[CHAPTER XV]
ATTIC versus ACHAEAN TRADITIONS
The mixed multitude of Ionian settlers in Asia must have had mixed traditions, not the legends of Athens alone, but those of the towns of the Calaurian amphictyony, and of many other regions, Cretan, Boeotian, Euboean, and so on. The dominant legends, however, in poetry, as known to us, were those of Athens, which are comparatively jejune, being often constructed, perhaps out of the competing variants of the Attic demes, to prove the legitimacy of one or another dynastic claim to the kingship of Athens. We are so familiar with the traditions as manipulated by the great tragedians, that we scarcely notice how absolutely Athens lies outside of the heroic myths of the rest of Greece.
Grote has justly observed that "neither the archaeology" (ancient traditions) "of Attica, nor that of its component fractions, was much dwelt upon by the ancient epic poets of Greece." He might have stated the case much more strongly, for he says, "Theseus is noticed both in the Iliad and Odyssey as having carried off from Crete, Ariadne, the daughter of Minos ... and the sons of Theseus take part in the Trojan war." But Demophon and Acamas, as sons of Theseus, appear, not in the Iliad, but only in the Ionian Cyclic poems; and if Theseus carries off Ariadne in the Odyssey,[1] not in the Iliad, the passage is of the most dubious, and the myth is obscure.
"Homer is," says Mr. Leaf, "of course, ignorant of the Theseus myth in all its branches."[2] "There is no trace," says Mr. Monro, "in Homer of acquaintance with the group of legends to which the story of Aethra" (mother of Theseus) "belongs."[3] No acknowledged fact can more perfectly demonstrate the difference between Attic and Homeric or Achaean tradition than the circumstance that Homer, while he ignores Theseus, takes a view of Minos and of the Cretan empire directly opposed to Attic legend. This was perfectly plain to educated Athenians of Plato's age.
Thus in the Platonic or pseudo-Platonic dialogue, Minos, Socrates points out that to no other hero does Homer give the same praise as to Minos, as not only a son, but a pupil of Zeus (Od. xix. 178-180). Says Socrates, "Minos every ninth year conversed with Zeus, and went to be instructed by his wisdom,"—"this is marvellous praise." It is thus that Socrates understands the Homeric world. Μίνως ἐννέωρος βασίλευε Διὸς μεγάλου ὀαριστής: "Minos was king, who every nine years conversed with Zeus." "Every nine years Minos went to the cave of Zeus to be instructed," adds Socrates; but of the cave of Zeus, Homer says nothing.