Of the three sisters, Herse was not a real person[103]; she has no shrine, she is only a heroine invented to account for the ceremony of the Hersephoria. The cult of Aglauros is below the Acropolis and manifestly separate from that of Pandrosos, and Pandrosos alone for the present need be considered. * * * * * Pausanias, after stating that the temple of Pandrosos adjoins that of Athena, says that she was ‘the only one of the sisters who was blameless in the affair of the chest intrusted to them.’ As Pandrosos had a shrine so revered it would have been awkward to make her out guilty. He then, without telling us whether or no he perceives any connection, proceeds to describe ‘a thing which caused me the greatest astonishment and is not generally known.’ The thing that so astonished Pausanias was the ceremony of the Arrephoria[104]. Maidens called Arrephoroi bore upon their heads certain sacred things covered up; these they carried by night by a natural underground passage to a precinct near to that of Aphrodite in the Gardens. There they left what they had been carrying, and brought back other things also wrapped up and unknown. From the analogy of other mystery cults we may be sure that the objects carried were some sort of fertility-charms, and they would be carried in a chest or wicker basket, a _cista_ or a _liknon_, veiled that the sacred thing might not be seen. The girl-Arrephoroi might not look into the sacred chests. Why? The answer was ready, the goddess they served, Pandrosos, had also her sacred chest into which she and she only had not looked. The personality of Pandrosos is hard to seize and fix. One thing is clear; ‘Pandrosos’ is not a mere ‘title of Athena.’ She manifestly, as daughter of Kekrops, belongs to that earlier stratum before the dominance of The Goddess. Later Athena absorbed her as she absorbed everything else. In official inscriptions she usually comes after Athena, and is clearly a separate personality. Thus the epheboi[105] offered their ‘sacrifices at departure (ἐξιτήρια) on the Acropolis to Athena Polias and to Kourotrophos and to Pandrosos,’ and women swore by her, though not so often as by Aglauros. We have one ritual particular that looked as though between her and Athene there was at some time friction. Harpocration[106] in explaining the rare word ‘ἐπίβοιον,’ ‘that which is after the ox,’ says, quoting from Philochoros, that it was the name given to a sacrifice to Pandrosos. If any one sacrificed an ox to Athena it was necessary to sacrifice a sheep to Pandrosos. Pandrosos was in danger of being effaced by Athena, and some one was determined this should not be; all that ‘The Goddess’ could secure was precedence. * * * * *