The Augralids

The most common story about the Augralids is that they were originally Earth and Fertility Goddesses. They were worshipped in pre-Hellenic Attica and they ruled the area around Athens before the Greek Goddess Athena came into rule there. The sisters were Herse, Pandrosos, and Agraulos. There names in Greek connected them to the “fertilizing dew,” which is another reference to their status as Earth or Fertility Goddesses.

The story goes that Athena thwarted an attempt by Hephaestus to rape her but some of His semen fell on her leg. When she wiped it off it fell onto the earth impregnating Gaia. The resulting child was Erichthonius (meaning earth born.) Athena placed the child into a willow basket/or box and gave it to the Augralids with the warning to never open it. Aglauros and Herse did open the basket which held the infant and a large snake. (Some say that Erichthonius was a terrible snake while other stories say he was a child and there was a snake in the box with him.)

There are two stories about what happened after the two sisters opened the box. One is that they both went mad and killed themselves jumping off the Acropolis. The other story is that Athena let them live providing they gave up their power and position and were simply Goddesses of the Earth. After this, Aglauros was turned to stone by Hermes when she became jealous of His attentions to her sister Herse.

The story of Hersa and Aglauros and the box is believed to later have been transformed into the story of Pandorda.

Resources

The Triple Goddess by Adam McLean 

http://www.hranajanto.com/goddessgallery/athena.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandrosus

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herse

http://www.pantheon.org/articles/a/aglauros.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aglaulus,_daughter_of_Cecrops

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/9247/Aglauros