Mnemosyne — Classical Greek Myth Library

Cecrops was the first king of what became Athens—an autochthon, earth-born, his body ending in a serpent’s coils (double-formed: human above, snake below), a living emblem of sprung-from-the-soil Attica. Under him the land, once called Acte or alternate early names, took the political shape of a kingdom. Apollodorus and Pausanias place in his reign the famous contest of Athena and Poseidon for patronage of the city: Poseidon struck the rock and brought forth a salt spring (or a horse); Athena planted the olive. Cecrops (or the other gods, with Cecrops as witness) judged Athena the winner; the city was named Athens after her, and Poseidon’s anger left marks on the rock and in later flood lore. Cecrops is credited with early laws—recognizing Zeus as supreme, inventing or ordering marriage, burial, and the census of citizens—and with founding the Acropolis settlement (Cecropia). He married Agraulus (daughter of Actaeus in some lists) and fathered Erysichthon (who died childless), and daughters Aglaurus, Herse, and Pandrosus—the Cecropids who later open Erichthonius’s chest. His reign ends with succession through Cranaus and others toward Erichthonius and Erechtheus; the serpent-king remains the charter autochthon: Athens is not founded by an immigrant hero but grown from its own earth, with Cecrops as first witness to Athena’s olive.