Aglaurus (daughter of Cecrops)

Aglaurus is presented in Attic genealogical myth as a daughter of Cecrops I, the autochthonous king of Athens. In the best-known cluster of accounts Athena entrusts the infant Erichthonius to Aglaurus and her sisters with strict instructions not to open the container; in versions preserved in mythographic tradition (summarized from sources such as the Bibliotheca/Hyginus and dramatists cited in modern summaries) Aglaurus (often paired with Herse) opens the box, sees the infant, goes mad, and kills herself by throwing herself from the Acropolis or into the sea. An alternative Attic tradition holds that Aglaurus voluntarily sacrificed herself during a war on an oracle’s instruction to secure the city’s safety; the Athenians thereafter honored her with a temple on the Acropolis where young warriors swore an oath. Ovid’s Roman account (Metamorphoses) adapts the figure as Aglauros, who obstructs Mercury and is turned to stone.

Primary Greek sources as summarized here give no sustained physical description of Aglaurus as a standing figure; she is attested primarily as an agent within narratives. In Ovid’s poetic variant she is said to be metamorphosed into stone, which later literary and visual traditions may have represented as a petrified figure or stone statue, but extant summaries in the supplied material do not provide a detailed or consistent physical portrayal.

No supernatural powers are attributed to Aglaurus in the provided sources. Her role is social and exemplificatory within Athenian civic religion: guardian/custodian in the Erichthonius myth, exemplar of civic self-sacrifice in the sacrificial tradition, and a dramatic figure of jealousy and consequent divine punishment in Roman poetry. Her vulnerabilities are mortal: she is subject to madness, suicide, or divine metamorphosis in different traditions, indicating susceptibility to divine retribution rather than inherent magical capability.