Kekrops was half man, half snake. His ‘double nature’ gave logographers and even philosophers much trouble. Was it because he had the understanding of a man and the strength of a dragon, was it because, at first a good king, he later became a tyrant, or because he knew two languages (Egyptian and Greek), or because he instituted marriage? The curious will find it all in Tzetzes[76]. Eager anthropologists have seized on Kekrops as a totem-snake, but the average orthodox mythologist is content to see in his snake-tail the symbol of the ‘earth-born’ Athenians. This interpretation grazes the truth, but just misses the point. The hybrid form is of course transitional. Kekrops is sloughing off his snake form[77] in deference to the inveterate anthropomorphism of the Greek. He was once a complete snake, not because he was a totem-snake, not because he was an ‘autochthonous hero,’ but because he was a dead man and all dead persons of importance, all heroes, become snakes. No one has done so much to obscure the early history of Athenian religion as Athena herself, by her constant habit of taking over the attributes of other divinities[78]. The eponymous hero of each victorious tribe, Kekrops and Erechtheus in turn, is a home-keeping, home-guarding snake (οἰκουρὸς ὄφις). But by the time of Herodotus[79] the sacred snake supposed to live on and guard the Acropolis lives in the sanctuary of Athena, and is almost the embodiment of the goddess herself; when the snake refused the honey-cake it was taken as an omen that ‘the goddess had deserted the Acropolis.’ By the time of Pheidias the snake is just an attribute of the Parthenos, and was set to crouch beneath her shield. But Pausanias[80] has an inkling of the truth; he says, ‘close beside the spear is a snake: this snake is probably Erichthonios.’ The real relation of goddess and snake was simply this: the original pair of divinities worshipped in many local cults were a matriarchal goddess, a local form of earth-goddess, and the local hero of the place in snake form as her male correlative; such a pair were Demeter and the snake-king Kenchreus at Eleusis[81], such were Chryse and her home-keeping nameless guardian snake on Lemnos[82], such were Eileithyia and Sosipolis at Olympia[83], such were ‘the goddess’ and her successive heroes Kekrops and Erichthonios or Erechtheus; only, as will later be seen, in this last pair another goddess preceded Athena. * * * * *