Returning, with this evidence in our minds, to the woman-headed bird in fig. 83, the conclusion seems inevitable that we have in her an early local form of Athene. The vase-painter had advanced to an anthropomorphic conception of the goddess, so he draws her in full human form as Athene, but he is haunted by the remembrance of the Megarian Diver, Aithuia, so he adds her figure, half as the double of Athene (hence the parallelism of attitude), half as attendant, and calls her Ϝοῦς. Athene on the Acropolis had another attendant bird, the little owl that still at evening haunts the sacred hill and hoots among the ruins of the Parthenon. Whatever bird was locally abundant and remarkable would naturally attach itself to the goddess, and be at first her vehicle and later her attribute: at seaside Megara the diver, at Athens the owl. The vase-painter remembers Athens as well as Megara, and adds for completeness a little owl. [Illustration: FIG. 84.] The design in fig. 84 is from a black-figured lekythos in a private collection in Sicily[795]. The scene represents Cassandra flying from Ajax and taking refuge at the xoanon of Athene. To the left stands old King Priam, in helpless anguish. The notable point about the scene is that Athene, who, statue though she be, is apparently about to move to the rescue, has sent as her advance guard her sacred animal, a great snake. The snake is clearly regarded as the vehicle of the wrath of the goddess. Just such a snake did Chryse, another local Kore, send out against the intruder Philoctetes[796], and the snake of Chryse, Sophocles expressly tells us, was the secret guardian of the open-air shrine. This ‘house-guarding snake,’ we may conjecture, was the earliest form of every earth-born Kore. At Athens, in the chryselephantine statue of Pheidias, it crouched beneath the shield, and tradition said it was the earth-born hero Erichthonios, fostered by the goddess. But almost certainly this guardian snake was primarily the guardian genius and fate of the city, before that genius or fate emerged to the status of godhead. When the Persians besieged the citadel, Herodotus[797] says, the guardian snake left the honey cake that was its monthly sacrificial food untouched, and, ‘when the priestess told this, the Athenians the more readily and eagerly forsook their city, inasmuch as it seemed that the goddess had abandoned the citadel.’ [Illustration: FIG. 85.] The design in fig. 85 is from a late red-figured lekythos in the National Museum at Athens[798]. The scene represented is a reminiscence of the Judgment of Paris, but one goddess only is present, Athene, and by her side, equal in height and majesty, a great snake. The artist seems dimly conscious that the snake is somehow the double of Athene[799]. To the left is the figure of a woman, probably Helen; she seems to be imploring the little xoanon of Athene to be gracious. Eros is apparently drawing the attention of Paris away from Athene to Helen.