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transmitted to us of the Attic kings, his predecessors,
is a compilation in which some of the names appear
to have been invented merely to fill up a gap in chrono-
logy; others clearly belong to purely mythical personages;
not one can safely be pronounced historical. Their
reigns are no less barren of events than their existence
is questionable. Two occurrences only are related in
their annals, which may seem to bear marks of a really
political character. One is the war with Eubœa, in
which Xuthus aided the Athenians; the other a contest
much more celebrated, between the Attic king Erech-
theus and the Thracian Eumolpus, who had become
sovereign of Eleusis, where he founded a priesthood,
which in later times was administered by an Athenian
house, which claimed him as its ancestor. In this
war Erechtheus is said to have perished, either through
the wrath of Poseidon, or by the hand of a mortal
enemy; and after his death, according to one form of
the legend, Ion, intrusted by the Athenians with the
command, terminated the war by a treaty, in which the
Eleusinians acknowledged the supremacy of Athens,
but reserved to themselves the celebration of their
rites. Neither Xuthus nor Ion however are enume-
rated among the kings of Attica. Erechtheus was
succeeded by a second Cecrops, who migrated to
Euboea, and left his hereditary throne to his son, a
second Pandion. But henceforward the Athenian annals
are full of civil wars and revolutions. Pandion is ex-
pelled from his dominions by the Metionids
-a rival
branch of the royal family—and takes refuge in Megara,
where he marries the king's daughter, and succeeds to
the throne.2 At Megara he became the father of
four sons: but the legitimacy of Egeus, the eldest,
was disputed; and when, after the death of Pandion, he
entered Attica at the head of an army, recovered his
patrimony from the usurpers, and shared it with his
brothers, he was still the object of their jealousy.

1 Apollod. iii. 15. 4. Paus. i. 38. 3. Strabo, viii. p. 383.
2 Paus. i. 5. 3.

As

he was long childless, they began to cast a wishful eye toward his inheritance. But a mysterious oracle brought him to Trozen, where fate had decreed that the future hero of Athens should be born. Ethra, the daughter of the sage king Pittheus, son of Pelops, was his mother: but the Trozenian legend called Poseidon, not Ægeus, his father. Ægeus however returned to Athens with the hope that, in the course of years, he should be followed by a legitimate heir. At parting, he shewed Athra a huge mass of rock, under which he had hidden a sword and a pair of sandals: when her child, if a boy, should be able to lift the stone, he was to repair to Athens with the tokens it concealed, and to claim Ægeus as his father. From this deposit, thra gave her son the name of Theseus.

The life of Theseus is composed of three main acts, his journey from Trozen to Athens, his victory over the Minotaur, and the political revolution which he effected in Attica. The former two achievements, notwithstanding their fabulous aspect, have probably a historical ground, no less than the third, as to which it can only be doubted how far it was the work of one individual. Instead of crossing the Saronic gulf, when he at length set out to claim the throne of Athens, the young hero resolved to signalise his journey by clearing the wild road that skirted the sea, which was haunted by monsters and savage men, who abused their gigantic strength in wrong and robbery, and had almost broken off all intercourse between Trozen and Attica. In the territory of Epidaurus he won the brazen mace with which Periphetes had been wont to surprise the unwary passenger. In the Isthmus he made Sinis undergo the same fate with his victims, whom he had rent to pieces between two pines; and he celebrated this victory by renewing the Isthmian games, which had been founded in honour of the sea-god Palamon, and were sacred to Poseidon. Before he left the Isthmus, he did not disdain to exert his strength in destroying the wild sow of Crommyon. In the territory of Megara he was

again stopped at a narrow pass hewn in a cliff, from which Sciron delighted to thrust wayfaring men into the waves. Theseus purified the accursed rock, by hurling the tyrant down its side, and cleared the Scironian road of dangers and obstacles. So, still struggling and conquering-for even in Eleusis and in Atrica he met with fresh antagonists—he forced his way to the banks of the Cephisus, where he was first welcomed and purified from all this bloodshed by the hospitable Phytalids. Recognised by Egeus, he crushed a conspiracy of his kinsmen, who viewed him as an intruder; and then sailed to Crete, to deliver Attica from the yoke of Minos, who, every ninth year, exacted a tribute of Athenian youths and virgins, and doomed them to perish in the jaws of the Minotaur. This was the more tragic story according to another tradition, they were only detained in Crete as captives consecrated to the god, who, by famine and pestilence, hart compelled the Athenians to propitiate him with this sacrifice. With the aid of Ariadne, the daughter of Minos, he vanquished the monster of the labyrinth, and retraced its mazes; but on his homeward voyage he abandoned his fair guide on the shore at Naxus, where, as poets sang, she was consoled by Dionysus for the loss of her mortal lover. At Delos too he left memorials of his presence in sacred and festive rites, which were preserved with religious reverence in after ages. His arrival at Athens proved fatal to Egeus, who was deceived by the black sail of the victim-ship, which Theseus had forgotten to exchange for the concerted token of victory, and in despair threw himself down from the Cecropian rock: his memory was honoured by the Athenians with yearly sacrifices, of which the house of the Phytalids were appointed hereditary ministers. Many cheerful festivals long commemorated the return of Theseus, and the plenty which was restored to Attica when the wrath of the gods was finally appeased by his enterprise. He

1 Plut. Thes. 16.

himself was believed to have opened the vintage procession of the Oschophoria, with two youths, who had accompanied him in disguise among the virgins, and to have instituted the harvest feast of the Pyanepsia, when the Eiresioné (an olive branch laden with the fruits of the year, cakes, and figs, and flasks of honey, oil, and wine) was carried about in honour of the sun and the seasons.

Of the political institutions ascribed to Theseus we shall find a fitter occasion of speaking hereafter, and we must pass over a great number of other adventures which adorn his legend; though some of them, as the war in which he is said to have repelled the invasion of the Amazons, may not be wholly destitute of historical import. We can only spare room for a few remarks on those broader features of the legend which we have here noticed. That part of it which relates to the journey from Trozen, seems to be grounded on the fact that the coasts of the Saronic gulf were early occupied by kindred tribes of the Ionian race. Hence Poseidon, the great Ionian deity, is the father of Theseus, as the national hero: the name of Ægeus was probably no more than an epithet of the same god. The journey of Theseus however must signify something more than a mere national relation; for its prominent feature is a successful struggle with some kind of obstacles. may perhaps be best explained by the supposition, that a period was remembered, when the union of the Ionian tribes of Attica and the opposite coast of Peloponnesus was cemented by the establishment of periodical meetings, sacred to the national god, not without opposition and interruption. The legend seems likewise to indicate, that, during the same period, perhaps as an effect of the troubles which were thus composed, a change took place in the ruling dynasty at Athens. This appears to be implied by the tradition, that Ægeus and Theseus were strangers to the line of Erechtheus. Both came from Megara to take possession of Attica; and the accounts that Pandion fled from

It

Athens to reign in Megara, and that Theseus, when he had mounted the throne, added Megara to his dominions, may be considered as expressing the same fact in an inverted order. But there seems to be no sufficient ground for referring any of these traditions to a migration by which the Ionians first became masters of Attica.

The legend of the Cretan expedition most probably also preserves some genuine historical recollections. But the only fact which appears to be plainly indicated by it, is a temporary connection between Crete and Attica. Whether this intercourse was grounded solely on religion, or was the result of a partial dominion exercised by Crete over Athens, it would be useless to inquire; and still less can we pretend to determine the nature of the Athenian tribute, or that of the Cretan worship to which it related. That part of the legend which belongs to Naxos and Delos was probably introduced after these islands were occupied by the Ionians. But the part assigned in these traditions to Minos, leads us to inquire a little further into the character and actions of this celebrated personage, who is represented by the general voice of antiquity as having raised Crete to a higher degree of prosperity and power than it ever reached at any subsequent period. Minos appears in the twofold character of a victorious prince, who exercises a salutary dominion over the sea and the neighbouring islands, and of a wise and just lawgiver, who exhibits to Greece the first model of a well-ordered state. In his former capacity he unites the various tribes of Crete under his sceptre, raises a great navy, scours the Ægean, and subdues the piratical Carians and Leleges, makes himself master of the Cyclades, and plants various colonies, undertakes a successful expedition against Megara and Attica, and imposes tribute, as we have seen, on his vanquished enemies: he is even said to have carried his arms into Sicily, where indeed he is cut off by treachery, and his fleet destroyed; yet his people remain there, and found a settlement which

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