zeus.

ii. Hephaistos and Athena.

So far we have seen reason to think that the Arrhephoria was
an annual rite in which a couple of Dew-bearers conveyed the very
seed of the sky-god down into the womb of the earth-goddess, and we
have surmised that they brought up thence a new-born babe named
Erichthonios. Moreover, a review of monuments known to represent
the birth of Erichthonios1 has made two points clear—that the
group of Ge handing over the child to Athena was constant from
first to last, and that Zeus as interested spectator was gradually
ousted by Hephaistos. Vases distributed along the fifth century'
showed us in succession a Zeus of normal type, a Zeus-like person-
age probably to be called Hephaistos, a Zeus-like personage certainly
called Hephaistos, and a Hephaistos of normal type.

How are these ritual and mythological data to be interpreted?
I should infer (i) that the rite of the Arrhephoria as performed in
the precinct (of Ge Olympiad') near the Ilissos found apt expression
in the Hellenic myth of Ge and Erichthonios, and (2) that in the
course of the sixth and fifth centuries B.C. the Hellenic myth was
forced (by popular pressure?3) to find room for the long-established
persons of pre-Hellenic cult. Thus Ge the original mother must
hand over her babe to Athena as foster-mother, while Zeus Olympios
the natural consort of Ge Olympia is displaced by Hephaistos the
primitive partner of Athena.

This reading of the story is of course in part conjectural, but it
fits well with certain important facts in the history of Attic religion
and it deserves to be weighed in relation to them.

1 I have excluded from my survey the parallel, but later, series of vases and reliefs,
which represent an Eleusinian (not Athenian) myth—the birth of the infant Ploutos,
handed over by Ge to Demeter. On these see S. Reinach ' La naissance de Ploutos' i'1
the Rev. Arch. 1900 i. 87—98 (= id. Cultes, mythes et religions Paris 1906 ii. 262—272);
Harrison Proleg. Gk. Rel? pp. 524—526 fig. 151, Nilsson Min.-Myc. Rel. pp. 487—489>
C. Picard in the Revue historique 1931-pp. 1—76 (especially 33—42), id. in the Bu"f
Corr. Hell. 1931 lv. 34—38 pL 3- 2 Supra p. 169 n. o.

3 The rigime of Peisistratos and his successors did much to enhance the prestige 01
Athena (see e.g. C. T. Seltman Athens: its History and Coinage before the Persian I"'
vasion Cambridge 1924 pp. 40 ff., 46 f., 61, 68, 94 and F. E. Adcock in The Cambridge
Ancient History Cambridge 1926 iv. 63, 66 f.), and pride in the city-goddess would tend
to make men jealous for the credit of her partner Hephaistos (infra pp. 200, 223,236). The
'Theseion,' if that be his temple [infra p. 223 n. 6), was no unworthy sequel to the
Parthenon.