The Location of the Hephaisteion

summary:

This paper argues that the Hephaisteion was erected on Kolonos Agoraios as the spot identified in Athenian topographic myth with the place of Hephaistos’s pursuit of Athena that led to Erichthonios’s birth. The complex association of semen with pollution kept the location of the foundation story of Athens separate from the Acropolis, offering a visual and topographic counterpoint to Athena’s temple. Kolonos Agoraios also had powerful connections with the Philaid family, through the cult of Eurysakes, which made it attractive for a temple commemorating the successes of Miltiades and Kimon in the Aegean, notably on Hephaistos’s island of Lemnos.