To return to the goddess: only two passages of Homer refer to Athens, and both were probably interpolated at the editing of Homer in the days of Peisistratus. Both allude to the connection between Athena and Erechtheus. The goddess is described in one place as visiting “the goodly house of Erechtheus,” which probably means the old Pelasgian palace on the Acropolis; in the other she has received Erechtheus, the son of Earth, into “her own rich shrine.” Modern criticism, however, is apt to reverse the relationship of host and guest--Erechtheus the earth-born was the prehistoric hero, Athena the Olympian interloper. The early shrine of Athena upon the Acropolis has quite recently been discovered on the north side of the plateau by Dörpfeld. It would seem to have been a building of the sixth century or earlier, and to have been surrounded with a peristyle of columns by a later hand--whose we shall presently see. This is the “old temple” superseded for cult purposes by the Parthenon. Our “Erechtheum,” so well known for its caryatid porch, was built right up against this old temple, so that the caryatid porch juts out over the stylobate of it. In the old temple was the old cult image of the goddess afterwards replaced by the splendid creation of Pheidias. It was a xoanon, or pillar statue, of olive-wood, in a standing posture, its rude shape doubtless concealed with offered drapery. It was armed with spear, shield, ægis, and helmet, and stood in act to strike. As the illustration[31] shows, this became a favourite motive in the portraiture of the goddess; she stands there as the champion and protectress of the city. Athena Polias is her fitting title. Pheidias idealised this type in his Athena Promachos. But it does not seem to be very ancient. Probably Athens, like Troy, had possessed an earlier seated Pallas, upon whose knees the women laid their embroidered “peplos.” Nothing in art or ritual need make us doubt that Pallas Athene was far from aboriginal in Athens, that she came in with the Achæans, and that it was not until Athens became a real city-state, with [Illustration: PLATE XXVI. ATHENA POLIAS: BRONZE _English Photo Co., Athens_] civic worship of an idealised type, that the great vogue of the Virgin began on the Acropolis. TYRANNY AND CULTURE