A Pausanias Commentary in Progress

1.24.7 I now offer this comment on Pausanias 1.24.7, drawing from an analysis of this same passage in HC 1§140: The wording of Pausanias here makes it clear that he is well aware of the highly charged mysticism of what he is saying when he says that the serpent who attends Athena Parthenos is none other than the autochthonous hero of Athens, Erikhthonios. The potential optative, which I translate as ‘would be’, marks the speaker’s self-awareness at a sacral moment of contemplation. He is touching on a matter of the greatest importance for the ideological self-definition of Athenian citizens as autochthonous supermen who model themselves on the cult hero Erikhthonios as the prototypical autochthon. I offer further comment, with reference to my earlier comments on Pausanias 1.2.6, 1.14.6, and 1.18.2: At 1.2.6 we saw the first reference made by Pausanias to the myth about the birth of Erikhthonios from Mother Earth. Then at 1.14.6 we saw a second reference to this myth, and I noted that Pausanias already there points to a mystical understanding of the hero’s birth. He says cryptically that the myth about this birth is saying something mystical about the relationship between Erikhthonios and Athena. One way to describe such a relationship, I suggested in my comment on Pausanias 1.14.6, is to say that Erikhthonios is the son that Athena “never” had. And then, we saw more, much more, in the third reference to the birth of Erikhthonios at Pausanias 1.18.2, where it was revealed for the first time that the nature of this prototypical hero of the Athenians was serpentine as well as human. As I noted in my comment on Pausanias 1.18.2, the biformity of Erikhthonios the autochthon as half-snake and half-human can also be a kind of bivalence. And now, here at Pausanias 1.24.7, we see that Erikhthonios himself can be visualized not only as half-snake but also as all-snake. As I predicted already in my comment on 1.18.2, Pausanias himself experiences such a visualization here at 1.24.7 where he gazes at the colossal gold-and-ivory statue of Athena Parthenos inside the Parthenon. Pausanias sees here, with his own eyes, the hero Erikhthonios standing next to the goddess, and the hero here is all-snake, seen in his fully serpentine glory.