Erechtheus

[3] The earth-born son was sired by Hephaestus, whose semen Athena wiped from her thigh with a fillet of wool cast to earth, by which Gaia was made pregnant.

[5] Erechtheus was father, by his wife Praxithea, of sons: Cecrops, Pandorus, Metion[6] and of six daughters, the eldest was Protogeneia, Pandora, Procris, Creusa, Oreithyia and Chthonia.

This late origin myth or aition justified and validated the descent of the hereditary priesthood of the Boutidai family.

His reign was marked by the war between Athens and Eleusis, when the Eleusinians were commanded by Eumolpus, coming from Thrace.

Athena resolves the action by instructing Erichtheus' widow Praxithea: ...and for your husband I command a shrine to be constructed in the middle of the city; he will be known for him who killed him, under the name of 'sacred Poseidon'; but among the citizens, when the sacrificial cattle are slaughtered, he shall also be called 'Erechtheus'.

The archaic joint temple built upon the spot that was identified as the Kekropion, the hero-grave of the mythic founder-king Cecrops[21] and the serpent that embodied his spirit was destroyed by the Persian forces in 480 BC, during the Greco-Persian wars, and was replaced between 421 and 407 BC by the present Erechtheum.

[22] Priests of the Erechtheum and the priestess of Athena jointly took part in the procession to Skiron that inaugurated the Skira festival near the end of the Athenian year.

Their object was the temenos at Skiron of the hero-seer Skiros, who had aided Eumolpus in the war between Athens and Eleusis in which Erechtheus II, the hero-king, was both triumphant and died.