The Seba library treats Erichthonios in 8 passages, across 5 authors (including Rohde, Erwin, Harrison, Jane Ellen, Burkert, Walter).
Erichthonios, who was expressly identified with the Homeric Erechtheus, was by later ages supposed to be buried in the Temple of Polias, i.e. the oldest temple of Athene, on the Acropolis.
Rohde uses Erichthonios as the paradigm case for his thesis that aboriginal chthonic deities are progressively demoted to mortal hero-status and re-housed beneath the temples of the Olympian gods who supersede them.
, Psyche: The Cult of Souls and the Belief in Immortality among the Greeks, 1894thesis
The cista of the coin and the cista of Erichthonios are one and the same; the myth arose from a rite. The carrying of sacred snakes or the figures of snakes was not confined to the worship of Dionysos.
Harrison argues that the myth of Erichthonios and his serpent-bearing cista is a direct etiological derivation from actual ritual practice shared across the Arrhephoria, Thesmophoria, and Dionysiac worship.
, Themis: A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion, 1912thesis
The first Lesser Panathenaia were traced back to Erichthonios: see Arist. fr. 637; Marm. Par., FGrHist 239 A 10; Hellanikos, FGrHist 323a F 2; Androtion, FGrHist 324 F 2.
Burkert documents the consistent ancient tradition attributing the founding of the Lesser Panathenaia to Erichthonios, situating the figure at the institutional origin of Athens’s most important civic festival.
, Homo Necans: The Anthropology of Ancient Greek Sacrificial Ritual and Myth, 1972supporting
ATHENE RECEIVES ERICHTHONIOS FROM GAIA, IN THE PRESENCE OF KEKROPS, HEPHAISTOS AND HERSE
Kerenyi’s iconographic reference to the Kodros painter vase establishes the standard visual schema of Erichthonios’s transmission from Earth to Athena, anchoring the myth in archaic Attic visual culture.
, The Gods of the Greeks, 1951supporting
the ancient Lesser Panathenaea, founded by Erichthonios, which were annual. In the same way at Olympia itself, as we shall see, the Heraea were probably at first annual.
Harrison situates the founding role of Erichthonios within a comparative argument about the development of annual festivals into quadrennial ones, linking Athens and Olympia through the same structural pattern.
, Themis: A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion, 1912supporting
The serpent that could be seen behind the shield of the famous statue of Athene Parthenos, a work of the sculptor Pheidias, was said to have been the serpent that emerged from the basket, and later took refuge with the goddess.
Kerenyi traces the serpent of the Erichthonios myth into the monumental iconography of the Parthenos statue itself, showing how the chthonic child’s guardian serpent becomes permanently incorporated into the image of Athena.
, The Gods of the Greeks, 1951supporting
Cecrops the hero-king, the author of all these social reforms, Cecrops the humane, the benevolent, has a serpent’s tail.
Harrison’s discussion of Kekrops’s serpentine nature provides the immediate mythic context surrounding Erichthonios, illuminating the shared chthonic, autochthonous symbolism that links these two foundational Athenian figures.
, Themis: A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion, 1912aside
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A fragmentary Hesiodic passage preserving a lineage reference connected to Erichthonios, attesting to the figure’s early epic-genealogical presence in the poetic tradition prior to his elaboration in Athenian cultic sources.
, Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns, and Homerica, -700aside