CHAPTER X.

ÆAKUS AND HIS DESCENDANTS.—ÆGINA, SALAMIS, AND PHTHIA.

The memorable heroic genealogy of the Æakids establishes a fabulous

connection between Ægina, Salamis, and Phthia, which we can only

recognize as a fact, without being able to trace its origin.

Æakus was the son of Zeus, born of Ægina, daughter of Asôpus, whom the

god had carried off and brought into the island to which he gave her

name: she was afterwards married to Aktôr, and had by him Menœtius,

father of Patroclus. As there were two rivers named Asôpus, one

between Phlius and Sikyôn, and another between Thêbes and Platæa—so

the Æginêtan heroic genealogy was connected both with that of Thêbes

and with that of Phlius: and this belief led to practical consequences

in the minds of those who accepted the legends as genuine history. For

when the Thêbans, in the 68th Olympiad, were hard-pressed in war by

Athens, they were directed by the Delphian oracle to ask assistance

of their next of kin: recollecting that Thêbê and Ægina had been

sisters, common daughters of Asôpus, they were induced to apply to the

Æginêtans as their next of kin, and the Æginêtans gave them aid, first

by sending to them their common heroes, the Æakids, next by actual

armed force.[433] Pindar dwells emphatically on the heroic brotherhood

between Thêbes, his native city, and Ægina.[434]

[433] Herodot. v. 81.

[434] Nem. iv. 22. Isthm. vii. 16.

Æakus was alone in Ægina: to relieve him from this solitude, Zeus

changed all the ants in the island into men, and thus provided him

with a numerous population, who, from their origin, were called

Myrmidons.[435] By his wife Endêis, daughter of Cheirôn, Æakus had for

his sons Pêleus and Telamôn: by the Nereid Psamathê, he had Phôkus. A

monstrous crime had then recently been committed by Pelops, in killing

the Arcadian prince, Stymphalus, under a simulation of friendship and

hospitality: for this the gods had smitten all Greece with famine

and barrenness. The oracles affirmed that nothing could relieve

Greece from this intolerable misery except the prayers of Æakus, the

most pious of mankind. Accordingly envoys from all quarters flocked

to Ægina, to prevail upon Æakus to put up prayers for them: on his

supplications the gods relented, and the suffering immediately ceased.

The grateful Greeks established in Ægina the temple and worship of Zeus

Panhellênius, one of the lasting monuments and institutions of the

island, on the spot where Æakus had offered up his prayer. The statues

of the envoys who had come to solicit him were yet to be seen in the

Æakeion, or sacred edifice of Æakus, in the time of Pausanias: and the

Athenian Isokratês, in his eulogy of Evagoras, the despot of Salamis in

Cyprus (who traced his descent through Teukrus to Æakus), enlarges upon

this signal miracle, recounted and believed by other Greeks as well as

by the Æginêtans, as a proof both of the great qualities and of the

divine favor and patronage displayed in the career of the Æakids.[436]

Æakus was also employed to aid Poseidôn and Apollo in building the

walls of Troy.[437]

[435] This tale, respecting the transformation of the ants into

men, is as old as the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women. See Düntzer,

Fragm. Epicc. 21. p. 34; evidently an etymological tale from the

name Myrmidones. Pausanias throws aside both the etymology and

the details of the miracle: he says that Zeus raised men from the

earth, at the prayer of Æakus (ii. 29, 2): other authors retained

the etymology of Myrmidons from μύρμηκες, but gave a different

explanation (Kallimachus, Fragm. 114, Düntzer). Μυρμιδόνων ἐσσῆνα

(Strabo, viii. p. 375). Ἐσσὴν, ὁ οἰκιστής (Hygin. fab. 52).

According to the Thessalian legend, Myrmidôn was the son of

Zeus by Eurymedusa, daughter of Kletor; Zeus having assumed the

disguise of an ant (Clemens Alex. Admon. ad Gent. p. 25. Sylb.).

[436] Apollod. iii. 12, 6. Isokrat. Evagor. Encom. vol. ii. p.

278, Auger. Pausan. i. 45, 13; ii. 29, 6. Schol. Aristoph. Equit.

1253.

So in the 106th Psalm, respecting the Israelites and Phinees, v.

29, “They provoked the Lord to anger by their inventions, and the

plague was great among them;” “Then stood up Phinees and prayed,

and so the plague ceased;” “And that was counted unto him for

righteousness, among all posterities for evermore.”

[437] Pindar, Olymp. viii. 41, with the Scholia. Didymus did not

find this story in any other poet older than Pindar.

Pêleus and Telamôn, the sons of Æakus, contracting a jealousy of

their bastard brother, Phôkus, in consequence of his eminent skill in

gymnastic contests, conspired to put him to death. Telamôn flung his

quoit at him while they were playing together, and Pêleus despatched

him by a blow with his hatchet in the back. They then concealed the

dead body in a wood, but Æakus, having discovered both the act and the

agents, banished the brothers from the island.[438] For both of them

eminent destinies were in store.

[438] Apollod. iii. 12, 6, who relates the tale somewhat

differently; but the old epic poem Alkmæônis gave the details

(ap. Schol. Eurip. Andromach. 685)—

Ἔνθα μὲν ἀντίθεος Τελαμὼν τροχοειδέϊ δίσκῳ

Πλῆξε κάρη· Πηλεὺς δὲ θοῶς ἀνὰ χεῖρα τανύσσας

Ἀξίνην ἐΰχαλκον ἐπεπλήγει μετὰ νῶτα.

While we notice the indifference to the moral quality of actions

implied in the old Hesiodic legend, when it imputes distinctly and

nakedly this proceeding to two of the most admired persons of the

heroic world—it is not less instructive to witness the change of

feeling which had taken place in the age of Pindar. That warm eulogist

of the great Æakid race hangs down his head with shame, and declines

to recount, though he is obliged darkly to glance at the cause which

forced the pious Æakus to banish his sons from Ægina. It appears that

Kallimachus, if we may judge by a short fragment, manifested the same

repugnance to mention it.[439]

[439] Pindar, Nem. v. 15, with Scholia, and Kallimach. Frag. 136.

Apollônius Rhodius represents the fratricide as inadvertent and

unintentional (i. 92); one instance amongst many of the tendency

to soften down and moralize the ancient tales.

Pindar, however, seems to forget this incident when he speaks

in other places of the general character of Pêleus (Olymp. ii.

75-86. Isthm. vii. 40).

Telamôn retired to Salamis, then ruled by Kychreus, the son of Poseidôn

and Salamis, who had recently rescued the island from the plague of

a terrible serpent. This animal, expelled from Salamis, retired to

Eleusis in Attica, where it was received and harbored by the goddess

Dêmêtêr in her sacred domicile.[440] Kychreus dying childless left his

dominion to Telamôn, who, marrying Peribœa, daughter of Alkathoos,

and grand-daughter of Pelops, had for his son the celebrated Ajax.

Telamôn took part both in the chase of the Kalydônian boar and in the

Argonautic expedition: he was also the intimate friend and companion of

Hêraklês, whom he accompanied in his enterprise against the Amazons,

and in the attack made with only six ships upon Laomedôn, king of Troy.

This last enterprise having proved completely successful, Telamôn was

rewarded by Hêraklês with the possession of the daughter of Laomedôn,

Hêsionê—who bore to him Teukros, the most distinguished archer amidst

the host of Agamemnôn, and the founder of Salamis in Cyprus.[441]

[440] Apollod. iii. 12, 7. Euphoriôn, Fragm. 5, Düntzer, p.

43, Epicc. Græc. There may have been a tutelary serpent in the

temple at Eleusis, as there was in that of Athênê Polias at

Athens (Herodot viii. 41. Photius, v. Οἰκοῦρον ὄφιν. Aristophan.

Lysistr. 759, with the Schol.).

[441] Apollod. iii. 12, 7. Hesiod. ap. Strab. ix. p. 393.

The libation and prayer of Hêraklês, prior to the birth of Ajax,

and his fixing the name of the yet unborn child, from an eagle

(αἰετὸς) which appeared in response to his words, was detailed in

the Hesiodic Eoia, and is celebrated by Pindar (Isthm. v. 30-54).

See also the Scholia.

Pêleus went to Phthia, where he married the daughter of Eurytiôn,

son of Aktôr, and received from him the third part of his dominions.

Taking part in the Kalydônian boar-hunt, he unintentionally killed his

father-in-law Eurytiôn, and was obliged to flee to Iôlkos, where he

received purification from Akastus, son of Pelias: the danger to which

he became exposed by the calumnious accusations of the enamoured wife

of Akastus has already been touched upon in a previous section. Pêleus

also was among the Argonauts; the most memorable event in his life

however was his marriage with the sea-goddess Thetis. Zeus and Poseidôn

had both conceived a violent passion for Thetis. But the former, having

been forewarned by Promêtheus that Thetis was destined to give birth to

a son more powerful than his father, compelled her, much against her

own will, to marry Pêleus; who, instructed by the intimations of the

wise Cheirôn, was enabled to seize her on the coast called Sêpias in

the southern region of Thessaly. She changed her form several times,

but Pêleus held her fast until she resumed her original appearance,

and she was then no longer able to resist. All the gods were present,

and brought splendid gifts to these memorable nuptials: Apollo sang

with his harp, Poseidôn gave to Pêleus the immortal horses Xanthos and

Balios, and Cheirôn presented a formidable spear, cut from an ash-tree

on Mount Pêlion. We shall have reason hereafter to recognize the value

of both these gifts in the exploits of Achilles.[442]

[442] Apollodôr. iii. 13, 5. Homer, Iliad, xviii. 434; xxiv. 62.

Pindar, Nem. iv. 50-68; Isthm. vii. 27-50. Herodot. vii. 192.

Catullus, Carm. 64. Epithal. Pel. et Thetidos, with the prefatory

remarks of Dœring.

The nuptials of Pêleus and Thetis were much celebrated in the

Hesiodic Catalogue, or perhaps in the Eoiai (Düntzer, Epic. Græc.

Frag. 36. p. 39), and Ægimius—see Schol. ad Apollôn. Rhod. iv.

869—where there is a curious attempt of Staphylus to rationalize

the marriage of Pêleus and Thetis.

There was a town, seemingly near Pharsalus in Thessaly, called

Thetideium. Thetis is said to have been carried by Pêleus to both

these places: probably it grew up round a temple and sanctuary of

this goddess (Pherekyd. Frag. 16, Didot; Hellank. ap. Steph. Byz.

Θεστιδεῖον).

The prominent part assigned to Thetis in the Iliad is well known,

and the post-Homeric poets of the Legend of Troy introduced her as

actively concurring first to promote the glory, finally to bewail the

death of her distinguished son.[443] Pêleus, having survived both his

son Achilles and his grandson Neoptolemus, is ultimately directed to

place himself on the very spot where he had originally seized Thetis,

and thither the goddess comes herself to fetch him away, in order

that he may exchange the desertion and decrepitude of age for a life

of immortality along with the Nêreids.[444] The spot was indicated to

Xerxês when he marched into Greece by the Iônians who accompanied him,

and his magi offered solemn sacrifices to her as well as to the other

Nêreids, as the presiding goddesses and mistresses of the coast.[445]

[443] See the arguments of the lost poems, the Cypria and the

Æthiopis, as given by Proclus, in Düntzer, Fragm. Epic. Gr. p.

11-16; also Schol. ad Iliad. xvi. 140; and the extract from the

lost Ψυχοστασία of Æschylus, ap. Plato. de Republic. ii. c. 21

(p. 382, St.).

[444] Eurip. Androm. 1242-1260; Pindar, Olymp. ii. 86.

[445] Herodot. vii. 198.

Neoptolemus or Pyrrhus, the son of Achilles, too young to engage in the

commencement of the siege of Troy, comes on the stage after the death

of his father as the indispensable and prominent agent in the final

capture of the city. He returns victor from Troy, not to Phthia, but to

Epirus, bringing with him the captive Andromachê, widow of Hectôr, by

whom Molossus is born to him. He himself perishes in the full vigor of

life at Delphi by the machinations of Orestês, son of Agamemnôn. But

his son Molossus—like Fleance, the son of Banquo, in Macbeth—becomes

the father of the powerful race of Molossian kings, who played so

conspicuous a part during the declining vigor of the Grecian cities,

and to whom the title and parentage of Æakids was a source of peculiar

pride, identifying them by community of heroic origin with genuine and

undisputed Hellênes.[446]

[446] Plutarch, Pyrrh. 1; Justin, xi. 3; Eurip. Androm. 1253;

Arrian, Exp. Alexand. i. 11.

The glories of Ajax, the second grandson of Æakus, before Troy, are

surpassed only by those of Achilles. He perishes by his own hand,

the victim of an insupportable feeling of humiliation, because a

less worthy claimant is allowed to carry off from him the arms of

the departed Achilles. His son Philæus receives the citizenship of

Athens, and the gens or dême called Philaidæ traced up to him its name

and its origin: moreover the distinguished Athenians, Miltiadês and

Thucydidês, were regarded as members of this heroic progeny.[447]

[447] Pherekydês and Hellanikus ap. Marcellin. Vit. Thucydid.

init.; Pausan. ii. 29, 4; Plutarch, Solôn, 10. According to

Apollodôrus, however, Pherekydês said that Telamôn was only the

friend of Pêleus, not his brother,—not the son of Æakus (iii. 12,

7): this seems an inconsistency. There was however a warm dispute

between the Athenians and the Megarians respecting the title to

the hero Ajax, who was claimed by both (see Pausan. i. 42, 4;

Plutarch, _l. c._): the Megarians accused Peisistratus of having

interpolated a line into the Catalogue in the Iliad (Strabo, ix.

p. 394).

Teukrus escaped from the perils of the siege of Troy as well as from

those of the voyage homeward, and reached Salamis in safety. But

his father Telamôn, indignant at his having returned without Ajax,

refused to receive him, and compelled him to expatriate. He conducted

his followers to Cyprus, where he founded the city of Salamis: his

descendant Evagoras was recognized as a Teukrid and as an Æakid even in

the time of Isokratês.[448]

[448] Herodot. vii. 90; Isokrat. Enc. Evag. _ut sup._; Sophokl.

Ajax, 984-995; Vellei. Patercul. i. 1; Æschyl. Pers. 891, and

Schol. The return from Troy of Teukrus, his banishment by

Telamôn, and his settlement in Cyprus, formed the subject of the

Τεῦκρος of Sophoklês, and of a tragedy under a similar title by

Pacuvius (Cicero de Orat. i. 58; ii. 46); Sophokl. Ajax, 892;

Pacuvii Fragm. Teucr. 15.—

“Te repudio, nec recipio, natum abdico,

Facesse.”

The legend of Teukros was connected in Attic archæology with the

peculiar functions and formalities of the judicature, ἐν Φρεαττοῖ

(Pausan. i. 28, 12; ii. 29, 7).

Such was the splendid heroic genealogy of the Æakids,—a family renowned

for military excellence. The Æakeion at Ægina, in which prayer and

sacrifice were offered to Æakus, remained in undiminished dignity down

to the time of Pausanias.[449] This genealogy connects together various

eminent gentes in Achaia Phthiôtis, in Ægina, in Salamis, in Cyprus,

and amongst the Epirotic Molossians. Whether we are entitled to infer

from it that the island of Ægina was originally peopled by Myrmidones

from Achaia Phthiôtis, as O. Müller imagines,[450] I will not pretend

to affirm. These mythical pedigrees seem to unite together special

clans or gentes, rather than the bulk of any community—just as we know

that the Athenians generally had no part in the Æakid genealogy, though

certain particular Athenian families laid claim to it. The intimate

friendship between Achilles and the Opuntian hero Patroclus—and the

community of name and frequent conjunction between the Locrian Ajax,

son of Oïleus, and Ajax, son of Telamôn—connect the Æakids with Opus

and the Opuntian Locrians, in a manner which we have no farther means

of explaining. Pindar too represents Menœtius, father of Patroclus, as

son of Aktôr and Ægina, and therefore maternal brother of Æakus.[451]

[449] Hesiod, Fragm. Düntz. Eoiai, 55, y. 43.—

Ἀλκὴν μὲν γὰρ ἔδωκεν Ὀλύμπιος Αἰακίδαισι,

Νοῦν δ᾽ Ἀμυθαονίδαις, πλοῦτον δ᾽ ἔπορ᾽ Ἀτρείδῃσι.

Polyb. v. 2.—

Αἰακίδας, πολέμῳ κεχαρηότας ἠΰτε δαιτί.

[450] See his Æginetica, p. 14, his earliest work.

[451] Pindar, Olymp. ix. 74. The hero Ajax, son of Oïleus, was

especially worshipped at Opus; solemn festivals and games were

celebrated in his honor.

CHAPTER XI.

ATTIC LEGENDS AND GENEALOGIES.

The most ancient name in Attic archæology, as far as our means of

information reach, is that of Erechtheus, who is mentioned both in

the Catalogue of the Iliad and in a brief allusion of the Odyssey.

Born of the Earth, he is brought up by the goddess Athênê, adopted

by her as her ward, and installed in her temple at Athens, where the

Athenians offer to him annual sacrifices. The Athenians are styled in

the Iliad, “the people of Erechtheus.”[452] This is the most ancient

testimony concerning Erechtheus, exhibiting him as a divine or heroic,

certainly a superhuman person, and identifying him with the primitive

germination (if I may use a term, the Grecian equivalent of which would

have pleased an Athenian ear) of Attic man. And he was recognized in

this same character, even at the close of the fourth century before the

Christian æra, by the Butadæ, one of the most ancient and important

Gentes at Athens, who boasted of him as their original ancestor: the

genealogy of the great Athenian orator Lykurgus, a member of this

family, drawn up by his son Abrôn, and painted on a public tablet in

the Erechtheion, contained as its first and highest name, Erechtheus,

son of Hêphæstos and the Earth. In the Erechtheion, Erechtheus

was worshipped conjointly with Athênê: he was identified with the

god Poseidôn, and bore the denomination of Poseidôn Erechtheus:

one of the family of the Butadæ, chosen among themselves by lot,

enjoyed the privilege and performed the functions of his hereditary

priest.[453] Herodotus also assigns the same earth-born origin to

Erechtheus:[454] but Pindar, the old poem called the Danais, Euripidês

and Apollodôrus—all name Erichthonius, son of Hêphæstos and the Earth,

as the being who was thus adopted and made the temple-companion of

Athênê, while Apollodôrus in another place identifies Erichthonius

with Poseidôn.[455] The Homeric scholiast treated Erechtheus and

Erichthonius as the same person under two names:[456] and since, in

regard to such mythical persons, there exists no other test of identity

of the subject except perfect similarity of the attributes, this seems

the reasonable conclusion.

[452] Iliad, ii. 546. Odyss. vii. 81.—

Οἳ δ᾽ ἄρ᾽ Ἀθήνας εἶχον ...

Δῆμον Ἐρεχθῆος μεγαλήτορος, ὅν ποτ᾽ Ἀθήνη

Θρέψε, Διὸς θυγάτηρ, τέκε δὲ ζείδωρος Ἄρουρα,

Κὰδ δ᾽ ἐν Ἀθήνῃσ᾽ εἷσεν ἑῷ ἐνὶ πίονι νηῷ,

Ἐνθάδε μιν ταύροισι καὶ ἀρνειοῖς ἱλάονται

Κοῦροι Ἀθηναίων, περιτελλομένων ἐνιαυτῶν.

[453] See the Life of Lykurgus, in Plutarch’s (I call it by

that name, as it is always printed with his works) Lives of the

Ten Orators, tom. iv. p. 382-384, Wytt. Κατῆγον δὲ τὸ γένος ἀπὸ

τούτων καὶ Ἐρεχθέως τοῦ Γῆς καὶ Ἡφαίστου ... καὶ ἐστὶν αὐτὴ ἡ

καταγωγὴ τοῦ γένους τῶν ἱερασαμένων του Ποσειδῶνος, etc. Ὃς τὴν

ἱερωσύνην Ποσειδῶνος Ἐρεχθέως εἶχε (pp. 382, 383). Erechtheus

Πάρεδρος of Athênê—Aristidês, Panathenaic. p. 184, with the

Scholia of Frommel.

Butês, the eponymus of the Butadæ, is the first priest of

Poseidôn Erichthonius: Apollod. iii. 15, 1. So Kallias (Xenoph.

Sympos. viii. 40), ἱερεὺς θεῶν τῶν ἀπ᾽ Ἐρεχθέως.

[454] Herodot. viii. 55.

[455] Harpokration, v. Αὐτοχθών. Ὁ δὲ Πίνδαρος καὶ ὁ τὴν Δαναΐδα

πεποιηκὼς φασιν, Ἐριχθόνιον ἐξ Ἡφαίστου καὶ Γῆς φανῆναι.

Euripidês, Ion. 21. Apollod. iii. 14, 6; 15, 1. Compare Plato,

Timæus, c. 6.

[456] Schol. ad Iliad, ii. 546, where he cites also Kallimachus

for the story of Erichthonius. Etymologicon Magn. Ἐρεχθεύς.

Plato (Kritias, c. 4) employs vague and general language to

describe the agency of Hêphæstos and Athênê, which the old fable

in Apollodôrus (iii. 14, 6) details in coarser terms. See Ovid,

Metam. ii. 757.

We may presume, from the testimony of Homer, that the first and oldest

conception of Athens and its sacred acropolis places it under the

special protection, and represents it as the settlement and favorite

abode of Athênê, jointly with Poseidôn; the latter being the inferior,

though the chosen companion of the former, and therefore exchanging

his divine appellation for the cognomen of Erechtheus. But the country

called Attica, which, during the historical ages, forms one social and

political aggregate with Athens, was originally distributed into many

independent dêmes or cantons, and included, besides, various religious

clans or hereditary sects (if the expression may be permitted); that

is, a multitude of persons not necessarily living together in the same

locality, but bound together by an hereditary communion of sacred

rites, and claiming privileges, as well as performing obligations,

founded upon the traditional authority of divine persons for whom

they had a common veneration. Even down to the beginning of the

Peloponnesian war, the demots of the various Attic dêmes, though long

since embodied in the larger political union of Attica, and having no

wish for separation, still retained the recollection of their original

political autonomy. They lived in their own separate localities,

resorted habitually to their own temples, and visited Athens only

occasionally for private or political business, or for the great public

festivals. Each of these aggregates, political as well as religious,

had its own eponymous god or hero, with a genealogy more or less

extended, and a train of mythical incidents more or less copious,

attached to his name, according to the fancy of the local exegetes and

poets. The eponymous heroes Marathôn, Dekelus, Kolônus, or Phlius, had

each their own title to worship, and their own position as themes of

legendary narrative, independent of Erechtheus, or Poseidôn, or Athênê,

the patrons of the acropolis common to all of them.

But neither the archæology of Attica, nor that of its various component

fractions, was much dwelt upon by the ancient epic poets of Greece.

Theseus is noticed both in the Iliad and Odyssey as having carried

off from Krête Ariadnê, the daughter of Minos—thus commencing that

connection between the Krêtan and Athenian legends which we afterwards

find so largely amplified—and the sons of Thêseus take part in the

Trojan war.[457] The chief collectors and narrators of the Attic mythes

were, the prose logographers, authors of the many compositions called

Atthides, or works on Attic archæology. These writers—Hellanikus,

the contemporary of Herodotus, is the earliest composer of an

Atthis expressly named, though Pherekydês also touched upon the

Attic fables—these writers, I say, interwove into one chronological

series the legends which either greatly occupied their own fancy, or

commanded the most general reverence among their countrymen. In this

way the religious and political legends of Eleusis, a town originally

independent of Athens, but incorporated with it before the historical

age, were worked into one continuous sequence along with those of the

Erechtheids. In this way, Kekrops, the eponymous hero of the portion of

Attica called Kekropia, came to be placed in the mythical chronology at

a higher point even than the primitive god or hero Erechtheus.

[457] Æthra, mother of Theseus, is also mentioned (Homer, Iliad,

iii. 144).

Ogygês is said to have reigned in Attica[458] 1020 years before the

first Olympiad, or 1796 years B. C. In his time happened the deluge

of Deukaliôn, which destroyed most of the inhabitants of the country:

after a long interval, Kekrops, an indigenous person, half man and

half serpent, is given to us by Apollodôrus as the first king of the

country: he bestowed upon the land, which had before been called

Actê, the name of Kekropia. In his day there ensued a dispute between

Athênê and Poseidôn respecting the possession of the acropolis at

Athens, which each of them coveted. First, Poseidôn struck the rock

with his trident, and produced the well of salt water which existed

in it, called the Erechthêis: next came Athênê, who planted the

sacred olive-tree ever afterwards seen and venerated in the portion

of Erechtheion called the cell of Pandrosus. The twelve gods decided

the dispute; and Kekrops having testified before them that Athênê

had rendered this inestimable service, they adjudged the spot to

her in preference to Poseidôn. Both the ancient olive-tree and the

well produced by Poseidôn were seen on the acropolis, in the temple

consecrated jointly to Athênê and Erechtheus, throughout the historical

ages. Poseidôn, as a mark of his wrath for the preference given to

Athênê, inundated the Thriasian plain with water.[459]

[458] Hellanikus, Fragm. 62; Philochor. Fragm. 8, ap. Euseb.

Præp. Evang. x. 10. p. 489. Larcher (Chronologie d’Hérodote, ch.

ix. s. 1. p. 278) treats both the historical personality and the

date of Ogygês as perfectly well authenticated.

It is not probable that Philochorus should have given any

calculation of time having reference to Olympiads; and hardly

conceivable that Hellanikus should have done so. Justin Martyr

quotes Hellanikus and Philochorus as having mentioned Moses,—ὡς

σφόδρα ἀρχαίου καὶ παλαιοῦ τῶν Ἰουδαίων ἄρχοντος Μωϋσέως

μέμνηνται—which is still more incredible even than the assertion

of Eusebius about their having fixed the date of Ogygês by

Olympiads (see Philochor. Fragm. 9).

[459] Apollod. iii. 14, 1; Herodot. viii. 55; Ovid. Metam. vi.

72. The story current among the Athenians represented Kekrops as

the judge of this controversy (Xenoph. Memor. iii. 5, 10).

The impressions of the trident of Poseidôn were still shown

upon the rock in the time of Pausanias (Pausan. i. 26, 4). For

the sanctity of the ancient olive-tree, see the narrative of

Herodotus (_l. c._), relating what happened to it when Xerxes

occupied the acropolis. As this tale seems to have attached

itself specially to the local peculiarities of the Erechtheion,

the part which Poseidôn plays in it is somewhat mean: that god

appears to greater advantage in the neighborhood of the Ἱπποτὴς

Κολωνὸς, as described in the beautiful Chorus of Sophoklês (Œdip.

Colon. 690-712).

A curious rationalization of the monstrous form ascribed to

Kekrops διφυὴς in Plutarch (Sera Num. Vindict. p. 551).

During the reign of Kekrops, Attica was laid waste by Karian pirates

on the coast, and by invasions of the Aônian inhabitants from Bœôtia.

Kekrops distributed the inhabitants of Attica into twelve local

sections—Kekropia, Tetrapolis, Epakria, Dekeleia, Eleusis, Aphidna,

Thorikus, Braurôn, Kythêrus, Sphêttus, Kêphisius, Phalerus. Wishing to

ascertain the number of inhabitants, he commanded each man to cast a

single stone into a general heap: the number of stones was counted, and

it was found that there were twenty thousand.[460]

[460] Philochor. ap. Strabo. ix. p. 397.

Kekrops married the daughter of Aktæus, who (according to Pausanias’s

version) had been king of the country before him, and had called it by

the name of Aktæa.[461] By her he had three daughters, Aglaurus, Ersê

and Pandrosus, and a son, Erysichthôn. Kekrops is called by Pausanias

contemporary of the Arcadian Lykaôn, and is favorably contrasted with

that savage prince in respect of his piety and humanity.[462] Though

he has been often designated in modern histories as an immigrant from

Egypt into Attica, yet the far greater number of ancient authorities

represent him as indigenous or earth-born.[463]

[461] The Parian chronological marble designates Aktæus as an

autochthonous person. Marmor Parium, Epoch. 3. Pausan. i. 2, 5.

Philochorus treated Aktæus as a fictitious name (Fragm. 8, _ut

sup._).

[462] Pausan. viii. 2. 2. The three daughters of Kekrops were

not unnoticed in the mythes (Ovid, Metam. ii. 739): the tale of

Kephalus, son of Hersê by Hermês, who was stolen away by the

goddess Eôs or Hêmera in consequence of his surpassing beauty,

was told in more than one of the Hesiodic poems (Pausan. i. 3, 1;

Hesiod. Theog. 986). See also Eurip. Ion. 269.

[463] Jul. Africanus also (ap. Euseb. x. 9. p. 486-488) calls

Kekrops γηγενὴς and αὐτοχθών.

Erysichthôn died without issue, and Kranaus succeeded him,—another

autochthonous person and another eponymus,—for the name Kranai was

an old denomination of the inhabitants of Attica.[464] Kranaus was

dethroned by Amphiktyôn, by some called an autochthonous man; by

others, a son of Deukaliôn: Amphiktyôn in his turn was expelled

by Erichthonius, son of Hêphæstos and the Earth,—the same person

apparently as Erechtheus, but inserted by Apollodôrus at this point of

the series. Erichthonius, the pupil and favored companion of Athênê,

placed in the acropolis the original Palladium or wooden statue of

that goddess, said to have dropped from heaven: he was moreover the

first to celebrate the festival of the Panathenæa. He married the nymph

Pasithea, and had for his son and successor Pandiôn.[465] Erichthonius

was the first person who taught the art of breaking in horses to the

yoke, and who drove a chariot and four.[466]

[464] Herod. viii. 44. Κρανααὶ Ἀθῆναι, Pindar.

[465] Apollod. iii. 14. Pausan. i. 26, 7.

[466] Virgil, Georgic iii. 114.

In the time of Pandiôn, who succeeded to Erichthonius, Dionysus and

Dêmêtêr both came into Attica: the latter was received by Keleos at

Eleusis.[467] Pandiôn married the nymph Zeuxippê, and had twin sons,

Erechtheus and Butês, and two daughters, Proknê and Philomêla. The two

latter are the subjects of a memorable and well-known legend. Pandiôn

having received aid in repelling the Thêbans from Têreus, king of

Thrace, gave him his daughter Proknê in marriage, by whom he had a son,

Itys. The beautiful Philomêla, going to visit her sister, inspired

the barbarous Thracian with an irresistible passion: he violated her

person, confined her in a distant pastoral hut, and pretended that she

was dead, cutting out her tongue to prevent her from revealing the

truth. After a long interval, Philomêla found means to acquaint her

sister of the cruel deed which had been perpetrated; she wove into a

garment words describing her melancholy condition, and despatched it

by a trusty messenger. Proknê, overwhelmed with sorrow and anger, took

advantage of the free egress enjoyed by women during the Bacchanalian

festival to go and release her sister: the two sisters then revenged

themselves upon Têreus by killing the boy Itys, and serving him up

for his father to eat: after the meal had been finished, the horrid

truth was revealed to him. Têreus snatched a hatchet to put Proknê to

death: she fled, along with Philomêla, and all the three were changed

into birds—Proknê became a swallow, Philomêla a nightingale, and

Têreus an hoopoe.[468] This tale, so popular with the poets, and so

illustrative of the general character of Grecian legend, is not less

remarkable in another point of view—that the great historian Thucydidês

seems to allude to it as an historical fact,[469] not however directly

mentioning the final metamorphosis.

[467] The mythe of the visit of Dêmêtêr to Eleusis, on which

occasion she vouchsafed to teach her holy rites to the leading

Eleusinians, is more fully touched upon in a previous chapter

(see _ante_, p. 50).

[468] Apollod. iii. 14, 8; Æsch. Supplic. 61; Soph. Elektr. 107;

Ovid, Metamorph. vi. 425-670. Hyginus gives the fable with some

additional circumstances, fab. 45. Antoninus Liberalis (Narr.

11), or Bœus, from whom he copies, has composed a new narrative

by combining together the names of Pandareos and Aêdôn, as given

in the Odyssey, xix. 523, and the adventures of the old Attic

fable. The hoopoe still continued the habit of chasing the

nightingale; it was to the Athenians a present fact. See Schol.

Aristoph. Aves, 212.

[469] Thucyd. ii. 29. He makes express mention of the nightingale

in connection with the story, though not of the metamorphosis.

See below, chap. xvi. p. 544, note 2. So also does Pausanias

mention and reason upon it as a real incident: he founds upon it

several moral reflections (i. 5, 4; x. 4, 5): the author of the

Λόγος Ἐπιτάφιος, ascribed to Demosthenês, treats it in the same

manner, as a fact ennobling the tribe Pandionis, of which Pandiôn

was the eponymus. The same author, in touching upon Kekrops, the

eponymus of the Kekropis tribe, cannot believe literally the

story of his being half man and half serpent: he rationalizes it

by saying that Kekrops was so called because in wisdom he was

like a man, in strength like a serpent (Demosth. p. 1397, 1398,

Reiske). Hesiod glances at the fable (Opp. Di. 566), ὀρθογόη

Πανδιονὶς ὦρτο χελιδών; see also Ælian., V. H. xii. 20. The

subject was handled by Sophoklês in his lost Têreus.

After the death of Pandiôn, Erechtheus succeeded to the kingdom,

and his brother, Butês, became priest of Poseidôn Erichthonius, a

function which his descendants ever afterwards exercised, the Butadæ

or Eteobutadæ. Erechtheus seems to appear in three characters in the

fabulous history of Athens—as a god, Poseidôn Erechtheus[470]—as a

hero, Erechtheus, son of the Earth—and now, as a king, son of Pandiôn:

so much did the ideas of divine and human rule become confounded and

blended together in the imagination of the Greeks in reviewing their

early times.

[470] Poseidôn is sometimes spoken of under the name of

Erechtheus simply (Lycophrôn, 158). See Hesychius, v. Ἐρεχθεύς.

The daughters of Erechtheus were not less celebrated in Athenian legend

than those of Pandiôn. Prokris, one of them, is among the heroines seen

by Odysseus in Hadês: she became the wife of Kephalus, son of Deionês,

and lived in the Attic dême of Thorikus. Kephalus tried her fidelity

by pretending that he was going away for a long period; but shortly

returned, disguising his person and bringing with him a splendid

necklace. He presented himself to Prokris without being recognized, and

succeeded in triumphing over her chastity. Having accomplished this

object, he revealed to her his true character: she earnestly besought

his forgiveness, and prevailed upon him to grant it. Nevertheless he

became shortly afterwards the unintentional author of her death: for

he was fond of hunting, and staid out a long time on his excursions,

so that Prokris suspected him of visiting some rival. She determined

to watch him by concealing herself in a thicket near the place of his

midday repose; and when Kephalus implored the presence of Nephelê (a

cloud) to protect him from the sun’s rays, she suddenly started from

her hiding-place: Kephalus, thus disturbed, cast his hunting-spear

unknowingly into the thicket and slew his wife. Erechtheus interred her

with great magnificence, and Kephalus was tried for the act before the

court of Areopagus, which condemned him to exile.[471]

[471] Pherekydês, Fragm. 77, Didot; ap. Schol. ad Odyss. xi. 320;

Hellanikus Fr. 82; ap. Schol. Eurip. Orest. 1648. Apollodôrus

(iii. 15, 1) gives the story differently.

Kreüsa, another daughter of Erechtheus, seduced by Apollo, becomes the

mother of Iôn, whom she exposes immediately after his birth in the cave

north of the acropolis, concealing the fact from every one. Apollo

prevails upon Hermês to convey the new-born child to Delphi, where he

is brought up as a servant of the temple, without knowing his parents.

Kreüsa marries Xuthus, son of Æolus, but continuing childless, she goes

with Xuthus to the Delphian oracle to inquire for a remedy. The god

presents to them Iôn, and desires them to adopt him as their son: their

son Achæus is afterwards born to them, and Iôn and Achæus become the

eponyms of the Iônians and Achæans.[472]

[472] Upon this story of Iôn is founded the tragedy of Euripidês

which bears that name. I conceive many of the points of that

tragedy to be of the invention of Euripidês himself: but to

represent Iôn as son of Apollo, not of Xuthus, seems a genuine

Attic legend. Respecting this drama, see O. Müller, Hist. of

Dorians, ii. 2. 13-15. I doubt however the distinction which he

draws between the Ionians and the other population of Attica.

Oreithyia, the third daughter of Erechtheus, was stolen away by the god

Boreas while amusing herself on the banks of the Ilissus, and carried

to his residence in Thrace. The two sons of this marriage, Zêtês

and Kalaïs, were born with wings: they took part in the Argonautic

expedition, and engaged in the pursuit of the Harpies: they were slain

at Tênos by Hêraklês. Kleopatra, the daughter of Boreas and Oreithyia,

was married to Phineus, and had two sons, Plexippus and Pandiôn; but

Phineus afterwards espoused a second wife, Idæa, the daughter of

Dardanus, who, detesting the two sons of the former bed, accused them

falsely of attempting her chastity, and persuaded Phineus in his wrath

to put out the eyes of both. For this cruel proceeding he was punished

by the Argonauts in the course of their voyage.[473]

[473] Apollodôr. iii. 15, 2; Plato, Phædr. c. 3; Sophok. Antig.

984; also the copious Scholion on Apollôn. Rhod. i. 212.

The tale of Phineus is told very differently in the Argonautic

expedition as given by Apollônius Rhodius, ii. 180. From

Sophoklês we learn that this was the Attic version.

The two winged sons of Boreas and their chase of the Harpies were

noticed in the Hesiodic Catalogue (see Schol. Apollôn. Rhod. ii.

296). But whether the Attic legend of Oreithyia was recognized in

the Hesiodic poems seems not certain.

Both Æschylus and Sophoklês composed dramas on the subject of

Oreithyia (Longin. de Sublimit. c. 3). “Orithyia Atheniensis,

filia Terrigenæ, et a Borea in Thraciam rapta.” (Servius ad Virg.

Æneid. xii. 83). Terrigenæ is the γηγενὴς Ἐρεχθεύς. Philochorus

(Fragm. 30) rationalized the story, and said that it alluded to

the effects of a violent wind.

On more than one occasion the Athenians derived, or at least

believed themselves to have derived, important benefits from this

marriage of Boreas with the daughter of their primæval hero: one

inestimable service, rendered at a juncture highly critical for

Grecian independence, deserves to be specified.[474] At the time of

the invasion of Greece by Xerxês, the Grecian fleet was assembled at

Chalcis and Artemision in Eubœa, awaiting the approach of the Persian

force, so overwhelming in its numbers as well by sea as on land. The

Persian fleet had reached the coast of Magnêsia and the south-eastern

corner of Thessaly without any material damage, when the Athenians

were instructed by an oracle “to invoke the aid of their son-in-law.”

Understanding the advice to point to Boreas, they supplicated his

aid and that of Oreithyia, most earnestly, as well by prayer as by

sacrifice,[475] and the event corresponded to their wishes. A furious

north-easterly wind immediately arose, and continued for three days

to afflict the Persian fleet as it lay on an unprotected coast: the

number of ships driven ashore, both vessels of war and of provision,

was immense, and the injury done to the armament was never thoroughly

repaired. Such was the powerful succor which the Athenians derived, at

a time of their utmost need, from their son-in-law Boreas; and their

gratitude was shown by consecrating to him a new temple on the banks of

the Ilissus.

[474] Herodot. vii. 189. Οἱ δ᾽ ὦν Ἀθηναῖοί σφι λέγουσι βοηθήσαντα

τὸν Βορῆν πρότερον, καὶ τότε ἐκεῖνα κατεργάσασθαι· καὶ ἱρὸν

ἀπελθόντες Βορέω ἱδρύσαντο παρὰ ποταμὸν Ἴλισσον.

[475] Herodot. _l. c._ Ἀθηναῖοι τὸν Βορῆν ἐκ θεοπροπίου

ἐπεκαλέσαντο, ἐλθόντος σφι ἄλλου χρηστηρίου, τὸν γαμβρὸν

ἐπίκουρον καλέσασθαι. Βορῆς δὲ, κατὰ τὸν Ἑλλήνων λόγον ἔχει

γυναῖκα Ἀττικὴν, Ὠρειθυίην τὴν Ἐρεχθῆος. Κατὰ δὴ τὸ κῆδος τοῦτο,

οἱ Ἀθηναῖοι, συμβαλλεόμενοί σφι τὸν Βορῆν γαμβρὸν εἶναι, etc.

The three remaining daughters of Erechtheus—he had six in all[476]—were

in Athenian legend yet more venerated than their sisters, on account of

having voluntarily devoted themselves to death for the safety of their

country. Eumolpus of Eleusis was the son of Poseidôn and the eponymous

hero of the sacred gens called the Eumolpids, in whom the principal

functions, appertaining to the mysterious rites of Dêmêtêr at Eleusis,

were vested by hereditary privilege: he made war upon Erechtheus and

the Athenians, with the aid of a body of Thracian allies; indeed it

appears that the legends of Athens, originally foreign and unfriendly

to those of Eleusis, represented him as having been himself a Thracian

born and an immigrant into Attica.[477] Respecting Eumolpus however

and his parentage, the discrepancies much exceed even the measure of

license usual in the legendary genealogies, and some critics, both

ancient and modern, have sought to reconcile these contradictions

by the usual stratagem of supposing two or three different persons

of the same name. Even Pausanias, so familiar with this class of

unsworn witnesses, complains of the want of native Eleusinian

genealogists,[478] and of the extreme license of fiction in which other

authors had indulged.

[476] Suidas and Photius, v. Πάρθενοι: Protogeneia and Pandôra

are given as the names of two of them. The sacrifice of Pandôra,

in the Iambi of Hippônax (Hippônact. Fragm. xxi. Welck. ap.

Athen. ix. p. 370), seems to allude to this daughter of

Erechtheus.

[477] Apollodôr. iii. 15, 3; Thucyd. ii. 15; Isokratês (Panegyr.

t. i. p. 206; Panathenaic. t. ii. p. 560, Auger), Lykurgus,

cont. Leocrat. p. 201, Reiske, Pausan. i. 38, 3; Euripid.

Erechth. Fragm. The Schol. ad. Soph. Œd. Col. 1048 gives valuable

citations from Ister, Akestodôrus and Androtiôn: we see that

the inquirers of antiquity found it difficult to explain how

the Eumolpids could have acquired their ascendant privileges in

the management of the Eleusinia, seeing that Eumolpus himself

was a foreigner.—Ζητεῖται, τί δήποτε οἱ Εὐμολπίδαι τῶν τελετῶν

ἐξάρχουσι, ξένοι ὄντες. Thucydidês does _not_ call Eumolpus

a Thracian: Strabo’s language is very large and vague (vii.

p. 321): Isokratês says that he assailed Athens in order to

vindicate the rights of his father Poseidôn to the sovereign

patronage of the city. Hyginus copies this (fab. 46).

[478] Pausan. i. 38. 3. Ἐλευσίνιοί τε ἀρχαῖοι, ἅτε οὐ προσόντων

σφισι γενεαλόγων, ἄλλα τε πλάσασθαι δεδώκασι καὶ μάλιστα ἐς τὰ

γένη τῶν ἡρώων. See Heyne ad Apollodôr. iii. 15, 4. “Eumolpi

nomen modo communicatum pluribus, modo plurium hominum res et

facta cumulata in unum. Is ad quem Hercules venisse dicitur,

serior ætate fuit: antiquior est is de quo hoc loco agitur ...

antecessisse tamen hunc debet alius, qui cum Triptolemo vixit,”

etc. See the learned and valuable comments of Lobeck in his

Aglaophamus, tom. i. p. 206-213: in regard to the discrepancies

of this narrative he observes, I think, with great justice (p.

211), “quo uno exemplo ex innumerabilibus delecto, arguitur

eorum temeritas, qui ex variis discordibusque poetarum et

mythographorum narratiunculis, antiquæ famæ formam et quasi

lineamenta recognosci posse sperant.”

In the Homeric Hymn to Dêmêtêr, the most ancient testimony before

us,—composed, to all appearance, earlier than the complete

incorporation of Eleusis with Athens,—Eumolpus appears (to repeat

briefly what has been stated in a previous chapter) as one of the

native chiefs or princes of Eleusis, along with Triptolemus, Dioklês,

Polyxeinus and Dolichus: Keleos is the king, or principal among these

chiefs, the son or lineal descendant of the eponymous Eleusis himself.

To these chiefs, and to the three daughters of Keleos, the goddess

Dêmêtêr comes in her sorrow for the loss of her daughter Persephonê:

being hospitably entertained by Keleos she reveals her true character,

commands that a temple shall be built to her at Eleusis, and prescribes

to them the rites according to which they are to worship her.[479] Such

seems to have been the ancient story of the Eleusinians respecting

their own religious antiquities: Keleos, with Metaneira his wife, and

the other chiefs here mentioned, were worshipped at Eleusis, and from

thence transferred to Athens as local gods or heroes.[480] Eleusis

became incorporated with Athens, apparently not very long before the

time of Solôn; and the Eleusinian worship of Dêmêtêr was then received

into the great religious solemnities of the Athenian state, to which

it owes its remarkable subsequent extension and commanding influence.

In the Atticized worship of the Eleusinian Dêmêtêr, the Eumolpids and

the Kêrŷkes were the principal hereditary functionaries: Eumolpus, the

eponym of this great family, came thus to play the principal part in

the Athenian legendary version of the war between Athens and Eleusis.

An oracle had pronounced that Athens could only be rescued from his

attack by the death of the three daughters of Erechtheus; their

generous patriotism consented to the sacrifice, and their father put

them to death. He then went forth confidently to the battle, totally

vanquished the enemy, and killed Eumolpus with his own hand.[481]

Erechtheus was worshipped as a god, and his daughters as goddesses,

at Athens.[482] Their names and their exalted devotion were cited

along with those of the warriors of Marathôn, in the public assembly

of Athens, by orators who sought to arouse the languid patriot, or to

denounce the cowardly deserter; and the people listened both to one and

the other with analogous feelings of grateful veneration, as well as

with equally unsuspecting faith in the matter of fact.[483]

[479] Homer, Hymn, ad Cerer. 153-475.—

... Ἡ δὲ κίουσα θεμιστοπόλοις βασιλεῦσι

Δεῖξεν Τριπτολέμῳ τε, Διόκλεΐ τε πληξίππῳ,

Εὐμόλπου τε βίῃ, Κελέῳ θ᾽ ἡγήτορι λαῶν,

Δρησμοσύνην ἱερῶν.

Also v. 105.

Τὴν δὲ ἴδον Κελέοιο Ἐλευσινίδαο θύγατρες.

The hero Eleusis is mentioned in Pausanias, i. 38, 7: some said

that he was the son of Hermês, others that he was the son of

Ogygus. Compare Hygin. f. 147.

[480] Keleos and Metaneira were worshipped by the Athenians

with divine honors (Athenagoras, Legat. p. 53, ed. Oxon.):

perhaps he confounds divine and heroic honors, as the Christian

controversialists against Paganism were disposed to do.

Triptolemus had a temple at Eleusis (Pausan. i. 38, 6).

[481] Apollodôr. iii. 15, 4. Some said that Immaradus, son of

Eumolpus, had been killed by Erechtheus (Pausan. i. 5, 2);

others, that both Eumolpus and his son had experienced this fate

(Schol. ad Eurip. Phœniss. 854). But we learn from Pausanias

himself what the story in the interior of the Erechtheion

was,—that Erechtheus killed Eumolpus (i. 27, 3).

[482] Cicero, Nat. Deor. iii. 19; Philochor. ap. Schol. Œdip.

Col. 100. Three daughters of Erechtheus perished, and three

daughters were worshipped (Apollodôr. iii. 15, 4; Hesychius,

Ζεῦγος τριπάρθενον; Eurip. Erechtheus, Fragm. 3, Dindorf); but

both Euripidês and Apollodôrus said that Erechtheus was only

required to sacrifice, and only did sacrifice, _one_,—the other

two slew themselves voluntarily, from affection for their sister.

I cannot but think (in spite of the opinion of Welcker to the

contrary, Griechisch. Tragöd. ii. p. 722) that the genuine legend

represented Erechtheus as having sacrificed all three, as appears

in the Iôn of Euripidês (276):—

IÔN. Πατὴρ Ἐρεχθεὺς σὰς ἔθυσε συγγόνους;

CREÜSA. Ἔτλη πρὸ γαίας σφάγια παρθένους κτανεῖν.

IÔN. Σὺ δ᾽ ἐξεσώθης πῶς κασιγνήτων μόνη;

CREÜSA. Βρέφος νέογνον μητρὸς ἦν ἐν ἀγκάλαις.

Compare with this passage, Demosthen. Λόγος Ἐπιταφ. p. 1397,

Reisk. Just before, the death of the three daughters of Kekrops,

for infringing the commands of Athênê, had been mentioned.

Euripidês modified this in his Erechtheus, for he there

introduced the mother Praxithea consenting to the immolation

of one daughter, for the rescue of the country from a foreign

invader: to propose to a mother the immolation of three daughters

at once, would have been too revolting. In most instances we find

the strongly marked features, the distinct and glaring incidents

as well as the dark contrasts, belong to the Hesiodic or old

Post-Homeric legend; the changes made afterwards go to soften,

dilute, and to complicate, in proportion as the feelings of the

public become milder and more humane; sometimes however the later

poets add new horrors.

[483] See the striking evidence contained in the oration of

Lykurgus against Leocratês (p. 201-204. Reiske; Demosthen. Λόγ.

Ἐπιταφ. _l. c._; and Xenophon, Memor. iii. 5, 9): from the two

latter passages we see that the Athenian story represented the

invasion under Eumolpus as a combined assault from the western

continent.

Though Erechtheus gained the victory over Eumolpus, yet the story

represents Poseidôn as having put an end to the life and reign of

Erechtheus, who was (it seems) slain in the battle. He was succeeded

by his son Kekrops II., and the latter again by his son Pandiôn

II.,[484]—two names unmarked by any incidents, and which appear to be

mere duplication of the former Kekrops and Pandiôn, placed there by

the genealogizers for the purpose of filling up what seemed to them a

chronological chasm. The Attic legends were associated chiefly with

a few names of respected eponymous personages; and if the persons

called the children of Pandiôn were too numerous to admit of their

being conveniently ascribed to one father, there was no difficulty in

supposing a second prince of the same name.

[484] Apollodôr. iii. 15, 5; Eurip. Iôn, 282; Erechth. Fragm. 20,

Dindorf.

Apollodôrus passes at once from Erechtheus to his son Kekrops II., then

to Pandiôn II., next to the four sons of the latter, Ægeus, Pallas,

Nisus and Lykus. But the tragedians here insert the story of Xuthus,

Kreüsa and Iôn; the latter being the son of Kreüsa by Apollo, but given

by the god to Xuthus, and adopted by the latter as his own. Iôn becomes

the successor of Erechtheus, and his sons Teleon, Hoplês, Argadês and

Aigikorês become the eponyms of the four ancient tribes of Athens,

which subsisted until the revolution of Kleisthenês. Iôn himself is

the eponym of the Iônic race both in Asia, in Europe, and in the Ægean

islands: Dôrus and Achæus are the sons of Kreüsa by Xuthus, so that Iôn

is distinguished from both of them by being of divine parentage.[485]

According to the story given by Philochorus, Iôn rendered such

essential service in rescuing the Athenians from the attack of the

Thracians under Eumolpus, that he was afterwards made king of the

country, and distributed all the inhabitants into four tribes or

castes, corresponding to different modes of life,—soldiers, husbandmen,

goatherds, and artisans.[486] And it seems that the legend explanatory

of the origin of the festival Boëdromia, originally important enough to

furnish a name to one of the Athenian months, was attached to the aid

thus rendered by Iôn.[487]

[485] Eurip. Iôn. 1570-1595. The Kreüsa of Sophoklês, a lost

tragedy, seems to have related to the same subject.

Pausanias (vii. 1, 2) tells us that Xuthus was chosen to

arbitrate between the contending claims of the sons of Erechtheus.

[486] Philochor. ap. Harpocrat. v. Βοηδρόμια; Strabo, viii. p.

383.

[487] Philochor. ap. Harpocrat. v. Βοηδρόμια.

We pass from Iôn to persons of far greater mythical dignity and

interest,—Ægeus and his son Thêseus.

Pandiôn had four sons, Ægeus, Nisus, Lykus, and Pallas, between whom

he divided his dominions. Nisus received the territory of Megaris,

which had been under the sway of Pandiôn, and there founded the seaport

of Nisæa. Lykus was made king of the eastern coast, but a dispute

afterwards ensued, and he quitted the country altogether, to establish

himself on the southern coast of Asia Minor among the Termilæ, to

whom he gave the name of Lykians.[488] Ægeus, as the eldest of the

four, became king of Athens; but Pallas received a portion both of the

south-western coast and the interior, and he as well as his children

appear as frequent enemies both to Ægeus and to Thêseus. Pallas is

the eponym of the dême Pallênê, and the stories respecting him and

his sons seem to be connected with old and standing feuds among the

different dêmes of Attica, originally independent communities. These

feuds penetrated into the legend, and explain the story which we find

that Ægeus and Thêseus were not genuine Erechtheids, the former being

denominated a supposititious child to Pandiôn.[489]

[488] Sophokl. ap. Strab. ix. p. 392; Herodot. i. 173; Strabo,

xii. p. 573.

[489] Plutarch, Thêseus, c. 13. Αἰγεὺς θετὸς γενόμενος Πανδίονι,

καὶ μηδὲν τοῖς Ἐρεχθείδαις προσήκων. Apollodôr. iii. 15, 6.

Ægeus[490] has little importance in the mythical history except as

the father of Thêseus: it may even be doubted whether his name is

anything more than a mere cognomen of the god Poseidôn, who was (as we

are told) the real father of this great Attic Hêraklês. As I pretend

only to give a very brief outline of the general territory of Grecian

legend, I cannot permit myself to recount in detail the chivalrous

career of Thêseus, who is found both in the Kalydônian boar-hunt and

in the Argonautic expedition—his personal and victorious encounters

with the robbers Sinnis, Procrustês, Periphêtês, Scirôn and others—his

valuable service in ridding his country of the Krommyonian sow and

the Marathônian bull—his conquest of the Minotaur in Krête, and his

escape from the dangers of the labyrinth by the aid of Ariadnê, whom he

subsequently carries off and abandons—his many amorous adventures, and

his expeditions both against the Amazons and into the under-world along

with Peirithous.[491]

[490] Ægeus had by Mêdea (who took refuge at Athens after her

flight from Corinth) a son named Mêdus, who passed into Asia,

and was considered as the eponymus and progenitor of the Median

people. Datis, the general who commanded the invading Persian

army at the battle of Marathôn, sent a formal communication to

the Athenians announcing himself as the descendant of Mêdus, and

requiring to be admitted as king of Attica: such is the statement

of Diodôrus (Exc. Vatic. vii.-x. 48: see also Schol. Aristophan.

Pac. 289).

[491] Ovid, Metamorph. vii. 433.—

... “Te, maxime Theseu,

Mirata est Marathon Cretæi sanguine Tauri:

Quodque Suis securus arat Cromyona colonus,

Munus opusque tuum est. Tellus Epidauria per te

Clavigeram vidit Vulcani occumbere prolem:

Vidit et immanem Cephisias ora Procrustem.

Cercyonis letum vidit Cerealis Eleusin.

Occidit ille Sinis,” etc.

Respecting the amours of Thêseus, Ister especially seems to have

entered into great details; but some of them were noticed both

in the Hesiodic poems and by Kekrops, not to mention Pherekydês

(Athen. xiii. p. 557). Peirithous, the intimate friend and

companion of Thêseus, is the eponymous hero of the Attic dême or

gens Perithoidæ (Ephorus ap. Photium, v. Περιθοῖδαι).

Thucydidês delineates the character of Thêseus as a man who combined

sagacity with political power, and who conferred upon his country the

inestimable benefit of uniting all the separate and self-governing

dêmes of Attica into one common political society.[492] From the

well-earned reverence attached to the assertion of Thucydidês, it

has been customary to reason upon this assertion as if it were

historically authentic, and to treat the romantic attributes which we

find in Plutarch and Diodôrus as if they were fiction superinduced

upon this basis of fact. Such a view of the case is in my judgment

erroneous. The athletic and amorous knight-errant is the old version

of the character—the profound and long-sighted politician is a

subsequent correction, introduced indeed by men of superior mind, but

destitute of historical warranty, and arising out of their desire to

find reasons of their own for concurring in the veneration which the

general public paid more easily and heartily to their national hero.

Thêseus, in the Iliad and Odyssey, fights with the Lapithæ against the

Centaurs: Thêseus, in the Hesiodic poems, is misguided by his passion

for the beautiful Æglê, daughter of Panopeus:[493] and the Thêseus

described in Plutarch’s biography is in great part a continuation

and expansion of these same or similar attributes, mingled with many

local legends, explaining, like the Fasti of Ovid, or the lost Aitia

of Kallimachus, the original genesis of prevalent religious and social

customs.[494] Plutarch has doubtless greatly softened down and modified

the adventures which he found in the Attic logographers as well as

in the poetical epics called Thêsêis. For in his preface to the life

of Thêseus, after having emphatically declared that he is about to

transcend the boundary both of the known and the knowable, but that the

temptation of comparing the founder of Athens with the founder of Rome

is irresistible, he concludes with the following remarkable words: “I

pray that this fabulous matter may be so far obedient to my endeavors

as to receive, when purified by reason, the aspect of history: in those

cases where it haughtily scorns plausibility and will admit no alliance

with what is probable, I shall beg for indulgent hearers, willing to

receive antique narrative in a mild spirit.”[495] We see here that

Plutarch sat down, not to recount the old fables as he found them, but

to purify them by reason and to impart to them the aspect of history.

We have to thank him for having retained, after this purification,

so much of what is romantic and marvellous; but we may be sure that

the sources from which he borrowed were more romantic and marvellous

still. It was the tendency of the enlightened men of Athens, from

the days of Solôn downwards, to refine and politicize the character

of Thêseus:[496] even Peisistratus expunged from one of the Hesiodic

poems the line which described the violent passion of the hero for the

fair Æglê:[497] and the tragic poets found it more congenial to the

feelings of their audience to exhibit him as a dignified and liberal

sovereign, rather than as an adventurous single-handed fighter. But the

logographers and the Alexandrine poets remained more faithful to the

old fables. The story of Hekalê, the hospitable old woman who received

and blessed Thêseus when he went against the Marathônian bull, and whom

he found dead when he came back to recount the news of his success, was

treated by Kallimachus:[498] and Virgil must have had his mind full of

the unrefined legends when he numbered this Attic Hêraklês among the

unhappy sufferers condemned to endless penance in the under-world.[499]

[492] Thuc. ii. 15. Ἐπειδὴ δὲ Θησεὺς ἐβασίλευσε, γενόμενος μετὰ

τοῦ ξυνετοῦ καὶ δυνατὸς, τά τε ἄλλα διεκόσμησε τὴν χώραν, καὶ

κατάλυσας τῶν ἄλλων πόλεων τά τε βουλευτήρια καὶ τὰς ἀρχὰς, ἐς

τὴν νῦν πόλιν ... ξυνῴκισε πάντας.

[493] Iliad, i. 265; Odyss. xi. 321. I do not notice the

suspected line, Odyss. xi. 630.

[494] Diodôrus also, from his disposition to assimilate Thêseus

to Hêraklês, has given us his chivalrous as well as his political

attributes (iv. 61).

[495] Plutarch, Thêseus, i. Εἴη μὲν οὖν ἡμῖν, ἐκκαθαιρόμενον

λόγῳ τὸ μυθῶδες ὑπακοῦσαι καὶ λαβεῖν ἱστορίας ὄψιν· ὅπου δ᾽ ἂν

αὐθαδῶς τοῦ πιθανοῦ περιφρονῇ, καὶ μὴ δέχηται ~τὴν πρὸς τὸ εἰκὸς

μίξιν~, εὐγνωμόνων ἀκροατῶν δεησόμεθα, καὶ πρᾴως τὴν ἀρχαιολογίαν

προσδεχομένων.

[496] See Isokratês, Panathenaic. (t. ii. p. 510-512, Auger);

Xenoph. Memor. iii. 5, 10. In the Helenæ Encomium, Isokratês

enlarges more upon the personal exploits of Thêseus in

conjunction with his great political merits (t. ii. p. 342-350,

Auger).

[497] Plutarch, Thêseus, 20.

[498] See the epigram of Krinagoras, Antholog. Pal. vol. ii. p.

144; ep. xv. ed. Brunck. and Kallimach. Frag. 40.

Ἀείδει δ᾽ (Kallimachus) Ἑκάλης τε φιλοξείνοιο καλιὴν,

Καὶ Θησεῖ Μαραθὼν οὓς ἐπέθηκε πόνους.

Some beautiful lines are preserved by Suidas, v. Ἐπαύλια,

περὶ Ἑκάλης θανούσης (probably spoken by Thêseus himself, see

Plutarch, Theseus, c. 14).

Ἴθι, πρηεῖα γυναικῶν,

Τὴν ὁδὸν, ἣν ἀνίαι θυμαλγέες οὐ περόωσιν·

Πόλλακι σεῖ᾽, ὦ μαῖα, φιλοξείνοιο καλιῆς

Μνησόμεθα· ξυνὸν γὰρ ἐπαύλιον ἔσκεν ἅπασι.

[499] Virgil, Æneid, vi. 617. “Sedet æternumque sedebit Infelix

Thêseus.”

Two however among the Thêseian fables cannot be dismissed without

some special notice,—the war against the Amazons, and the expedition

against Krête. The former strikingly illustrates the facility as well

as the tenacity of Grecian legendary faith; the latter embraces the

story of Dædalus and Minos, two of the most eminent among Grecian

ante-historical personages.

The Amazons, daughters of Arês and Harmonia,[500] are both early

creations and frequent reproductions of the ancient epic—which

was indeed, we may generally remark, largely occupied both with

the exploits and sufferings of women, or heroines, the wives and

daughters of the Grecian heroes—and which recognized in Pallas Athênê

the finished type of an irresistible female warrior. A nation of

courageous, hardy and indefatigable women, dwelling apart from men,

permitting only a short temporary intercourse for the purpose of

renovating their numbers, and burning out their right breast with

a view of enabling themselves to draw the bow freely,—this was at

once a general type stimulating to the fancy of the poet and a theme

eminently popular with his hearers. Nor was it at all repugnant to

the faith of the latter—who had no recorded facts to guide them, and

no other standard of credibility as to the past except such poetical

narratives themselves—to conceive communities of Amazons as having

actually existed in anterior time. Accordingly we find these warlike

females constantly reappearing in the ancient poems, and universally

accepted as past realities. In the Iliad, when Priam wishes to

illustrate emphatically the most numerous host in which he ever found

himself included, he tells us that it was assembled in Phyrgia, on the

banks of the Sangarius, for the purpose of resisting the formidable

Amazons. When Bellerophôn is to be employed on a deadly and perilous

undertaking,[501] by those who indirectly wish to procure his death,

he is despatched against the Amazons. In the Æthiopis of Arktinus,

describing the post-Homeric war of Troy, Penthesileia, queen of the

Amazons, appears as the most effective ally of the besieged city,

and as the most formidable enemy of the Greeks, succumbing only to

the invincible might of Achilles.[502] The Argonautic heroes find

the Amazons on the river Thermôdon, in their expedition along the

southern coast of the Euxine. To the same spot Hêraclês goes to attack

them, in the performance of the ninth labor imposed upon him by

Eurystheus, for the purpose of procuring the girdle of the Amazonian

queen, Hippolytê;[503] and we are told that they had not yet recovered

from the losses sustained in this severe aggression when Thêseus also

assaulted and defeated them, carrying off their queen, Antiopê.[504]

This injury they avenged by invading Attica,—an undertaking (as

Plutarch justly observes) “neither trifling nor feminine,” especially

if according to the statement of Hellanikus, they crossed the Cimmerian

Bosporus on the winter ice, beginning their march from the Asiatic

side of the Paulus Mæotis.[505] They overcame all the resistances

and difficulties of this prodigious march, and penetrated even into

Athens itself, where the final battle, hard-fought and at one time

doubtful, by which Theseus crushed them, was fought—in the very heart

of the city. Attic antiquaries confidently pointed out the exact

position of the two contending armies: the left wing of the Amazons

rested upon the spot occupied by the commemorative monument called the

Amazoneion; the right wing touched the Pnyx, the place in which the

public assemblies of the Athenian democracy were afterwards held. The

details and fluctuations of the combat, as well as the final triumph

and consequent truce, were recounted by these authors with as complete

faith and as much circumstantiality as those of the battle of Platæa

by Herodotus. The sepulchral edifice called the Amazoneion, the tomb

or pillar of Antiopê near the western gate of the city—the spot called

the Horkomosion near the temple of Thêseus—even the hill of Areiopagus

itself, and the sacrifices which it was customary to offer to the

Amazons at the periodical festival of the Thêseia—were all so many

religious mementos of this victory;[506] which was moreover a favorite

subject of art both with the sculptor and the painter, at Athens as

well as in other parts of Greece.

[500] Pherekyd. Fragm. 25, Didot.

[501] Iliad, iii. 186; vi. 152.

[502] See Proclus’s Argument of the lost Æthiopis (Fragm. Epicor.

Græcor. ed. Düntzer, p. 16). We are reduced to the first book of

Quintus Smyrnæus for some idea of the valor of Penthesileia; it

is supposed to be copied more or less closely from the Æthiopis.

See Tychsen’s Dissertation prefixed to his edition of Quintus,

sections 5 and 12. Compare Dio. Chrysostom. Or. xi. p. 350,

Reiske. Philostratus (Heroica, c. 19, p. 751) gives a strange

transformation of this old epical narrative into a descent of

Amazons upon the island sacred to Achilles.

[503] Apollôn. Rhod. ii. 966, 1004; Apollod. ii. 5-9; Diodôr.

ii. 46; iv. 16. The Amazons were supposed to speak the Thracian

language (Schol. Apoll Rhod. ii. 953), though some authors

asserted them to be natives of Libyia, others of Æthiopia (_ib._

965).

Hellanikus (Frag. 33, ap. Schol. Pindar. Nem. iii. 65) said that

all the Argonauts had assisted Hêraklês in this expedition: the

fragment of the old epic poem (perhaps the Ἀμαζόνια) there quoted

mentions Telamôn specially.

[504] The many diversities in the story respecting Thêseus and

the Amazon Antiopê are well set forth in Bachet de Meziriac

(Commentaires sur Ovide, t. i. p. 317).

Welcker (Der Epische Cyclus, p. 313) supposes that the ancient

epic poem called by Suidas Ἀμαζόνια, related to the invasion of

Attica by the Amazons, and that this poem is the same, under

another title, as the Ἀτθὶς of Hegesinous cited by Pausanias: I

cannot say that he establishes this conjecture satisfactorily,

but the chapter is well worth consulting. The epic Thêsêis seems

to have given a version of the Amazonian contest in many respects

different from that which Plutarch has put together out of the

logographers (see Plut. Thês. 28): it contained a narrative of

many unconnected exploits belonging to Thêseus, and Aristotle

censures it on that account as ill-constructed (Poetic. c. 17).

The Ἀμαζονὶς or Ἀμαζονικὰ of Onasus can hardly have been (as

Heyne supposes, ad Apollod. ii. 5, 9) an epic poem: we may infer

from the rationalizing tendency of the citation from it (Schol.

ad Theocrit. xiii. 46, and Schol. Apollôn. Rhod. i. 1207) that it

was a work in prose. There was an Ἀμαζονὶς by Possis of Magnêsia

(Athenæus, vii. p. 296).

[505] Plutarch, Thêseus, 27. Pindar (Olymp. xiii. 84) represents

the Amazons as having come from the extreme north, when

Bellerophôn conquers them.

[506] Plutarch, Thêseus, 27-28; Pausan. i. 2, 4; Plato, Axiochus,

c. 2; Harpocratiôn, v. Ἀμαζονεῖον; Aristophan. Lysistrat. 678,

with the Scholia. Æschyl. (Eumenid. 685) says that the Amazons

assaulted the citadel from the Areiopagus:—

Πάγον τ᾽ Ἄρειον τόνδ᾽, Ἀμαζόνων ἕδραν

Σκηνάς τ᾽, ὅτ᾽ ἦλθον Θησέως κατὰ φθόνον

Στρατηλατοῦσαι, καὶ πόλιν νεόπτολιν

Τήνδ᾽ ὑψίπυργον ἀντεπύργωσάν ποτε.

No portion of the ante-historical epic appears to have been more deeply

worked into the national mind of Greece than this invasion and defeat

of the Amazons. It was not only a constant theme of the logographers,

but was also familiarly appealed to by the popular orators along

with Marathôn and Salamis, among those antique exploits of which

their fellow-citizens might justly be proud. It formed a part of the

retrospective faith of Herodotus, Lysias, Plato and Isokratês,[507] and

the exact date of the event was settled by the chronologists.[508] Nor

did the Athenians stand alone in such a belief. Throughout many other

regions of Greece, both European and Asiatic, traditions and memorials

of the Amazons were found. At Megara, at Trœzen, in Laconia near Cape

Tænarus, at Chæroneia in Bœôtia, and in more than one part of Thessaly,

sepulchres or monuments of the Amazons were preserved. The warlike

women (it was said), on their way to Attica, had not traversed those

countries, without leaving some evidences of their passage.[509]

[507] Herodot. ix. 27, Lysias (Epitaph, c. 3) represents the

Amazons as ἄρχουσαι πολλῶν ἔθνων: the whole race, according to

him, was nearly extinguished in their unsuccessful and calamitous

invasion of Attica. Isokratês (Panegyric. t. i. p. 206, Auger)

says the same; also Panathênaic. t. iii. p. 560, Auger; Demosth.

Epitaph, p. 1391. Reisk. Pausanias quotes Pindar’s notice of the

invasion, and with the fullest belief of its historical reality

(vii. 2, 4) Plato mentions the invasion of Attica by the Amazons

in the Menexenus (c. 9), but the passage in the treatise De Legg.

c. ii. p. 804,—ἀκούων γὰρ δὴ μύθους παλαιοὺς πέπεισμαι, etc.—is

even a stronger evidence of his own belief. And Xenophon in the

Anabasis, when he compares the quiver and the hatchet of his

barbarous enemies to “those which the Amazons carry,” evidently

believed himself to be speaking of real persons, though he could

have seen only the costumes and armature of those painted by

Mikôn and others (Anabas. iv. 4, 10; compare Æschyl. Supplic.

293, and Aristophan. Lysistr. 678; Lucian. Anachars, c. 34. v.

iii. p. 318).

How copiously the tale was enlarged upon by the authors of the

Atthides, we see in Plutarch, Thêseus, 27-28.

Hekatæus (ap. Steph. Byz. Ἀμαζονεῖον; also Fragm. 350, 351, 352,

Didot) and Xanthus (ap. Hesychium, v. Βουλεψίη) both treated

of the Amazons: the latter passage ought to be added to the

collection of the Fragments of Xanthus by Didot.

[508] Clemens Alexandr. Stromat, i. p. 336; Marmor Parium, Epoch.

21.

[509] Plutarch, Thês. 27-28. Steph. Byz. v. Ἀμαζονεῖον. Pausan.

ii. 32, 8; iii. 25, 2.

Amongst the Asiatic Greeks the supposed traces of the Amazons were yet

more numerous. Their proper territory was asserted to be the town and

plain of Themiskyra, near the Grecian colony of Amisus, on the river

Thermôdôn, a region called, after their name by Roman historians and

geographers.[510] But they were believed to have conquered and occupied

in early times a much wider range of territory, extending even to the

coast of Iônia and Æolis. Ephesus, Smyrna, Kymê, Myrina, Paphos and

Sinopê were affirmed to have been founded and denominated by them.[511]

Some authors placed them in Libya or Ethiopia; and when the Pontic

Greeks on the north-western shore of the Euxine had become acquainted

with the hardy and daring character of the Sarmatian maidens,—who were

obliged to have slain each an enemy in battle as the condition of

obtaining a husband, and who artificially prevented the growth of the

right breast during childhood,—they could imagine no more satisfactory

mode of accounting for such attributes than by deducing the Sarmatians

from a colony of vagrant Amazons, expelled by the Grecian heroes from

their territory on the Thermôdôn.[512] Pindar ascribed the first

establishment of the memorable temple of Artemis at Ephesus to the

Amazons. And Pausanias explains in part the preëminence which this

temple enjoyed over every other in Greece by the widely diffused renown

of its female founders,[513] respecting whom he observes (with perfect

truth, if we admit the historical character of the old epic), that

women possess an unparalleled force of resolution in resisting adverse

events, since the Amazons, after having been first roughly handled

by Hêraklês and then completely defeated by Thêseus, could yet find

courage to play so conspicuous a part in the defence of Troy against

the Grecian besiegers.[514]

[510] Pherekydês ap. Schol. Apollôn. Rh. ii. 373-992; Justin, ii.

4; Strabo, xii. p. 547, Θεμίσκυραν, τὸ τῶν Ἀμαζόνων οἰκητήριον;

Diodôr. ii. 45-46; Sallust ap. Serv. ad Virgil. Æneid. xi. 659;

Pompon. Mela, i. 19; Plin. H. N. vi. 4. The geography of Quintus

Curtius (vi. 4) and of Philostratus (Heroic c. 19) is on this

point indefinite, and even inconsistent.

[511] Ephor. Fragm. 87, Didot. Strabo, xi. p. 505; xiii p. 573;

xiii. p. 622. Pausan. iv. 31, 6; vii. 2. 4. Tacit. Ann. iii. 61.

Schol. Apollôn. Rhod. ii. 965.

The derivation of the name Sinopê from an Amazon was given by

Hekatæus (Fragm. 352). Themiskyra also had one of the Amazons for

its eponymus (Appian, Bell. Mithridat. 78).

Some of the most venerated religious legends at Sinopê were

attached to the expedition of Hêraklês against the Amazons:

Autolykus, the oracle-giving hero, worshipped with great

solemnity even at the time when the town was besieged by

Lucullus, was the companion of Hêraclês (Appian, _ib._ c. 83).

Even a small mountain village in the territory of Ephesus, called

Latoreia, derived its name from one of the Amazons (Athenæ. i. p.

31).

[512] Herodot. iv. 108-117, where he gives the long tale,

imagined by the Pontic Greeks, of the origin of the Sarmatian

nation. Compare Hippokratês, De Aëre, Locis et Aquis, c. 17;

Ephorus, Fragm. 103; Skymn. Chius, v. 102; Plato, Legg. vii. p.

804; Diodôr. ii. 34.

The testimony of Hippokrates certifies the practice of the

Sarmatian women to check the growth of the right breast: Τὸν

δέξιον δὲ μαζὸν οὐκ ἔχουσιν. Παιδίοισι γὰρ ἐοῦσιν ἔτι νηπίοισιν

αἱ μητέρες χαλκεῖον τετεχνήμενον ἐπ᾽ αὐτέῳ τούτῳ διάπυρον

ποιέουσαι, πρὸς τὸν μαζὸν τιθέασι τὸν δέξιον· καὶ ἐπικαίεται,

ὥστε τὴν αὔξησιν φθείρεσθαι, ἐς δὲ τὸν δέξιον ὦμον καὶ βραχίονα

πᾶσαν τὴν ἴσχυν καὶ τὸ πλῆθος ἐκδιδόναι.

Ktêsias also compares a warlike Sakian woman to the Amazons

(Fragm. Persic. ii. pp. 221, 449, Bähr).

[513] Pausan. iv. 31, 6; vii. 2, 4. Dionys. Periêgêt. 828.

[514] Pausan. i. 15, 2.

It is thus that in what is called early Grecian history, as the

Greeks themselves looked back upon it, the Amazons were among the

most prominent and undisputed personages. Nor will the circumstance

appear wonderful if we reflect, that the belief in them was first

established at a time when the Grecian mind was fed with nothing else

but religious legend and epic poetry, and that the incidents of the

supposed past, as received from these sources, were addressed to their

faith and feelings, without being required to adapt themselves to any

canons of credibility drawn from present experience. But the time came

when the historians of Alexander the Great audaciously abused this

ancient credence. Amongst other tales calculated to exalt the dignity

of that monarch, they affirmed that after his conquest and subjugation

of the Persian empire, he had been visited in Hyrcania by Thalestris,

queen of the Amazons, who admiring his warlike prowess, was anxious to

be enabled to return into her own country in a condition to produce

offspring of a breed so invincible.[515] But the Greeks had now been

accustomed for a century and a half to historical and philosophical

criticism—and that uninquiring faith, which was readily accorded to the

wonders of the past, could no longer be invoked for them when tendered

as present reality. For the fable of the Amazons was here reproduced in

its naked simplicity, without being rationalized or painted over with

historical colors.

[515] Arrian, Exped. Alex. vii. 13; compare iv. 15; Quint. Curt.

vi. 4; Justin, xlii. 4. The note of Freinshemius on the above

passage of Quintus Curtius is full of valuable references on the

subject of the Amazons.

Some literary men indeed, among whom were Dêmêtrius of Skepsis, and

the Mitylenæan Theophanês, the companion of Pompey in his expeditions,

still continued their belief both in Amazons present and Amazons past;

and when it becomes notorious that at least there were none such on the

banks of the Thermôdôn, these authors supposed them to have migrated

from their original locality, and to have settled in the unvisited

regions north of Mount Caucasus.[516] Strabo, on the contrary, feeling

that the grounds of disbelief applied with equal force to the ancient

stories and to the modern, rejected both the one and the other. But

he remarks at the same time, not without some surprise, that it was

usual with most persons to adopt a middle course,—to retain the Amazons

as historical phænomena of the remote past, but to disallow them as

realities of the present, and to maintain that the breed had died

out.[517] The accomplished intellect of Julius Cæsar did not scruple

to acknowledge them as having once conquered and held in dominion

a large portion of Asia;[518] and the compromise between early,

traditional, and religious faith on the one hand, and established

habits of critical research on the other, adopted by the historian

Arrian, deserves to be transcribed in his own words, as illustrating

strikingly the powerful sway of the old legends even over the most

positive-minded Greeks:—“Neither Aristobulus nor Ptolemy (he observes),

nor any other competent witness, has recounted this (visit of the

Amazons and their queen to Alexander): nor does it seem to me that the

race of the Amazons was preserved down to that time, nor have they been

noticed either by any one before Alexander, or by Xenophôn, though he

mentions both the Phasians and the Kolchians, and the other barbarous

nations which the Greeks saw both before and after their arrival at

Trapezus, in which marches they must have met with the Amazons, if the

latter had been still in existence. Yet _it is incredible to me_ that

this race of women, celebrated as they have been by authors so many

and so commanding, _should never have existed at all_. The story tells

of Hêraklês, that he set out from Greece and brought back with him the

girdle of their queen Hippolytê; also of Thêseus and the Athenians,

that they were the first who defeated in battle and repelled these

women in their invasion of Europe; and the combat of the Athenians

with the Amazons has been painted by Mikôn, not less than that between

the Athenians and the Persians. Moreover Herodotus has spoken in many

places of these women, and those Athenian orators who have pronounced

panegyrics on the citizens slain in battle, have dwelt upon the victory

over the Amazons as among the most memorable of Athenian exploits. If

the satrap of Media sent any equestrian women at all to Alexander, I

think that they must have come from some of the neighboring tribes,

practised in riding and equipped in the costume generally called

Amazonian.”[519]

[516] Strabo, xi. p. 503-504; Appian, Bell. Mithridat. c. 103;

Plutarch, Pompeius, c. 35. Plin. N. H. vi. 7. Plutarch still

retains the old description of Amazons from the mountains near

the Thermôdôn. Appian keeps clear of this geographical error,

probably copying more exactly the language of Theophanês, who

must have been well aware that when Lucullus besieged Themiskyra,

he did not find it defended by the Amazons (see Appian, Bell.

Mithridat. c. 78). Ptolemy (v. 9) places the Amazons in the

imperfectly known regions of Asiatic Sarmatia, north of the

Caspian and near the river Rha (Volga). “This fabulous community

of women (observes Forbiger, Handbuch der alten Geographie,

ii. 77, p. 457) was a phænomenon much too interesting for the

geographers easily to relinquish.”

[517] Strabo, xi. p. 505. Ἴδιον δέ τι συμβέβηκε τῷ λόγῳ τῷ περὶ

τῶν Ἀμαζόνων. Οἱ μὲν γὰρ ἄλλοι τὸ μυθῶδες καὶ τὸ ἱστορικὸν

διωρίσμενον ἔχουσι· τὰ γὰρ παλαιὰ καὶ ψευδῆ καὶ τερατώδη, μῦθοι

καλοῦνται· [_Note._ Strabo does not always speak of the μῦθοι in

this disrespectful tone; he is sometimes much displeased with

those who dispute the existence of an historical kernel in the

inside, especially with regard to Homer.] ἡ δ᾽ ἱστορία βούλεται

τἀληθὲς, ἄντε παλαιὸν, ἄντε νέον· καὶ τὸ τερατῶδες ἢ οὐκ ἔχει, ἢ

σπάνιον. Περὶ δὲ τῶν Ἀμαζόνων τὰ αὐτὰ λέγεται καὶ νῦν καὶ παλαὶ,

τερατώδη τ᾽ ὄντα, καὶ πίστεως πόῤῥω. Τίς γὰρ ἂν πιστεύσειεν,

ὡς γυναικῶν στράτος, ἢ πόλις, ἢ ἔθνος, συσταίη ἂν πότε χωρὶς

ἀνδρῶν; καὶ οὐ μόνον συσταίη, ἀλλὰ καὶ ἐφόδους ποιήσαιτο ἐπὶ τὴν

ἀλλοτρίαν, καὶ κρατήσειεν οὐ τῶν ἐγγὺς μόνον, ὥστε καὶ μέχρι τῆς

νῦν Ἰωνίας προελθεῖν, ἀλλὰ καὶ διαπόντιον στείλαιτο στρατίαν

μέχρι τῆς Ἀττικῆς; Ἀλλὰ μὴν ταῦτά γε αὐτὰ καὶ νῦν λέγεται περὶ

αὐτῶν· ~ἐπιτείνει δὲ τὴν ἰδιότητα καὶ τὸ πιστεύεσθαι τὰ παλαιὰ

μᾶλλον ἢ τὰ νῦν~. There are however, other passages in which he

speaks of the Amazons as realities.

Justin (ii. 4) recognizes the great power and extensive conquests

of the Amazons in very early times, but says that they gradually

declined down to the reign of Alexander, in whose time there

were _just a few remaining_; the queen with these few visited

Alexander, but shortly afterwards the whole breed became extinct.

This hypothesis has the merit of convenience, perhaps of

ingenuity.

[518] Suetonius, Jul. Cæsar, c. 22. “In Syriâ quoque regnasse

Semiramin (Julius Cæsar said this), magnamque Asiæ partem

Amazonas tenuisse quondam.”

In the splendid triumph of the emperor Aurelian at Rome after the

defeat of Zenobia, a few Gothic women who had been taken in arms

were exhibited among the prisoners; the official placard carried

along with them announced them as _Amazons_ (Vopiscus Aurel. in

Histor. August. Scrip. p. 260, ed. Paris).

[519] Arrian, Expedit. Alexand. vii. 13.

There cannot be a more striking evidence of the indelible force with

which these ancient legends were worked into the national faith and

feelings of the Greeks, than these remarks of a judicious historian

upon the fable of the Amazons. Probably if any plausible mode of

rationalizing it, and of transforming it into a quasi-political event,

had been offered to Arrian, he would have been better pleased to

adopt such a middle term, and would have rested comfortably in the

supposition that he believed the legend in its true meaning, while his

less inquiring countrymen were imposed upon by the exaggerations of

poets. But as the story was presented to him plain and unvarnished,

either for acceptance or rejection, his feelings as a patriot

and a religious man prevented him from applying to the past such

tests of credibility as his untrammelled reason acknowledged to be

paramount in regard to the present. When we see moreover how much

his belief was strengthened, and all tendency to scepticism shut out

by the familiarity of his eye and memory with sculptured or painted

Amazons[520]—we may calculate the irresistible force of this sensible

demonstration on the convictions of the unlettered public, at once

more deeply retentive of passive impressions, and unaccustomed to the

countervailing habit of rational investigation into evidence. Had the

march of an army of warlike women, from the Thermôdôn or the Tanais

into the heart of Attica, been recounted to Arrian as an incident

belonging to the time of Alexander the Great, he would have rejected

it no less emphatically than Strabô; but cast back as it was into an

undefined past, it took rank among the hallowed traditions of divine

or heroic antiquity,—gratifying to extol by rhetoric, but repulsive to

scrutinize in argument.[521]

[520] Ktêsias described as real animals, existing in wild and

distant regions, the heterogeneous and fantastic combinations

which he saw sculptured in the East (see this stated and

illustrated in Bähr, Preface to the Fragm. of Ktêsias, pp. 58,

59).

[521] Heyne observes (Apollodôr. ii. 5, 9) with respect to the

fable of the Amazons, “In his historiarum fidem aut vestigia nemo

quæsiverit.” Admitting the wisdom of this counsel (and I think

it indisputable), why are we required to presume, in the absence

of all proof, an historical basis for each of those _other_

narratives, such as the Kalydônian boar-hunt, the Argonautic

expedition, or the siege of Troy, which go to make up, along

with the story of the Amazons, the aggregate matter of Grecian

legendary faith? If the tale of the Amazons could gain currency

without any such support, why not other portions of the ancient

epic?

An author of easy belief, Dr. F. Nagel, vindicates the historical

reality of the Amazons (Geschichte der Amazonen, Stutgart,

1838). I subjoin here a different explanation of the Amazonian

tale, proceeding from another author who rejects the historical

basis, and contained in a work of learning and value (Guhl,

_Ephesiaca_, Berlin, 1843. p. 132):—

“Id tantum monendum videtur, Amazonas nequaquam historice

accipiendas esse, sed e contrario totas ad mythologiam pertinere.

Earum enim fabulas quum ex frequentium hierodularum gregibus in

cultibus et sacris Asiaticis ortas esse ingeniose ostenderit

Tolken, jam _inter omnes mythologiæ peritos constat_, Amazonibus

nihil fere nisi peregrini cujusdam cultus notionem expressum

esse, ejusque cum Græcorum religione certamen frequentibus istis

pugnis designatum esse, quas cum Amazonibus tot Græcorum heroes

habuisse credebantur, Hercules, Bellerophon, Theseus, Achilles,

et vel ipse, quem Ephesi cultum fuisse supra ostendimus,

Dionysus. Quæ Amazonum notio primaria, quum paulatim Euemeristicâ

(ut ita dicam) ratione ita transformaretur, ut Amazones pro vero

feminarum populo haberentur, necesse quoque erat, ut omnibus

fere locis, ubi ejusmodi religionum certamina locum habuerunt,

Amazones habitasse, vel eo usque processisse, crederentur.

Quod cum nusquam manifestius fuerit, quam in Asiâ minore, et

potissimum in eâ parte quæ Græciam versus vergit, haud mirandum

est omnes fere ejus oræ urbes ab Amazonibus conditas putari.”

I do not know the evidence upon which this conjectural

interpretation rests, but the statement of it, though it boasts

so many supporters among mythological critics, carries no

appearance of probability to my mind. Priam fights against the

Amazons as well as the Grecian heroes.

CHAPTER XII.

KRETAN LEGENDS.—MINOS AND HIS FAMILY.

To understand the adventures of Thêseus in Krête, it will be necessary

to touch briefly upon Minôs and the Krêtan heroic genealogy.

Minôs and Rhadamanthus, according to Homer, are sons of Zeus, by

Europê,[522] daughter of the widely-celebrated Phœnix, born in Krête.

Minôs is the father of Deukaliôn, whose son Idomeneus, in conjunction

with Mêrionês, conducts the Krêtan troops to the host of Agamemnôn

before Troy. Minôs is ruler of Knossus, and familiar companion of

the great Zeus. He is spoken of as holding guardianship in Krête—not

necessarily meaning the whole of the island: he is farther decorated

with a golden sceptre, and constituted judge over the dead in the

under-world to settle their disputes, in which function Odysseus finds

him—this however by a passage of comparatively late interpolation into

the Odyssey. He also had a daughter named Ariadnê, for whom the artist

Dædalus fabricated in the town of Knossus the representation of a

complicated dance, and who was ultimately carried off by Thêseus: she

died in the island of Dia, deserted by Thêseus and betrayed by Dionysos

to the fatal wrath of Artemis. Rhadamanthus seems to approach to Minôs

both in judicial functions and posthumous dignity. He is conveyed

expressly to Eubœa, by the semi-divine sea-carriers the Phæacians, to

inspect the gigantic corpse of the earth-born Tityus—the longest voyage

they ever undertook. He is moreover after death promoted to an abode

of undisturbed bliss in the Elysian plain at the extremity of the

earth.[523]

[522] Europê was worshipped with very peculiar solemnity in the

island of Krête (see Dictys Cretensis, De Bello Trojano, i. c. 2).

The venerable plane-tree, under which Zeus and Europê had

reposed, was still shown, hard by a fountain at Gortyn in

Krête, in the time of Theophrastus: it was said to be the only

plane-tree in the neighborhood which never cast its leaves

(Theophrast. Hist. Plant. i. 9).

[523] Homer, Iliad, xiii. 249, 450; xiv. 321. Odyss. xi. 322-568;

xix. 179; iv. 564-vii. 321.

The Homeric Minôs in the under-world is not a judge of the

previous lives of the dead, so as to determine whether they

deserve reward or punishment for their conduct on earth: such

functions are not assigned to him earlier than the time of Plato.

He administers justice _among_ the dead, who are conceived as a

sort of society, requiring some presiding judge: θεμιστεύοντα

νεκύεσσι, with regard to Minôs, is said very much like (Odyss.

xi. 484) νῦν αὖτε μέγα κρατέεις νεκύεσσι with regard to Achilles.

See this matter partially illustrated in Heyne’s Excursus xi. to

the sixth book of the Æneid of Virgil.

According to poets later than Homer, Europê is brought over by Zeus

from Phœnicia to Krête, where she bears to him three sons, Minôs,

Rhadamanthus and Sarpêdôn. The latter leaves Krête and settles in

Lykia, the population of which, as well as that of many other portions

of Asia Minor, is connected by various mythical genealogies with

Krête, though the Sarpêdôn of the Iliad has no connection with Krête,

and is not the son of Europê. Sarpêdôn having become king of Lykia,

was favored by his father, Zeus, with permission to live for three

generations.[524] At the same time the youthful Milêtus, a favorite

of Sarpêdôn, quitted Krête, and established the city which bore his

name on the coast of Asia Minor. Rhadamanthus became sovereign of

and lawgiver among the islands in the Ægean: he subsequently went to

Bœôtia, where he married the widowed Alkmênê, mother of Hêraklês.

[524] Apollodôr. iii. 1, 2. Καὶ αὐτῷ δίδωσι Ζεὺς ἐπὶ τρεῖς γενεὰς

ζῇν. This circumstance is evidently imagined by the logographers

to account for the appearance of Sarpêdôn in the Trojan war,

fighting against Idomeneus, the grandson of Minôs. Nisus is the

eponymus of Nisæa, the port of the town of Megara: his tomb

was shown at Athens (Pausan. i. 19, 5). Minôs is the eponym of

the island of Minoa (opposite the port of Nisæa), where it was

affirmed that the fleet of Minôs was stationed (Pausan. i. 44, 5).

Europê finds in Krête a king Astêrius, who marries her and adopts her

children by Zeus: this Astêrius is the son of Krês, the eponym of the

island, or (according to another genealogy by which it was attempted to

be made out that Minôs was of Dôrian race) he was a son of the daughter

of Krês by Tektamus, the son of Dôrus, who had migrated into the island

from Greece.

Minôs married Pasiphaê, daughter of the god Hêlios and Perseïs, by

whom he had Katreus, Deukaliôn, Glaukus, Androgeos, names marked in

the legendary narrative,—together with several daughters, among whom

were Ariadnê and Phædra. He offended Poseidôn by neglecting to fulfil a

solemnly-made vow, and the displeased god afflicted his wife Pasiphaê

with a monstrous passion for a bull. The great artist Dædalus, son of

Eupalamus, a fugitive from Athens, became the confidant of this amour,

from which sprang the Minôtaur, a creature half man and half bull.[525]

This Minôtaur was imprisoned by Minôs in the labyrinth, an inextricable

inclosure constructed by Dædalus for that express purpose, by order of

Minôs.

[525] Apollodôr iii. 1, 2.

Minôs acquired great nautical power, and expelled the Karian

inhabitants from many of the islands of the Ægean, which he placed

under the government of his sons on the footing of tributaries. He

undertook several expeditions against various places on the coast—one

against Nisus, the son of Pandiôn, king of Megara, who had amongst

the hair of his head one peculiar lock of a purple color: an oracle

had pronounced that his life and reign would never be in danger so

long as he preserved this precious lock. The city would have remained

inexpugnable, if Scylla, the daughter of Nisus, had not conceived a

violent passion for Minôs. While her father was asleep, she cut off

the lock on which his safety hung, so that the Krêtan king soon became

victorious. Instead of performing his promise to carry Scylla away

with him to Krête, he cast her from the stern of his vessel into the

sea:[526] both Scylla and Nisus were changed into birds.

[526] Apollodôr. iii. 15, 8. See the Ciris of Virgil, a juvenile

poem on the subject of this fable; also Hyginus, f. 198; Schol.

Eurip. Hippol. 1200. Propertius (iii. 19, 21) gives the features

of the story with tolerable fidelity; Ovid takes considerable

liberties with it (Metam. viii. 5-150).

Androgeos, son of Minôs having displayed such rare qualities as to

vanquish all his competitors at the Panathenaic festival in Athens,

was sent by Ægeus the Athenian king to contend against the bull of

Marathôn,—an enterprise in which he perished, and Minôs made war upon

Athens to avenge his death. He was for a long time unable to take the

city: at length he prayed to his father Zeus to aid him in obtaining

redress from the Athenians, and Zeus sent upon them pestilence and

famine. In vain did they endeavor to avert these calamities by offering

up as propitiatory sacrifices the four daughters of Hyacinthus. Their

sufferings still continued, and the oracle directed them to submit to

any terms which Minôs might exact. He required that they should send

to Krête a tribute of seven youths and seven maidens, periodically,

to be devoured by the Minôtaur,[527]—offered to him in a labyrinth

constructed by Dædalus, including countless different passages, out of

which no person could escape.

[527] Apollodôr. iii. 15, 8.

Every ninth year this offering was to be despatched. The more common

story was, that the youths and maidens thus destined to destruction

were selected by lot—but the logographer Hellanikus said that Minôs

came to Athens and chose them himself.[528] The third period for

despatching the victims had arrived, and Athens was plunged in the

deepest affliction, when Thêseus determined to devote himself as one

of them, and either to terminate the sanguinary tribute or to perish.

He prayed to Poseidôn for help, and the Delphian god assured him that

Aphroditê would sustain and extricate him. On arriving at Knossus

he was fortunate enough to captivate the affections of Ariadnê, the

daughter of Minôs, who supplied him with a sword and a clue of thread.

With the former he contrived to kill the Minôtaur, the latter served to

guide his footsteps in escaping from the labyrinth. Having accomplished

this triumph, he left Krête with his ship and companions unhurt,

carrying off Ariadnê, whom however he soon abandoned on the island of

Naxos. On his way home to Athens, he stopped at Dêlos, where he offered

a grateful sacrifice to Apollo for his escape, and danced along with

the young men and maidens whom he had rescued from the Minôtaur, a

dance called the Geranus, imitated from the twists and convolutions

of the Krêtan labyrinth. It had been concerted with his father Ægeus,

that if he succeeded in his enterprise against the Minôtaur, he should

on his return hoist white sails in his ship in place of the black

canvas which she habitually carried when employed on this mournful

embassy. But Thêseus forgot to make the change of sails; so that Ægeus,

seeing the ship return with her equipment of mourning unaltered, was

impressed with the sorrowful conviction that his son had perished,

and cast himself into the sea. The ship which made this voyage was

preserved by the Athenians with careful solicitude, being constantly

repaired with new timbers, down to the time of the Phalerian Dêmêtrius:

every year she was sent from Athens to Dêlos with a solemn sacrifice

and specially-nominated envoys. The priest of Apollo decked her stern

with garlands before she quitted the port, and during the time which

elapsed until her return, the city was understood to abstain from all

acts carrying with them public impurity, so that it was unlawful to put

to death any person even under formal sentence by the dikastery. This

accidental circumstance becomes especially memorable, from its having

postponed for thirty days the death of the lamented Socratês.[529]

[528] See, on the subject of Thêseus and the Minôtaur, Eckermann,

Lehrbuch der Religions Geschichte und Mythologie, vol. ii. ch.

xiii. p. 133. He maintains that the tribute of these human

victims paid by Athens to Minôs is an historical fact. Upon what

this belief is grounded, I confess I do not see.

[529] Plato, Phædon, c. 2, 3; Xenoph. Memor. iv. 8. 2. Plato

especially noticed τοὺς δὶς ἕπτα ἐκείνους, the seven youths and

the seven maidens whom Thêseus conveyed to Krête and brought

back safely: this number seems an old and constant feature in

the legend, maintained by Sappho and Bacchylidês as well as by

Euripidês (Herc. Fur. 1318). See Servius ad Virgil Æneid. vi. 21.

The legend respecting Thêseus, and his heroic rescue of the seven

noble youths and maidens from the jaws of the Minôtaur, was thus both

commemorated and certified to the Athenian public, by the annual holy

ceremony and by the unquestioned identity of the vessel employed in it.

There were indeed many varieties in the mode of narrating the incident;

and some of the Attic logographers tried to rationalize the fable by

transforming the Minôtaur into a general or a powerful athlete, named

Taurus, whom Thêseus vanquished in Krête.[530] But this altered version

never overbore the old fanciful character of the tale as maintained by

the poets. A great number of other religious ceremonies and customs,

as well as several chapels or sacred enclosures in honor of different

heroes, were connected with different acts and special ordinances

of Thêseus. To every Athênian who took part in the festivals of

the Oschophoria, the Pyanepsia, or the Kybernêsia, the name of this

great hero was familiar, and the motives for offering to him solemn

worship at his own special festival of the Thêseia, became evident and

impressive.

[530] For the general narrative and its discrepancies, see

Plutarch, Thês. c. 15-19; Diodôr. iv. 60-62; Pausan. i. 17, 3;

Ovid, Epist. Ariadn. Thês. 104. In that other portion of the

work of Diodôrus which relates more especially to Krête, and is

borrowed from Kretan logographers and historians (v. 64-80), he

mentions nothing at all respecting the war of Minôs with Athens.

In the drama of Euripidês called Thêseus, the genuine story

of the youths and maidens about to be offered as food to the

Minotaur was introduced (Schol. ad Aristoph. Vesp. 312).

Ariadnê figures in the Odyssey along with Thêseus: she is the

daughter of Minôs, carried off by Thêseus from Krête, and killed

by Artemis in the way home: there is no allusion to Minôtaur, or

tribute, or self-devotion of Thêseus (Odyss. xi. 324). This is

probably the oldest and simplest form of the legend—one of the

many amorous (compare Theognis, 1232) adventures of Thêseus: the

rest is added by post-Homeric poets.

The respect of Aristotle for Minôs induces him to adopt the

hypothesis that the Athenian youths and maidens were not put

to death in Krête, but grew old in servitude (Aristot. Fragm.

Βοττιαίων Πολιτεία, p. 106. ed. Neumann. of the Fragments of the

treatise Περὶ Πολιτειῶν, Plutarch, Quæst. Græc. p. 298).

The same Athenian legends which ennobled and decorated the character

of Thêseus, painted in repulsive colors the attributes of Minôs; and

the traits of the old Homeric comrade of Zeus were buried under those

of the conqueror and oppressor of Athens. His history like that of

the other legendary personages of Greece, consists almost entirely of

a string of family romances and tragedies. His son Katreus, father

of Aëropê, wife of Atreus, was apprized by an oracle that he would

perish by the hand of one of his own children: he accordingly sent them

out of the island, and Althæmenês, his son, established himself in

Rhodes. Katreus having become old, and fancying that he had outlived

the warning of the oracle, went over to Rhodes to see Althæmenês.

In an accidental dispute which arose between his attendants and the

islanders, Althæmenês inadvertently took part and slew his father

without knowing him. Glaukus, the youngest son of Minôs, pursuing a

mouse, fell into a reservoir of honey and was drowned. No one knew

what had become of him, and his father was inconsolable; at length the

Argeian Polyeidus, a prophet wonderfully endowed by the gods, both

discovered the boy and restored him to life, to the exceeding joy of

Minôs.[531]

[531] Apollodôr. iii. cap. 2-3.

The latter at last found his death in an eager attempt to overtake and

punish Dædalus. This great artist, the eponymous hero of the Attic gens

or dême called the Dædalidæ, and the descendant of Erechtheus through

Mêtion, had been tried at the tribunal of Areiopagus and banished for

killing his nephew Talos, whose rapidly improving skill excited his

envy.[532] He took refuge in Krête, where he acquired the confidence of

Minôs, and was employed (as has been already mentioned) in constructing

the labyrinth; subsequently however he fell under the displeasure

of Minôs, and was confined as a close prisoner in the inextricable

windings of his own edifice. His unrivalled skill and resource however

did not forsake him. He manufactured wings both for himself and for

his son Ikarus, with which they flew over the sea: the father arrived

safely in Sicily at Kamikus, the residence of the Sikanian king

Kokalus, but the son, disdaining paternal example and admonition, flew

so high that his wings were melted by the sun and he fell into the sea,

which from him was called the Ikarian sea.[533]

[532] Pherekyd. Fragm. 105; Hellanik. Fragm. 82 (Didot); Pausan.

vii. 4, 5.

[533] Diodôr. iv. 79; Ovid, Metamorph. viii. 181. Both Ephorus

and Philistus mentioned the coming of Dædalus to Kokalus in

Sicily (Ephor. Fr. 99; Philist. Fragm. 1, Didot): probably

Antiochus noticed it also (Diodôr. xii. 71). Kokalus was the

point of commencement for the Sicilian historians.

Dædalus remained for some time in Sicily, leaving in various parts of

the island many prodigious evidences of mechanical and architectural

skill.[534] At length Minôs bent upon regaining possession of his

person, undertook an expedition against Kokalus with a numerous fleet

and army. Kokalus affecting readiness to deliver up the fugitive, and

receiving Minôs with apparent friendship, ordered a bath to be prepared

for him by his three daughters, who, eager to protect Dædalus at any

price, drowned the Krêtan king in the bath with hot water.[535] Many

of the Krêtans who had accompanied him remained in Sicily and founded

the town of Minoa, which they denominated after him. But not long

afterwards Zeus roused all the inhabitants of Krête (except the towns

of Polichna and Præsus) to undertake with one accord an expedition

against Kamikus for the purpose of avenging the death of Minôs. They

besieged Kamikus in vain for five years, until at last famine compelled

them to return. On their way along the coast of Italy, in the Gulf

of Tarentum, a terrible storm destroyed their fleet and obliged them

to settle permanently in the country: they founded Hyria with other

cities, and became Messapian Iapygians. Other settlers, for the most

part Greeks, immigrated into Krête to the spots which this movement

had left vacant, and in the second generation after Minôs occurred

the Trojan war. The departed Minôs was exceedingly offended with the

Krêtans for coöperating in avenging the injury to Menelaus, since the

Greeks generally had lent no aid to the Krêtans in their expedition

against the town of Kamikus. He sent upon Krête, after the return

of Idomeneus from Troy, such terrible visitations of famine and

pestilence, that the population again died out or expatriated, and was

again renovated by fresh immigrations. The intolerable suffering[536]

thus brought upon the Krêtans by the anger of Minôs, for having

coöperated in the general Grecian aid to Menelaus, was urged by them to

the Greeks as the reason why they could take no part in resisting the

invasion of Xerxês; and it is even pretended that they were advised and

encouraged to adopt this ground of excuse by the Delphian oracle.[537]

[534] Diodôr. iv. 80.

[535] Pausan. vii. 4, 5; Schol. Pindar. Nem. iv. 95; Hygin. fab.

44; Conon, Narr. 25; Ovid, Ibis, 291.—

“Vel tua maturet, sicut Minoia fata,

Per caput infusæ fervidus humor aquæ.”

This story formed the subject of a lost drama of Sophoklês,

Καμίκιοι or Μίνως; it was also told by Kallimachus, ἐν Αἰτίοις,

as well as by Philostephanus (Schol. Iliad, ii. 145).

[536] This curious and very characteristic narrative is given by

Herodot. vii. 169-171.

[537] Herodot. vii. 169. The answer ascribed to the Delphian

oracle, on the question being put by the Krêtan envoys whether it

would be better for them to aid the Greeks against Xerxês or not,

is highly emphatic and poetical: Ὦ νήπιοι, ἐπιμέμφεσθε ὅσα ὑμῖν

ἐκ τῶν Μενελέω τιμωρημάτων Μίνως ἔπεμψε μηνίων δακρύματα, ὅτι

οἱ μὲν οὐ ξυνεξεπρήξαντο αὐτῷ τὸν ἐν Καμίκῳ θάνατον γενόμενον,

ὑμεῖς δὲ κείνοισι τὴν ἐκ Σπάρτης ἁρπασθεῖσαν ὑπ᾽ ἀνδρὸς βαρβάρου

γυναῖκα.

If such an answer was ever returned at all, I cannot but think

that it must have been from some oracle in Krête itself, not from

Delphi. The Delphian oracle could never have so far forgotten

its obligations to the general cause of Greece, at that critical

moment, which involved moreover the safety of all its own

treasures, as to deter the Krêtans from giving assistance.

Such is the Minôs of the poets and logographers, with his legendary and

romantic attributes: the familiar comrade of the great Zeus,—the judge

among the dead in Hadês,—the husband of Pasiphaê, daughter of the god

Hêlios,—the father of the goddess Ariadnê, as well as of Androgeos,

who perishes and is worshipped at Athens,[538] and of the boy Glaukus,

who is miraculously restored to life by a prophet,—the person

beloved by Scylla, and the amorous pursuer of the nymph or goddess

Britomartis,[539]—the proprietor of the Labyrinth and of the Minôtaur,

and the exacter of a periodical tribute of youths and maidens from

Athens as food for this monster,—lastly, the follower of the fugitive

artist Dædalus to Kamikus, and the victim of the three ill-disposed

daughters of Kokalus in a bath. With this strongly-marked portrait,

the Minôs of Thucydidês and Aristotle has scarcely anything in common

except the name. He is the first to acquire _Thalassokraty_, or command

of the Ægean sea: he expels the Karian inhabitants from the Cyclades

islands, and sends thither fresh colonists under his own sons; he

puts down piracy, in order that he may receive his tribute regularly;

lastly, he attempts to conquer Sicily, but fails in the enterprise and

perishes.[540] Here we have conjectures, derived from the analogy of

the Athenian maritime empire in the historical times, substituted in

place of the fabulous incidents, and attached to the name of Minôs.

[538] Hesiod, Theogon. 949; Pausan. i. 1, 4.

[539] Kallimach. Hymn. ad Dian. 189. Strabo (x. p. 476) dwells

also upon the strange contradiction of the legends concerning

Minôs: I agree with Hoeckh (Kreta, ii. p. 93) that δασμόλογος in

this passage refers to the tribute exacted from Athens for the

Minôtaur.

[540] Thucyd. i. 4. Μίνως γὰρ, παλαίτατος ὧν ἀκοῇ ἴσμεν,

ναυτικὸν ἐκτήσατο, καὶ τῆς νῦν Ἑλληνικῆς θαλάσσης ἐπὶ πλεῖστον

ἐκράτησε, καὶ τῶν Κυκλάδων νήσων ἦρξέ τε καὶ οἰκιστὴς αὐτὸς τῶν

πλείστων ἐγένετο, Κᾶρας ἐξελάσας καὶ τοὺς ἑαυτοῦ παῖδας ἡγεμόνας

ἐγκαταστήσας· τό τε λῃστικὸν, ὡς εἰκὸς, καθῄρει ἐκ τῆς θαλάσσης,

ἐφ᾽ ὅσον ἠδύνατο, τοῦ τὰς προσόδους μᾶλλον ἰέναι αὐτῷ. See also

c. 8.

Aristot. Polit. ii. 7, 2, Δοκεῖ δ᾽ ἡ νῆσος καὶ πρὸς τὴν ἀρχὴν

τὴν Ἑλληνικὴν πεφυκέναι καὶ κεῖσθαι καλῶς ... διὸ καὶ τὴν

τῆς θαλάσσης ἀρχὴν κατέσχεν ὁ Μίνως, καὶ τὰς νήσους τὰς μὲν

ἐχειρώσατο, τὰς δὲ ᾤκισε· τέλος δ᾽ ἐπιθέμενος τῇ Σικελίᾳ τὸν βίον

ἐτελεύτησεν ἐκεῖ περὶ Κάμικον.

Ephorus (ap. Skymn. Chi. 542) repeated the same statement: he

mentioned also the autochthonous king Krês.

In the fable, a tribute of seven youths and seven maidens is paid

to him periodically by the Athenians; in the historicized narrative

this character of a tribute-collector is preserved, but the tribute

is money collected from dependent islands;[541] and Aristotle points

out to us how conveniently Krête is situated to exercise empire over

the Ægean. The expedition against Kamikus, instead of being directed

to the recovery of the fugitive Dædalus, is an attempt on the part of

the great thalassokrat to conquer Sicily. Herodotus gives us generally

the same view of the character of Minôs as a great maritime king, but

his notice of the expedition against Kamikus includes the mention of

Dædalus as the intended object of it.[542] Ephorus, while he described

Minôs as a commanding and comprehensive lawgiver imposing his commands

under the sanction of Zeus, represented him as the imitator of an

earlier lawgiver named Rhadamanthus, and also as an immigrant into

Krête from the Æolic Mount Ida, along with the priests or sacred

companions of Zeus called the Idæi Dactyli. Aristotle too points him

out as the author of the Syssitia, or public meals common in Krête as

well as at Sparta,—other divergences in a new direction from the spirit

of the old fables.[543]

[541] It is curious that Herodotus expressly denies this, and in

language which shows that he had made special inquiries about it:

he says that the Karians or Leleges in the islands (who were,

according to Thucydidês, expelled by Minôs) paid no tribute to

Minôs, but manned his navy, _i. e._ they stood to Minôs much in

the same relation as Chios and Lesbos stood to Athens (Herodot.

i. 171). One may trace here the influence of those discussions

which must have been prevalent at that time respecting the

maritime empire of Athens.

[542] Herodot. vii. 170. Λέγεται γὰρ Μίνω κατὰ ζήτησιν Δαιδάλου

ἀπικόμενον ἐς Σικανίην, τὴν νῦν Σικελίην καλουμένην, ἀποθανεῖν

βιαίῳ θανάτῳ. Ἀνὰ δὲ χρόνον Κρῆτας, θεοῦ σφὶ ἐποτρύνοντος, etc.

[543] Aristot. Polit. ii. 7, 1; vii. 9, 2. Ephorus, Fragm. 63,

64, 65. He set aside altogether the Homeric genealogy of Minôs,

which makes him brother of Rhadamanthus and born in Krête.

Strabo, in pointing out the many contradictions respecting Minôs,

remarks, Ἔστι δὲ καὶ ἄλλος λόγος οὐχ ὁμολογούμενος, τῶν μὲν ξένον

τῆς νήσου τὸν Μίνω λεγόντων, τῶν δὲ ἐπιχώριον.. By the former he

doubtless means Ephorus, though he has not here specified him (x.

p. 477).