Although Erekhtheus here is born of the goddess Gaia as ‘Mother Earth’, he is nursed by the goddess Athena. This division of labor between Gaia and Athena is signaled by the verb trephein ‘nourish, nurse’, revealing a pattern of differentiation between older and newer concepts of a mother goddess. In terms of an older concept, an autochthonous hero would be both born of and nursed by a mother goddess, visualized primarily as the Earth. We may compare the wording in Plato Menexenus 237b on Mother Gaia, ‘the one who gave birth, nourished [trephein], and accepted [them] into her care’ (τῆς τεκούσης καὶ θρεψάσης καὶ ὑποδεξαμένης), with reference to the Athenians as her autochthonous children. See HTL 161, with bibliography.