Heroes required a _grave_ at which the continued existence and potency of the "Hero" was localized; by a natural process of development the Hero Erechtheus translated alive and made immortal is thought of as _buried_ in a grave. Erichthonios, who was expressly identified with the Homeric Erechtheus, was by later ages supposed to be buried in the Temple of Polias, i.e. the oldest temple of Athene, on the Acropolis.[41\3] We have clearly before us the steps by which the {99} aboriginal deity, dwelling beneath the ground, the son of Earth, is made into a mortal Hero, translated to immortality and placed under the protection of the Olympian goddess who has now become more powerful than he; and finally transferred, cave and all, to the precincts of her temple, and finally reduced to the condition of a Hero like another, who had died and lies peacefully buried in the temple of the goddess on the citadel. With this example before us we may explain several other analogous cases, in which we have only the last stage of the process, the grave of a Hero in a god's temple, without any of the intermediate steps. A single example may be given. At Amyklai, not far from Sparta, in the holiest temple of Laconia, stood the ancient bronze statue of Apollo upon an altar-shaped base, within which, according to legend, _Hyakinthos_ lay buried. Through a bronze door in the side of the altar offerings for the dead were sent down to "Hyakinthos" buried below every year at the festival of the Hyakinthia.[42\3] The recipient of these offerings has little resemblance to the gentle youth of popular legend. The Hellenistic poets tell how he was beloved by Apollo and died by a cast of Apollo's discus and was changed into a flower. The fable, almost destitute of local reference, has been put together from many popular themes.[43\3] The sculpture on the above-mentioned altar, on the other hand, represents among many gods and heroes Hyakinthos and his sister Polyboia as they are being carried up to heaven--which will not square with the metamorphosis story. Further, he is represented as bearded, and so not as the boy whom Apollo loved,[44\3] but as a grown man (of whose daughters indeed other legends make mention).[45\3] The true story of _this_ Hyakinthos has disappeared almost without leaving a trace. But in what the monument reveals and in what we know of the yearly festival held in honour of Hyakinthos significant features emerge which perhaps can tell us the real character of the Daimon that was honoured at Amyklai together with, and as our information clearly shows, before Apollo himself.[46\3] Hyakinthos was given offerings that were otherwise peculiar to the gods that ruled the lower world.[47\3] These offerings were let down directly into the underground place where, in fact, Hyakinthos himself was supposed to dwell. In the great festival of the Hyakinthia the alternate worship of Apollo and Hyakinthos (after whom as the chief personage the festival is named)