The old Erechtheus worship, the snake, the ancient image of Athena, and the allied precincts, lost none of their sanctity as time went on. From Herodotus we learn that Themistocles was materially aided before Salamis, in persuading the Athenians to abandon the city, by the sudden disappearance of the sacred snake. “The Athenians,” he gravely reports, “say that a large snake dwells in the sacred precinct as guardian of the Acropolis. And they not only say this but they make offerings to him month by month, setting them out for him as actually there. These consist of a honey-cake. Now this honey-cake, although heretofore it had always been consumed, remained at this time untasted, so the Athenians, when the priestess reported the fact, made the more eager haste to leave the city, on the ground that the goddess had abandoned her citadel.” The sacred olive tree, however, which Xerxes had burned with the rest of the precinct, put forth the very next day a new shoot one cubit long. By the time of Pausanias the guide said “two” cubits. But the essential point is the continued care of the goddess, and as for the snake, he soon resumed his dwelling on the Acropolis. In the “Lysistrata” of Aristophanes, the women who have seized and barricaded the Acropolis make excuses for leaving, complaining that they cannot sleep, one on account of the hooting of Athena’s owls, another by reason of her terror:— “Since I clapped eyes upon the snake that dwelleth there.” When in the “Eumenides” of Æschylus the scene shifts from Delphi to the Acropolis, we find Orestes seated as suppliant before Athena’s most ancient image. This we may think of, in default of any other temple then existing, as placed in the old Hecatompedon, whose foundations are seen adjoining the Erechtheum on the south. This temple, burned by the Persians, but partially restored, may have been in use even after the Parthenon was dedicated in 438 B. C., twenty years after this play was brought out, and perhaps until the completion many years later of the Athena Polias chamber in the Erechtheum. An Athenian could not well conceive of his city as safe without this ancient statue; even the birds in their new Cloud-cuckoo-town must needs debate whether they shall not keep Athena Polias as their protector. No Roman Catholic ever accepted more loyally the established glory of St. Peter’s and the Vatican than the Athenians accepted their citadel. The new gateways were spoken of with undisguised pride. A comic poet, Phœnicides of neighbouring Megara, when ridiculing Athens, incidentally admits that the Athenians cared as much for their Propylæa as their palates. He says:— “Of myrtle berries and their honey, too, they talk, And praise their Propylæa. Last, not least, dried figs. I sailed and forthwith had a taste of all of these, Including Propylæa! Not one single thing Upon this bill of fare could ever match our grouse!”