Now the channels called Rheti are like rivers only in their flow, for
their water is sea water. And one might suppose that they flow from
the Euripus near Chalcis underground, falling into a sea with a lower
level. These Rheti are said to be sacred to Proserpine and Demeter,
and their priests only may catch the fish in them. And they were,
as I hear, in old times the boundaries between the territory of the
Eleusinians and Athenians. And the first inhabitant on the other side
of the Rheti was Crocon, and that district is called to this day the
kingdom of Crocon. This Crocon the Athenians say married Sæsara the
daughter of Celeus. This at least is the tradition of the occupants
of the township of Scambonidæ. Crocon’s tomb indeed I could not find,
but Eumolpus’ tomb the Athenians and Eubœans both show. This Eumolpus
they say came from Thrace, and was the son of Poseidon and Chione: and
Chione was they say the daughter of Boreas and Orithyia. Homer has
not indeed given us his pedigree, but he calls him in his poem a noble
man. And in the battle between the people of Eleusis and the Athenians
Erechtheus the king of Athens was slain, and also Immaradus the son of
Eumolpus: and peace was concluded on these conditions, that the people
of Eleusis should be in all other respects Athenians, but should have
the private management of their Mysteries. And the rites of the two
goddesses, Demeter and Proserpine, were performed by the daughters of
Celeus. Pamphus and Homer alike call them by the names Diogenea, and
Pammerope, and Sæsara. But on the death of Eumolpus Ceryx the youngest
son was the only one left, who (the heralds say) was not the son of
Eumolpus at all, but the son of Hermes by Aglaurus the daughter of
Cecrops.
There is also a hero-chapel to Hippothoon, from whom a tribe gets its
name, and near it one to Zarex, who is said to have learnt music of
Apollo. But my own idea is that Zarex was a stranger, a Lacedæmonian
who had come into Attica, and that the city Zarex in Laconia by the
sea was called after him. But if the hero Zarex was a native of
Attica, I know nothing about him. And the river Cephisus flows near
the Eleusinian territory with greater speed than before: and here
is a place called Erineus, where Pluto they say descended, when he
carried off Proserpine. On the banks of this river Theseus slew the
robber Polypemon, who was surnamed Procrustes. And the Eleusinians
have a temple to Triptolemus, and to Propylæan Artemis, and to Father
Poseidon, and a well called Callichorus, where the Eleusinian women
first danced and sang songs to the goddess. And the Rharian plain
was the first sown and the first that produced crops according to
tradition, and this is the reason why it is the custom to use barley
from it to make cakes for the sacrifices. Here is shown Triptolemus’
threshing-floor and altar. But what is inside the sacred wall I am
forbidden by a dream to divulge, for those who are uninitiated, as
they are forbidden sight of them, so also clearly may not hear of the
mysteries. And the hero Eleusis, from whom the city gets its name, was
according to some the son of Hermes and Daira the daughter of Oceanus,
others make him the son of Ogygus. For the ancients, when they had no
data for their pedigrees, invented fictitious ones, and especially in
the pedigrees of heroes.
And as you turn from Eleusis to Bœotia the boundary of Attica is
the Platæan district. That was the old boundary between the Athenians
and the people of Eleutheræ. But when the people of Eleutheræ became
Athenians then Mount Cithæron in Bœotia became the boundary. And the
people of Eleutheræ became Athenians not by compulsion, but from hatred
to the Thebans and a liking for the Athenian form of government. In
this plain too is a temple of Dionysus, and a statue of the god was
removed thence to Athens long ago: the one at Eleutheræ now is an
imitation of it. And at some distance is a small grotto, and near it a
spring of cold water. And it is said that Antiope gave birth to twins
and left them in this grotto, and a shepherd finding them near the
spring gave them their first bath in it, having stript them of their
swaddling clothes. And there was still in my day remains of a wall and
buildings at Eleutheræ. This makes it clear that it was a town built a
little above the plain towards Mount Cithæron.