The "grave" under the Omphalos means in the case of Python the overthrow of an earth-dwelling Chthonic Daimon by the cult of Apollo. The "grave" of Zeus, which had thrust itself into the place of an older legend of the dwelling of Zeus in the cave of the mountain, expresses the same idea as this legend, but expresses it in a form current in later ages which knew of many "Heroes" who after their death and from their graves gave proof of a higher existence and a powerful influence. The Zeus that died and is buried is only a god reduced to a Hero;[34\3] remarkable and paradoxical is only the fact that unlike Zeus Amphiaraos, Zeus Trophonios (and Zeus Asklepios), he has not, in the usual fashion, dropped his title of god, which directly contradicted his "Hero" {98} nature. It is possible that in the case of this cave-Zeus, half-god half-Hero, a conception has been transferred merely on analogy from other cases where it was applied more properly, after they had become fully "Heroized", to gods who according to the no longer intelligible theory had once been dwellers in the depths of the earth. We have several accounts of Heroes who were buried in temples of gods and were sometimes associated with the cult of the higher god to whom the temple was dedicated. The way in which such legends could arise may be seen unusually clearly from the case of _Erechtheus_. The Ship-Catalogue in the Iliad (ii, 546 ff.) tells us that Erechtheus was the son of the Earth, but that Athene brought him up and "settled him in her rich temple",[35\3] where the Athenians every year honour him with sacrifice of sheep and bulls.[36\3] It is plain that Erechtheus is here thought of as still living; to honour a dead man with such offerings, repeated every year and attended by the whole community, would be a custom quite unknown to Homer. Erechtheus is, therefore, thought of as dwelling alive in the temple in which Athene has set him down, i.e. the ancient temple on the Acropolis which was enclosed in the "strong house of Erechtheus", to which, according to the Odyssey, Athene betakes herself as her _own_ home. On the old citadel of the Kings, royal residence and sanctuary of the goddess were combined; its foundation walls have recently been discovered on the spot where later joint worship was paid to Athene and Erechtheus in the "Erechtheion".[37\3] Erechtheus dwells below the ground in a crypt of this temple,[38\3] like other earth-deities, in the form of a snake, immortally. He is not dead, for as Euripides still says, in a story which otherwise follows different lines, "the earth gaped and covered him over,"[39\3] i.e. he was _translated_ and lived on under the earth. On the analogy of the examples already discussed it is clear that this is also a case of a primitive local deity,[40\3] once supposed to have been living always in a cave on the mountain-side, transformed to a Hero who has been brought there and raised to immortal life. The later belief in