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.
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]
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.
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]
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]
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]
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]
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.