The story of the autochthonous King Erichthonius of Athens is highly curious and involves many familiar symbols. The painting of Rubens shows motifs of Cybele and Artemis from previous posts. Autochthonesis is different from parthenogenesis but strangely related, a child born without mother; or rather, the mother is the Earth/Gaia herself. Also curious is the basket or object the baby is found within (given to the daughters of Cecrops by a Goddess), not to mention the baby's serpent-like legs, or sometimes centaur-like appearance!
The daughters of Cecrops are the sisters Herse, Pandrosus and Aglaulus to whom Athena gave a small box, telling them to never open it.
Even more curious is that Cecrops himself was an autochthon:
It was said that he was born from the earth itself (an autochthon) and was accordingly called a γηγενής (gēgenḗs "native"), and described as having his top half shaped like a man and the bottom half in serpent or fish-tail form.
Two versions of the story are summarized here in this article on King Erichthonius.
Interestingly, King Erichthonius was the ruler of Athens at the time of an important meteoritic event in the Cybelian Mountains, probably near the city of Pessinus (aka Cybele); from Chladni's book, "Feuer-Meteor":
The Parian Chronicle (Marmora Oxoniensia, P. 2. inscr. 23, p. 21) provides information about this in the 18th and 19th lines and says: the Image of the Mother of the Gods (which was probably nothing other than this stone) appeared on the Cybelian Mountains 1241 years before the writing of the inscription, at the time when Erichthonius was reigning in Athens, i.e. about 1478 years before our era. This event, which would have happened about 297 years before the destruction of Troy, certainly falls into a rather fabulous age, but the events reported in the inscription seem to have been recognized as historically correct at the time.
