Near the council chamber of The Five Hundred is the room called the
Rotunda, and here the Prytanes sacrifice, and there are some silver
statues not very large. And higher up are some statues of the heroes,
from whom the tribes of the Athenians in later times got their names.
And who made the tribes ten instead of four, and changed their names
from the old ones, has been told by Herodotus. And of the heroes who
gave their names to the tribes, (_Eponymus_ is the name they give
them), are Hippothoon, the son of Poseidon by Alope the daughter
of Cercyon, and Antiochus, one of the sons of Hercules by Meda the
daughter of Phylas, and the third Ajax, the son of Telamon; and of the
Athenians Leo, who is said to have devoted all his daughters for the
public weal at the bidding of the oracle. Erechtheus also is among
the Eponymi, who conquered the Eleusinians in battle, and slew their
commander Immaradus, the son of Eumolpus; also Ægius, and Œneus the
illegitimate son of Pandion, and of the sons of Theseus Acamas. And
what Cecrops and Pandion they hold in honour, (for I saw their statues
too among the Eponymi), I do not know, for there were two of each; the
first Cecrops, that was king, married the daughter of Actæus, and the
other, who settled at Eubœa, was the son of Erechtheus, the grandson
of Pandion and the great grandson of Erichthonius, and the two Pandion
kings were the son of Erichthonius and the son of Cecrops the younger.
The latter was deposed from his kingdom by the Metionidæ, and when he
fled to Megara, the daughter of whose king he had married, his sons
were banished with him. And it is said that Pandion died there of
illness, and his tomb is near the sea in Megara, on the rock that is
called the rock of Athene the Diver. But his sons returned from exile
at Megara, and expelled the Metionidæ, and Ægeus, being the eldest, had
the sovereignty over the Athenians. Pandion also reared daughters, but
not with good fortune, nor had they any sons to avenge him. And yet for
the love of power he had made affinity with the king of Thrace. But
man has no power to escape what is willed by the Deity. They say that
Tereus (though married to Procne) dishonoured Philomela, not acting
according to the law of the Greeks: and, having still further murdered
the damsel, he compelled the women to punish him. There is also another
statue erected to Pandion in the Acropolis, well worth seeing. These
are the ancient Eponymi of the Athenians. And after these they have
as Eponymi Attalus the Mysian, and Ptolemy the Egyptian, and, in my
time, the Emperor Adrian, who worshipped the gods more religiously than
anyone, and who contributed most to the individual happiness of his
subjects. And he never willingly undertook any war, only he punished
the revolt of the Hebrews who live beyond the Syrians. And as to the
temples of the gods, part of which he originally built, and part of
which he adorned with votive offerings and decorations, or of the gifts
which he gave to the Greek cities and to those of the barbarians who
asked for them, all these good deeds of his are written up at Athens,
in the temple common to all the gods.