CHAPTER XXXVIII.
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.