havoc on the Acropolis, burning temples, throwing down columns,
demolishing statues. When the Athenians, flushed with victory, returned
to their ruined homes, they regarded as unhallowed all that had been
touched by the hands of the barbarian, and therefore, in building up
anew the Acropolis as the sacred precinct of Athena, they extended and
levelled its surface and filled in the hollows thus made with the debris
of the Acropolis--architectural blocks, statues, and vessels; and these
relics of pre-Persian art lay thus securely buried for ages, to be
revealed to modern eyes by the pickaxe of the archaeologist. Now, who are
these maidens, standing in conventional pose, with regular and finely
moulded features, and with richly adorned drapery and elaborate
headdress? They cannot represent priestesses of Athena, for the
priestess was always an elderly lady, who, after being chosen, held
office for the rest of her life. Nor can they represent the goddess
herself, for all her usual attributes--the aegis, the spear, the helmet,
the snake--are absent. Hence we probably have in these statues
portraits of votaries of Athena, young women of the aristocratic
families of Athens, who placed statues of themselves in the sacred
precinct of the goddess to serve as symbols of perpetual homage.

Finally, certain maidens of Athens of the Heroic Age were later deified
and themselves given sacred precincts on the Acropolis. King Cecrops had
three daughters--- Aglauros, Herse, and Pandrosus. When Erectheus, the
son of Earth by Hephaestus, was born, half of his form being like that of
a snake,--a sign of his origin,--the child was put into a chest by
Athena, who then gave it to the daughters of Cecrops to take care of, at
the same time forbidding them to open it. Aglauros and Herse disobeyed,
and, in terror at the serpent-shaped child, went mad and threw
themselves from the rock of the Acropolis. Pandrosus, the faithful
maiden, was rewarded by being made the first priestess of Athena, and
was later honored by having a sanctuary of her own, next to that of the
goddess; while Aglauros had to rest content with a cavern on the
northern slope of the Acropolis, near where she had thrown herself down.

The celebrations in honor of Dionysus, the god of luxuriant fertility
and especially of the grape, were exceedingly simple at first, according
to Plutarch, being merely "a rustic procession carrying a vine-wreathed
jar and a basket of figs"; but later