The Snake Child

I midwifed her from
all-father’s head,
freeing them
with a blow
that split the seas
and sundered
new from old.
She emerged--no--
shouted forth
complete, armored
in cunningly wrought
gold, her face already
brazen and fierce,
her first words
so pure and wise
as to name
the unvoweled world.
How could I not
desire her with
my smithy’s eye,
a creator’s zeal
for rapturous
forgeries? She
was perfect
in every nobler
way my hammer
beat hot iron.
How could I
not claim her
as the bride-price
for my services?
Zeus assented
and we were wed;
yet her aegis
proved impregnable
even to a god,
aloof and breechless
as high Athens.
I led her to
our wedding bed
and lay her whiteness
down, spreading
those unwidened
thighs--and yet
as I thrust my
hammer down
she disappeared,
my god-loud dew
falling on the
ground. Thus
my union with
her fell to Mother
Earth to grow
to term. Yet Gaia
was not happy
to womb a son
not here, not by
nature bred, and
she refused to birth
such strangeness.
So Athena snatched
the disincarnate
mess & locked it
in a cunning box
where it grew at
last to term, a boy
with snaketails
for hands and feet,
half-real, half-imagined,
first and last at once,
half hammer of
male desire, half
vanishing virgin.
She bid the snakeboy
kept in that box
& had it stored in
in a ghostly, gloomy
cavern deep beneath
the city, and there
he ruled it from
heart of hearts,
in the secret depths
of culture. I failed
to mate her
in the flesh, and
yet our coupling
sired the brightest
inch of history,
Hellenism’s wild
short flare.
Does that not tell you
what fangs in
foiled desire,
what dark
dynasties egg in
love’s fading Yes?
I think of him
sometimes as I
labor aons
at the bellows, amid
the reek of sulphur
and sour sweat;
his name resounds
in each hammer-stroke
by which I forge
the swords and
shields of history.
He’s at work too you
know in the smithy
behind the tongue,
coiling strangeness
between the lines
of Plato & hauling
combers of blue
majesty in a Sibyl’s
scalding mouth.
He’s the soul of every
human truth, you know,
battering you til we shine.


Source material

from Apollodorus, Library and Epitome,
ed. Sir James George Frazier

Some say that this Erichthonius was a son of Hephaestus and Atthis, daughter of Cranaus, and some that he was a son of Hephaestus and Athena, as follows: Athena came to Hephaestus, desirous of fashioning arms. But he, being forsaken by Aphrodite, fell in love with Athena, and began to pursue her; but she fled. When he got near her with much ado ( for he was lame), he attempted to embrace her; but she, being a chaste virgin, would not submit to him, and he dropped his seed on the leg of the goddess. In disgust, she wiped off the seed with wool and threw it on the ground; and as she fled and the seed fell on the ground, Erichthonius was produced. Him Athena brought up unknown to the other gods, wishing to make him immortal; and having put him in a chest, she committed it to Pandrosus, daughter of Cecrops, forbidding her to open the chest. But the sisters of Pandrosus opened it out of curiosity, and beheld a serpent coiled about the babe; and, as some say, they were destroyed by the serpent, but according to others they were driven mad by reason of the anger of Athena and threw themselves down from the acropolis. Having been brought up by Athena herself in the precinct, Erichthonius expelled Amphictyon and became king of Athens; and he set up the wooden image of Athena in the acropolis,6 and instituted the festival of the Panathenaea, and married Praxithea, a Naiad nymph, by whom he had a son Pandion.

***

Hephaestus and his brother Ares are sons of Hera, with or without the cooperation of Zeus. In classic and late interpretations, Hera bore him alone, in jealousy for Zeus's solo birth of Athena, but as Hera is older than Zeus in terms of human history, the myth may be an inversion. Indeed, in some versions of Athena's birth, the goddess only enters the world after Zeus' head is split open by a hammer-wielding Hephaestus. Either way, in Greek thought, the fates of the goddess of wisdom and war (Athena) and the god of the forge that makes the weapons of war were linked. In Attica, Hephaestus and Athena Ergane (Athena as patroness of craftsman and artisans), were honored at a festival called Chalceia on the thirtieth day of Pyanepsion. Hephaestus crafted much of Athena's weaponry, along with those of the rest of the gods and even of a few mortals who received their special favor.

An Athenian founding myth tells that Athena refused a union with Hephaestus, and that when he tried to force her she disappeared from the bed. Hephaestus ejaculated on the earth, impregnating Gaia, who subsequently gave birth to Erichthonius of Athens; then the surrogate mother gave the child to Athena to foster, guarded by a serpent. Hyginus made an etymology of strife ("Eri-") between Athena and Hephaestus and the Earth-child ("chthonios"). Some readers may have the sense that an earlier, non-virginal Athene is disguised in a convoluted re-making of the myth-element. At any rate, there is a Temple of Hephaestus (Hephaesteum or the so-called "Theseum") located near the Athens agora, or marketplace.

-- source: Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hephaestus

***

Erechtheus
by Micha F. Lindemans
in Encyclopedia Mythica
http://www.pantheon.org/articles/e/erechtheus.html

Erechtheus the First, known as Erechtheus or Erechthonios (not to be confused with Erechthonius the Second, believed to be the son of Pandion and the nymph Zeuxippe), he was, according to legend, an early king of Athens. Thought to be the son of the goddess Gaia, Erechtheus - the "earth-born king of Athens" (ref: Iliad) - was raised by Athena, the patron of Athens, as her own child. Erechtheus was worshipped, together with Athena on the Acropolis after he gained divine honors during his life. He was also associated in his lifetime with Poseidon, god of the sea, and Cecrops, a mythical king of Athens who was half man and half snake. The snake was also the sacred animal of Erechtheus, and opinion is divided as to whether Cecrops and Erechtheus were actually one and the same person. Others say that Cecrops was the son of Erechtheus. Erechtheus had two daughters, Creusa and Procris, who married Cephalus.

According to legend, Erectheus resided atop the Acropolis in his palace. Some myths state that Poseidon killed Erechtheus with his trident, whereas in other versions, it was Zeus who killed Erechtheus with his thunderbolt. After his death the palace was refashioned and used as a temple. Homer records that this was the first temple on the Athenian Acropolis.

Poseidon at that time was trying to gain control of Athens, and challenged Athena to see who had the most to give to the people. Poseidon struck the ground with his trident and a salt water spring flowed from that very spot. Athena also struck the ground with her spear, and miraculously an olive tree sprang up, fully grown and bearing fruit. The olive tree proved to be far more useful than a salt-water spring, and Athena won the contest, but neither she or Poseidon were given the honor of having the temple, which had been built on the site of the contest, named after them. Instead, the temple was named "The Erechtheion"; it also kept its name when, in the 5th century, it was replaced by the temple we see today.

Erechtheus was said to have founded the "Panathenaia", a festival in honor of Athena, when the cult statue of Athena Polias, housed within the Erechtheion, receives a new "peplos" (woolen gown). The sacred snake of Erechtheus was depicted on the inside of the shield which the chryselephantine (gold and ivory) statue of Athena Parthenos held in her hand. The statue was the work of Pheidias the famous Greek sculptor, who also sculpted the great statue of Zeus at the sanctuary of Olympia.