Furthermore, excavations at Athens made in 1886 brought to light a number of statues of maidens, which now adorn one of the rooms of the Acropolis Museum. They are all of one type,--life-size figures of young women, all standing in the same attitude, with one arm extended from the elbow, while the other hand holds the long and elegant drapery close about the figure; their hair is elaborately arranged, and ringlets fall over their necks and shoulders. These statues are relics of days before the Persian War. The Persians sacked Athens in B.C. 480, and wrought general havoc on the Acropolis, burning temples, throwing down columns, demolishing statues. When the Athenians, flushed with victory, returned to their ruined homes, they regarded as unhallowed all that had been touched by the hands of the barbarian, and therefore, in building up anew the Acropolis as the sacred precinct of Athena, they extended and levelled its surface and filled in the hollows thus made with the debris of the Acropolis--architectural blocks, statues, and vessels; and these relics of pre-Persian art lay thus securely buried for ages, to be revealed to modern eyes by the pickaxe of the archaeologist. Now, who are these maidens, standing in conventional pose, with regular and finely moulded features, and with richly adorned drapery and elaborate headdress? They cannot represent priestesses of Athena, for the priestess was always an elderly lady, who, after being chosen, held office for the rest of her life. Nor can they represent the goddess herself, for all her usual attributes--the aegis, the spear, the helmet, the snake--are absent. Hence we probably have in these statues portraits of votaries of Athena, young women of the aristocratic families of Athens, who placed statues of themselves in the sacred precinct of the goddess to serve as symbols of perpetual homage. Finally, certain maidens of Athens of the Heroic Age were later deified and themselves given sacred precincts on the Acropolis. King Cecrops had three daughters--- Aglauros, Herse, and Pandrosus. When Erectheus, the son of Earth by Hephaestus, was born, half of his form being like that of a snake,--a sign of his origin,--the child was put into a chest by Athena, who then gave it to the daughters of Cecrops to take care of, at the same time forbidding them to open it. Aglauros and Herse disobeyed, and, in terror at the serpent-shaped child, went mad and threw themselves from the rock of the Acropolis. Pandrosus, the faithful maiden, was rewarded by being made the first priestess of Athena, and was later honored by having a sanctuary of her own, next to that of the goddess; while Aglauros had to rest content with a cavern on the northern slope of the Acropolis, near where she had thrown herself down.