Erechtheus, not Kekrops, is the king-hero known to Homer; the two passages in which he and his city are mentioned are significant. In the _Odyssey_[131], Athena, having counselled Odysseus, leaves him to make his entrance alone into the house of Alkinoös, while she betakes herself home. ‘Therewith grey-eyed Athene departed over the unharvested seas and left pleasant Scheria and came to Marathon and wide-wayed Athens, and entered the good house of Erechtheus.’ Here manifestly Athena has no temple, she has to shelter herself in the good house of Erechtheus (Ἐρεχθῆος πυκινὸν δόμον). That is how it used to be in the old kingly days, the king was divine, his palace a sanctuary. But in the Catalogue of the Ships[132]—allowed on all hands to be a later document—things are quite otherwise. Among the captains of the ships were ‘they that possessed the goodly citadel of Athens, the domain of Erechtheus the high-hearted, whom erst Athene, daughter of Zeus, fostered, when Earth, the grain-giver, brought him to birth;—and she gave him a resting-place in Athens, in her own rich sanctuary; and there the sons of the Athenians worship him with bulls and rams as the years turn in their courses.’ The passage is a notable one. The singer is manifestly in some difficulty. Athena by his time is supreme; she has a goodly temple: it is she who offers hospitality to Erechtheus, not Erechtheus to her. Yet the singer knows the early tradition that the goodly citadel belongs to the king Erechtheus, he also knows the ritual fact that annual sacrifice was offered to him. This ritual fact of the sacrifice to Erechtheus is attested by Herodotus[133]. He tells us that the Epidaurians were allowed to cut down sacred olive-trees to make statues from, on the express condition that they annually sacrificed victims to Athena Polias and Erechtheus. Here the goddess joins in the honours, a fact not expressly stated in Homer, though probably understood. * * * * * So far we have Erechtheus, hero-king, snake-king, like the earlier Kekrops and Athena. Athena, it is evident, is the later intruder, but we have had no evidence of Poseidon. Poseidon’s position at Athens is a very peculiar one. Unlike Erechtheus, he has no temple called after him, he cannot give his name even to a salt sea-well, his trident-mark is probably to begin with a thunder-smitten rock; unlike Athena he never gets the people called after him, and yet, spite of all this, his worship is ancient and deep-rooted, and from him rather than from Zeus or Athena the old nobility of Athens claimed to be descended. We are so accustomed to regard Athena as the Alpha and well-nigh the Omega of Athenian religion that the priority of Poseidon, one of the ‘other gods,’ needs emphasis. The Athenians themselves, however, at least the more conservative[134] among them, recognized it. Poseidon they knew was son of Kronos, and Athena daughter only of the younger Zeus.