Mnemosyne — Classical Greek Myth Library

Erechtheus (sometimes identified or conflated with Erichthonius in early lists, but distinct as warrior-king in the war story) ruled Athens when Eumolpus—son of Poseidon and Chione, king or war-leader of Eleusis, often with Thracian allies—made war on Athens. An oracle told Erechtheus that Athens would be saved if he sacrificed one of his daughters. He chose (or the lot fell on) one; in the fullest tragic and oratorical tradition her sisters swore to die with her, so that several or all of the Erechtheids perished together—Praxithea the queen consenting for the city’s sake in Euripides’ lost *Erechtheus*, praised later by Lycurgus as a model of patriotic piety. In the battle Erechtheus killed Eumolpus (or Eumolpus’s son Immaradus, with variants on who fell). Poseidon, avenging his line, struck Erechtheus with his trident and drove him into a chasm in the earth—or Zeus smote him at Poseidon’s request. The Athenians thereafter honored Erechtheus in the Erechtheum with Athena, and Eleusis’s cult settlement with Athens is mythically sealed by the war’s end and by shared rites. The story is Attica’s human counterpart to the olive contest: Poseidon’s claim returns as invasion; the city’s survival costs the king his daughters and finally himself, buried in the rock he defended.