As Cecrops explains to Xena, he was chosen to judge the contest by which the city of Athens chose its name and its patron deity. Legend agrees -- Cecrops was judge of the competition, which Athena won by providing a gift with a thousand uses. The olive tree was perhaps the single most important plant to the Greeks and Romans, providing food, cooking oil, lamp oil, wood. . . . At least twenty-seven varieties of olives were exported throughout the known world; olive shoots were grafted on fig trees and wild varieties added to the cultivated stock to improve hardiness and develope new strains. The tradition of olive cultivation in the Mediterranean begun by Athena continues to this day.

Cecrops was, in myth, first king of Athens (although some legends name Actaeus instead). Some writers say he was an Egyptian whose father was Hephaestus. In art he is depicted as a serpent below the waist to represent his unusual origins. By Aglauros, daughter of Actaeus, he is said to have had three daugthers, Pandrosos, Herse, and Aglauros.

Cecrops was also a great benefactor of mankind, who gave the world burial of the dead, writing, and monogamy. Athenians believed his tomb was on the Acropolis.

Wonderfully Watery Special Effects: Tidal waves, Seastorms, the maelstrom Charybdis, and Poseidon himself

The Poseidon of XENA is just not like the other gods. Master of earthquakes and fresh water and vegetation as husband of earth, lord of the land, and originally (it is thought) god of an inland people, he is also lord of horses, which were perhaps brought to Greece by ship. Only secondarily was he god of the sea, in spite of the famous story of how Zeus, Hades, and Poseidon divided the realms of the universe among them. Of his consort, the nymph Amphitrite, little is spoken; from his dalliance with the gorgon Medusa he is said to have fathered Pegasus.