Pandrosus

Pandrosus: The Obedient Daughter of Cecrops in Greek Mythology

Pandrosus (also spelled Pandrosos) was one of the three daughters of Cecrops, the first king of Athens. She is best known as the sister who obeyed Athena and did not open the chest containing the child Erichthonius, and as the heroine whose shrine, the Pandroseum, stood beside Athena’s temple on the Acropolis (Pausanias, Description of Greece 1.18.2, 1.27.2).

The Birth and Family of Pandrosus

Cecrops married Agraulus, the daughter of Actaeus, and had a son, Erysichthon, who died childless, and three daughters: Agraulus (usually Aglaurus), Herse and Pandrosus (Apollodorus, Library 3.14.2). Pausanias gives the same family, naming the daughters Herse, Aglaurus and Pandrosus and saying that Erysichthon died while his father was still alive, so that the kingdom passed to Cranaus (Pausanias 1.2.6). Pandrosus is thus the sister of Aglaurus and Herse and of Erysichthon. In Ovid’s telling the three sisters each have a room in the house of Cecrops: Pandrosus the right-hand one, Aglaurus the left, and Herse the middle one (Ovid, Metamorphoses 2.738–739).

Pandrosus and the Tale of the Sacred Basket

In Apollodorus’ account, Athena raised Erichthonius, the child born from the earth when the seed of Hephaestus fell on the ground, in secret from the other gods, wishing to make him immortal. She put him in a chest and gave it to Pandrosus to keep, forbidding her to open it. The sisters of Pandrosus opened it out of curiosity and saw a serpent coiled around the baby. According to some, the serpent destroyed them; according to others, they were driven mad by Athena’s anger and threw themselves down from the Acropolis (Apollodorus, Library 3.14.6).

Pausanias tells the same story in a slightly different way. Athena gave the hidden Erichthonius to all three sisters, and Pandrosus obeyed the command, but the other two opened the chest, went mad when they saw the child, and threw themselves down the steepest part of the Acropolis (Pausanias 1.18.2). He mentions it where he describes the enclosure of Aglaurus below the Acropolis.

In another version, told by Ovid, only Aglaurus breaks the command. Pandrosus and Herse keep the trust, while the third sister unties the knots and looks inside; she sees the child and the serpent beside him (Ovid, Metamorphoses 2.552–561). In each version Pandrosus is the one who does what Athena asked.

Pandrosus’ Connection to Athena

Pausanias says that next to the temple of Athena on the Acropolis was the temple of Pandrosus, “the only one of the sisters to be faithful to the trust” (Pausanias 1.27.2). This sanctuary was called the Pandroseum. Apollodorus places in it the olive tree that Athena planted when she took possession of Attica and called on Cecrops as witness, and says that the tree was still shown there in his day (Apollodorus, Library 3.14.1). Pausanias adds that this olive had been burnt when the Persians set fire to Athens, and that it grew again to the height of two cubits on the same day (Pausanias 1.27.2).

Pausanias also records that the Athenians worshipped Pandrosus together with one of the two Seasons, the goddess whom they called Thallo (Pausanias 9.35.2). Ancient sources do not describe Pandrosus as a priestess of Athena; she is a daughter of the king and the object of cult at her own shrine.

The Legacy of Pandrosus in Greek Mythology

Pandrosus is less famous than her sisters, because the best-known part of the story is the fate of those who disobeyed. Her place in Athenian tradition was fixed by the Pandroseum, which stood beside the temple of Athena on the Acropolis and the olive tree that grew there. Through her father Cecrops and her connection to Erichthonius, whom the sisters were told to guard, she belongs to the oldest generation of the royal house of Athens.

No ancient source names a husband or children of Pandrosus.

See Also: Cecrops, Aglaurus, Herse, Erichthonius, Erechtheus, Athena, Hephaestus