MYTHOLOGY AND MONUMENTS MYTHOLOGY & MONUMENTS OF ANCIENT ATHENS BEING A TRANSLATION OF A PORTION OF THE 'ATTICA' OF PAD SAN I AS BY MARGARET DE G. VERRALL WITH INTRODUCTORY ESSAY AND ARCH/EOLOGICAL COMMENTARY liY JANE E. HARRISON AUTHOR OF MYTHS OF THE ODYSSF.V,' ' INTRODUCTORY STUDIES IN GREEK ART,' ETC. ILLUSTRATED Hondoti MACMILLAN AND CO. AND NEW YORK I 890 All rights reserved TO THOSE WHO HAVE TAUGHT ME I DEDICATE THIS BOOK J. E. H. ADDENDA ET CORRIGENDA Page xlvi, line 31 For ' StamatovurzV read ' Stamatovuw?.' Page cxxxviii, line 23 For ' tradition and coinage' read ' tradition and cu Itus.' Page 441, line 20 'I believe him to be the symbol of Poseidon's spring. This idea was suggested to me by Mr. Cecil Smith. The arguments in support of it will be stated by him in a paper shortly to appear in the Jahrbiich. Page 444 and passim For ' Cephu^us' read the earlier form ' Cephims.' Page 517, line 10 After 'do' read 'so.' NOTE i. The map of Athens is taken in part from Dr. Baumgarten's Rund- gang durch Athen, but with many alterations and additions ; the plan of the Dipylon from the Guide Joanne, Athhtes ; the plan of the theatre from Baumeister's Denkmdler, but with the addition of the orchestra. NOTE 2. Inscriptions are facsimiled only when they appear in the plates. PREFACE I HAVE tried by the title chosen to express the exact purport of my book. Its object is, first and foremost, to elucidate the Mythology of Athens, and with this intent I have examined its Monuments, taking Pausanias as a guide. I am anxious to make this clear, because to produce an adequate archaeological edition even of one book of Pausanias would have been in some respects beyond my scope. Such an archaeological commentary would demand a scholar who should be at once philologist, topographer, epigraphist, architect, as well as mythologist and mythographist. My com- petence, at first hand, is confined to the last two branches of classical learning. My work as regards the other departments has been rather to weigh the opinions of others than to originate my own. The Commentary is addressed, not to the professional archaeologist, but to the student, whose needs I have constantly borne in mind. On the other hand, in the Mythological Essay I venture to hope the specialist may find material worthy of his criticism. As regards this Essay, I have laid special stress on three points, the first of which at least may be somewhat novel to the English reader : First, I have dealt specially with vase-paintings as sources. The study of vase-paintings at all, so long seriously pursued ii PREFACE by (ierman archaeologists, is new among us. Even abroad their study as sources is in its infancy. We are accustomed to turn to the pages of epic poets and tragedians as evidence for the date of a myth ; we make little use of the contemporary and sometimes prior sources of art, and specially ceramography. The use of vase-paintings as sources is, I admit, beset with difficulties. It does not do, because a myth has not appeared on a vase-painting of the fifth century B.C., to conclude off- hand that the myth was not current at the time. To employ their evidence at all, the mythologist must have a thorough knowledge of ceramography in general, of the principles of typography, and the conditions under which it developed. All this is not learnt in a day. To employ a vase hap- hazard as an illustration is for any scientific purpose often worse than useless. In the matter of suggestion, in raising problems in the mythologist's mind which from literary ver- sions might never have occurred, lies, I think, their chief scientific value. This I hope to have abundantly shown in the myths of Triptolemos, of Procne and Philomela, of Prokris and Kephalos. Second, I have tried, in dealing with literary sources, to distinguish with the greatest care early and late versions, and to disentangle the often almost hopelessly intricate web that logographers and Latin -poets have woven for us. In our Lempriere or our Smith a myth is given in its final form, always as a connected story, with occasional references to Homer, Sophocles, Ovid, Hyginus, as if they were all authori- ties of equal value and contemporaneous date. No attempt is made to arrive at primitive form and trace its development, to formulate and eliminate constantly -recurring factors, to detect Roman " contaminatio," to trace in the modification of myth either the political purpose of the statesman or the personal tendency of a Euripides or a Pindar. In fact, mythology is treated as if it were a crystallised form, almost PREFACE in a dogma, instead of the most vital and pliable of human growths. Third, I have tried everywhere to get at, where possible, the cult as the explanation of the legend. My belief is that in many, even in the large majority of cases ritual practice misunderstood explains the elaboration of myth. I hope to have given salient instances of this in the myths of Erich- thonios, of Aletis, and of Kephalos. Some of the loveliest stories the Greeks have left us will be seen to have taken their rise, not in poetic imagination, but in primitive, often savage, and, I think, always practical ritual. In this matter in regarding the myth-making Greek as a practical savage rather than a poet or philosopher I follow, quam longo intervallo, in the steps of Eusebius, Lobeck, Mannhardt, and Mr. Andrew Lang. The nomina numina method I have utterly discarded first, because I am no philologist ; and second, because, whatever partial success may await it in the future, a method so long over- driven may well lie by for a time. That I have been unable, except for occasional illustration, to apply to my examination of cults the comparative method is matter of deep regret to me, and is due to lack of time, not lack of conviction. I may perhaps be allowed to ask that my present attempts be only taken as prolegomena to a more systematic study. I have attempted the examination of Athenian local cults only. It may surprise some that in an essay on such a subject no place is given to Athene. The reason is simply this Athene was not the object of a merely local cult, as Cecrops was. She reigned at Athens as one of the orthodox Olympian hierarchy nay, more, there is constant and abundant evidence of her forcible propagandist entrance, of her suppression of Poseidon, her affiliation of Erechtheus. Any examination of Athene's mythology would include the Homeric system, and be of far wider scope than the analysis of a local cult. Athene iv PREFACE is mentioned in her place on the Acropolis, just as Dionysos is treated of in his temples and theatre, Asklepios in his hieron. My rule throughout has been to examine the stranger gods only as they occur in the text of Pausanias, and to reserve all thorough investigation of local mythology for the Essay. In this matter of the distinction between popular local cults with their endless diversity and the orthodox and ultimately dominant Olympian hierarchy I should be ungrateful if I did not acknow- ledge my deep debt to Sir Charles LyalPs fascinating Asiatic Studies, a book that shows a marvellous insight into the " tangled jungle " of classic polytheism. The twelve orthodox Olympian gods have so imposed themselves upon our modern imagination that it is perhaps only those who, like Sir Charles Lyall in India, have watched mythology in the making who can realise a classical world peopled, not by the stately and plastic figures of Zeus, Hera, Artemis, Apollo, Athene, and Hephaistos, but by a motley gathering of demi-gods and deified saints, household gods, tribal gods, local gods, and can note how these live on as an undercurrent even after the regular hierarchy, with its fixed attributes and definite departments, has been superimposed by some dominant system. With respect to the Commentary, my definitely mythological purpose will, I hope, explain some apparent inconsistencies. My aim has been to discuss in full detail every topographical point that could bear upon mythology, and, for the sake of completeness, to touch, but very briefly, on such non-mytho- logical monuments as were either noted by Pausanias or cer- tainly existed in his day. Many points, which at first may seem irrelevant to my purpose, turn out on closer examination to have a definite mythological significance. For example, the circuit of the Thucydidean walls and the precinct of the Pelasgikon might seem to be purely topographical ; but their limits once understood, a flood of light is thrown on the signi- ficance of the Areopagus cults and the double legend of the PREFACE V grave of CEdipus. The " Enneakrounos episode " might seem mere matter of contention for topographer and linguistic scholar; but, sever the Enneakrounos from the Areopagus, and we rob the Eleusinion of half its meaning, and make mere nonsense of one form of the legend of Oreithyia. So, again, with sculpture. What has mythology to do with the lovely grave reliefs, the human family groups of the Hagia Trias ? This as I have tried to show that the very form and grouping of those figures that seem merely human has its root and ground in mythology. I had intended to devote a chapter to the bibliography of the subject. Space has failed me, and happily the appearance of two important works on the subject renders such a labour superfluous. If the student will supply himself with the second augmented edition of E. Hiibner's Bibliographic der Klass- ischen Alterthumswissenschaft (Berlin, 1889), which has just appeared, he will have before him the whole apparatus of his subject. Specially valuable will be the historical summary of the progress of classical studies in ancient times, dealing, as it does, with matters such as the scholia on the various authors, the lexicographers, and Byzantine scholarship. All the editions of fragments, lexicons, and remoter authors are care- fully noted. Moreover a great merit in the eyes of the English student a list is given of all foreign academies, institutes, etc., and full reference to all monographs appearing in the various periodicals issued by them. In the depart- ment devoted to the fine arts a complete list is given of books and monographs, not only on architecture, sculpture, and painting, but on figured mythology, vase-paintings, terra- cottas, and the like. In the department of mythology I have only one important addition to make. J. Toepffer's Attische Genealogie appeared just too late for me to avail myself of his investigations. I am glad to find that in the one or two vi PREFACE matters in which, since going to press, I have been able to refer to his book, our views on some mythological points agree. I can only regret that I was unable to support these views, which I could only hazard as plausible conjecture, by the vast stores of learning at his command. I commend his book especially to students, because it carries the investigation a step farther than my limits allowed, and by a scrutiny of the lineage of sacred families links mythology and history. For those who desire a more detailed guide, Iwan Miiller's great Handbuch der KlassiscJien Alterthumsunssemchaft is now fast approaching completeness. The section by Dr. Lolling on the " Topographic von Athen " reached me midway in my work, and to it I am much indebted. The sections on " Nach- klassische Litteratur " and on " Griechische und Lateinische Lexicographic " should also be consulted. So much of- our knowledge of Athenian antiquities, both as regards mythology and topography, is based on the various lexicons of Harpo- cration, Hesychius, Suidas, the author of the Etymologicum Magnum, and the like, themselves compilers from earlier authorities, that some notion of the sources from which they borrowed and of their mutual relation is necessary to their just appreciation as authorities. In the Handbuch will also be found full information as to the life, works, and personal tendency of the various mythographers, such as Apollodorus and Hyginus, to whom constant reference is made. It is by a thorough acquaintance with the ancient biblio- graphy of the subject that we come to our fullest appreciation of Pausanias himself. To the student who has lamented the loss of such writers as Polemon and Heliodorus, who is wearied and confused by the vague and often palpably ignorant and second-hand statements of scholiasts and lexicographers, our own periegetes, whose guide-book has been preserved in its entirety, and who was an eye-witness of what he describes, comes as a veritable godsend. I say advisedly eye-witness, PREFACE vi l though certain modern critics seem to hold that Pausanias was, as J. C. Scaliger said, " omnium (iraeculorum mendacissimum." I have read carefully all the attacks upon my author by Dr. Wilamowitz (Hermes, xii. 346) and by Dr. A. Kalkmann (Pausanias der Periegef, 1886). The controversy is one which can only fairly be waged in relation to the whole periegesis, and therefore is beside my province. I feel bound, however, to record my own conviction that the narrative of Pausanias is no instance of " Reise Romantik," but the careful, conscientious, and in some parts amusing and (mite original narrative of a bona-fide traveller. If Pausanias did read his Polemon before he started, and when he got back to his study in Asia Minor posted up his notes by the help of the last mythological handbook, what educated man would do less ? Moreover, was the second century A. n. an age of exact and minute reference to authorities? In those days, when the weekly papers were not, all the learning of the past was the free and happy hunting-ground of the original writer of the present. Even to-day, which of us, in writing our reminiscences of Athens, not for the specialist but for the general educated public, might not permissibly refresh our memories by a glance at our Murray or our Baedeker ? who would be extreme to con- fess precisely what ignorance or haste had left unnoted on the spot, or how many lines were written in to veil a discreditable mental lacuna ? And if, nearly two thousand years ago, he did the same, is it any reason why we should pillory Pausanias before the literary world, and call him a " Dutzendmensch ohne Originalitat " ? In the face of recent excavations, which every- where, save in the most trivial details, confirm the narrative of Pausanias, such criticism proves nothing but that there is a vast amount of energy and learned ingenuity out of work. Setting controversy aside, a word must be said as to the character of the narrative of Pausanias. This is best under- stood by remembering the date at which he wrote. Born, probably, during the last years of Hadrian's rule, he lived during the reign of Antoninus Pius (138-160 A.D.) and part of that of Marcus Aurelius (161-180 A.D.) i.e., his whole life falls during the quiet times of the good emperors. These were days of peace for Greece, and of a certain well- assured, if somewhat stagnant, material prosperity. Hadrian, as we shall constantly see, tried to revive for Athens her faded glory. He restored old temples, built new ones, erected libraries, gymnasia, baths, watercourses. He supplied anew all the outside apparatus of a vigorous city life, but he could not stay the progress of that death which is from within. Accordingly this prosperous period of the reign of Hadrian has the irony of a magnificence purely external. Greece endured to the full the last ignominy of greatness, she became the fashion of the vulgar. Pausanias, of course, did not feel the pathos of this situation. Perhaps no contemporary thinker could have stood sufficiently aloof to see how hollow was this Neo-Attic revival. Anyhow, Pausanias was not the man to feel these larger issues of things ; he was essentially an antiquarian, and only by parenthesis either politician and patriot. Such a man is, as we might expect, diligent always in the collection of facts, curious in inquiry into recondite detail, prolix often in narra- tion, intelligent sometimes with that depressing form of intellect to which all things are interesting, which is hungry for facts rather than their significance, against whose mental horizon all things are ranged in a somewhat dreary level of flatness, unrelieved by the perspective of a personal point of view. With respect, however, to two of his characteristics Pausanias is not only a man characteristic of his times, but he also betrays a personal bias. As these two characteristics influence con- siderably the way in which I propose to treat his narrative, I must note them distinctly. PREFACE ix First, Pausanias, when politics engage him, is distinctly imperial in tone. An anonymous translator of the last century hits the mark, I think, when he says that Pausanias has, with " consummate accuracy and diligence " in every part of Greece, given an account of "the mutations of empires and the illustrious transactions of kings." This imperial bias of Pausanias leads him into wearisome and well-nigh interminable digressions. If Pyrrhus, if Attains, if Antigonus are mentioned ever so casually, Pausanias is off at a tangent into pages of eulogistic narration. We must do him the justice to say he returns to his starting- point ; but the mythologist, after following the migrations of the Gauls over half a continent or the adventures of Ptolemy through a lifetime, retraces his steps jaded and weary. When- ever, therefore, Pausanias thus indulges his love for the "illustrious transactions of kings," I have decided to omit the digression entirely, or, if interesting in connection with the context, briefly to note its contents. I am aware that this proceeding will be viewed by many with suspicion, but from my point of view it is, I think, justifiable. My object in bringing this book of Pausanias before the general reader is not in the least to make him known as a writer, it is rather that he may help to make Athens and the Athenian people known to us ; hence, when he digresses to tell the fortunes of foreigners and barbarians, because his story is no longer serviceable to my purpose, I omit or curtail it. Thus far I may seem, though I will not impugn his veracity, to have but slight reverence for my author. It may occur perhaps to some reader to ask " Why select for purposes of strictly popular utility an author with so little to recommend him ? Why follow this old-world cicerone at all if his foot- steps are halting and devious?" I answer in the first place that the intellectual shortcomings of Pausanias constitute also in a sense his peculiar merit. A more able man might often X PREFACE have been a less trustworthy guide. Jf we arc conscious, on the one hand, that in the view taken by Pausanias of the monuments of Greece there is a certain want of perspective, a lack of grouping, an inability to see the relative proportion of things, we feel at least that we get our facts undistorted by the medium of a powerful personality, untinged by any colour- ing of formative theory. But Pausanias has another peculiar and positive merit which makes him for my purpose a desirable guide. I mean his marked antiquarian bias. In this matter, as in others, we have Pausanias at his worst in the Attica. It is unfortunate that on the most difficult portion of his work he had to try his 'prentice hand ; he is manifestly ill at ease, and oppressed by the burden of impending material, nor has he yet quite felt his way to his own proper manner. Still, in the Attica, as throughout, be his faults and shortcomings what they may, with Pausanias we feel that for us mythologists his heart is in the right place ; for that which is archaic, quaint, obsolete, whether in art or custom, he cherishes a special affection. When a priest will tell him a half-forgotten local legend or divulge a secret ceremony, when he lights upon a rude shapeless xoanon, the object of some lingering barbarian cult these are his happy moments. An age of scepticism will always cherish and admire the rude symbols of a primitive faith ; an urbane and effete civilisation delights to contemplate the customs of the rustic barbarian. We cannot call Pausanias a sceptic, he everywhere expresses a reverent belief in his country's gods and heroes ; but his faith is not simple and spontaneous, it is of the protesting, deprecating, consciously conservative sort. When we become interested in the gods, when we study the minutiae of their worship and recount their variant legends, the days of love and fear are long since over and gone. So it is also with art. Pausanias loves to linger over the strange images wrought PREFACE xi by Daedalus and his fellows, and yet we somehow feel it is not that he is attracted by their real inherent merit, by their straight simplicity, their direct truth, their plain unconsciousness, rather it is because they are odd, grotesque, and out of the way, because they serve as material for recondite exposition. The motives, however, of the antiquarian curiosity concern us little, the fact is all-important. In our quest of knowledge concerning the mind of Greece it is above all things necessary we should study the beginnings of their religious thought, get as near to the fountain-head as we may. Early art, early custom betrays itself with a na'ive and childlike unconscious- ness ; as yet it knows and fears not the critic ; it utters itself clearly in its own mother tongue touched with the lingering provincialism that is soon to be silenced by the growing habit of cosmopolitan speech. Therefore the record of primitive custom, the description of archaic works of art in which Pausanias is constantly diligent, is for us supremely valuable. In this matter I shall follow and even outstrip his guidance. I shall pass with scant notice all temples, buildings, statues of the decadence, be they ever so showy and spacious ; I shall be sparing in details of Roman architecture and topography let those discuss them to whom they are dear but wher- ever Pausanias stops to tell some early legend, or to describe the rude image of some primitive faith, we will stop with him. Because my object is not all Hellas, but, so far as it can be separated, Athens only, I shall stop longest where the shrine is of some indigenous Attic worship, but no early cult shall pass unnoticed. Athens welcomed within her hospitable walls many a foreign cult ; whatever she received we shall not disallow. The task before me is touched with inevitable sadness. The record we have to read is the record of what we have lost. That loss, but for Pausanias, we should never have realised. He and he only gives us the real live picture of what the art of ancient Athens was. Even the well-furnished XI i PREFACE classical scholar pictures the Acropolis as a stately hill ap- proached by the Propylaea, crowned by the austere beauty of the Parthenon, and adds to his picture perhaps the re- membrance of some manner of Erechtheion, a vision of colourless marble, of awe, restraint, severe selection. Only Pausanias tells him of the colour and life, the realism, the quaintness, the forest of votive statues, the gold, the ivory, the bronze, the paintings on the walls, the golden lamps, the brazen palm tree, the strange old Hermes hidden in myrtle leaves, the ancient stone on which Silenus sat, the smoke-grimed images of Athene, Diitrephes all pierced with arrows, Kleoitas with his silver nails, the heroes peeping from the Trojan horse, Anacreon singing in his cups ; all these, if we would picture the truth and not our own imaginations, we must learn of, and learn of from Pausanias. But if the record of our loss is a sad one, it has its meed of sober joy ; it is the record also of what if it be even a little in these latter days we have refound. The translation of the text of Pausanias is throughout by Mrs. Verrall. Her responsibility begins and ends there, and with the appended critical notes. But though she is answer- able for no mistakes in the Archaeological Commentary or Introductory Essay, I should like to say here how much I owe to her for her constant kindness in the tedious and arduous task of revising proofs and verifying references, and also to Mr. Verrall for his frequent aid in the discussion of difficulties of textual interpretation, a matter which archaeology can never safely disregard. With regard to the vexed question of the spelling of proper names, the general principle adopted has been that of retaining the more familiar Latin forms in the case of the better known names, but using the Greek spelling wherever it could be used PREFACE xiil without a shock to literary associations. It seemed equally inappropriate to write Korinth and Asclepius. But where so uncertain a standard has been adopted as the presumed fami- liarity of the reader, there will be many disputable decisions, and the only inconsistency I have endeavoured to avoid has been that of spelling the same name in various ways. In the matter of illustrations, I owe special thanks to Mr. Kabbadias, General Ephor of Antiquities at Athens, for his most kind permission to reproduce the coloured plan of the Acropolis immediately after its appearance, and I take this opportunity of thanking him for the constant facilities he afforded me for study while at Athens. Professor Percy Gardner has kindly allowed me to make free use of the numismatic commentary which, conjointly with Dr. Imhoof Blumner, he has published in the Hellenic Journal ; and the Council of the Hellenic Society have allowed the reproduction of the numismatic and several other plates. My frequent obliga- tions to foreign and other publications are, I hope, fully stated in the notes. I am indebted to many friends for the original photographs, which they have either made expressly for this book or allowed me to make use of; to Mr. Peveril Turnbull for the illustrations on pp. 108, 228, 347, 367, 387, 389, 405, and 416, and for his unwearied help given me at Athens in the reproducing and verification of inscriptions ; to Mr. J. S. Furley for the views on pp. 19 and 20. Section xii. also owes to him the beautiful view of the Epidaurus theatre (p. 294) and the general views on pp. 272 and 286, and to Mr. Elsey Smith those on pp. 272, 277, and 284. I have only to regret that, owing to the unavoidable reduction of size, these views give but an inadequate notion of the clearness and detail of the originals. The same should be said of the views, kindly taken for me this spring by Mr. Walter Leaf (pp. 349, 354, and 404), of the south-west side of the Acropolis, the Pelasgian xiv PREFACE wall near the Propylaea, and the precinct of Artemis Brauronia, all of which are of special value, as they represent the result of recent excavations. Finally, to Dr. Dorpfeld I owe a double debt. During the spring of 1888 I had the privilege of attending his lectures at Athens on the Dionysiac theatre, the " Theseion " and Pnyx, and the successive temples at Eleusis. Up to that time the study of topography had been to me a weary and most dis- tasteful necessity ; then, and not till then, I began to realise its close and intimate relation to my own special study, and I saw with constantly increasing clearness that the juxtaposition of shrines and cults must be a constant factor in the interpretation of both ritual and myth. With a rare generosity Dr. Dorpfeld has allowed me to make use of many of his as yet unpublished views, which are acknowledged in their place in the Commentary, and lastly, has, with the most patient kindness, gone through the whole of my proofs, a task, I must fear, rendered trebly irksome by a foreign idiom, the unscientific nature of my book, and the heavy pressure of professional duties. This revision has not only saved me from numbers of minor topographical and archi- tectural blunders, but has added many important suggestions, which are in part incorporated in the Commentary, in part printed as addenda to the various sections. On one im- portant point only respecting the newly discovered temple on the Acropolis I have felt obliged to maintain an opinion directly contrary to his. I can only say that it is this portion of my book I send forth with the greatest misgiving. For my double debt I can offer to Dr. Dorpfeld no ade- quate thanks. JANE E. HARRISON. LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS THE MYTHOLOGY OF ATHENIAN LOCAL CULTS FIG. I'AGE 1. Amasis vase : Athene and Poseidon ( Bibliothequc Nationale, Paris) xxvii 2. Terra-cotta : Birth of Erich thonios (Berlin Museum) . . ..\.\viii 3. Cylix : Birth of Erichthonios (Berlin Museum) .... xxix 4. Amphora : Erichthonios in the chest (British Museum) . . . xxxii 5. Terra-cotta : Dionysos on mule (Berlin Museum) . . . xxxviii 6. Vase: Satyr swinging maiden (Berlin Museum) .... xliv 7. Relief: Entrance of Dionysos (Louvre) ..... xlv 8. Hieron vase : Starting of Triptolemos (British Museum) . . 1 9. Kalpis : Starting of Triptolemos (British Museum) . . . lii 10. Vase: Triptolemos in Egypt (Hermitage) ..... liii 11. Hieron cylix : Eos pursues Kephalos (Xeuburg) .... Ixv 12. Hieron cylix (exterior) : Hunting scene (Neuburg) . . . Ixvi 13. Blacas krater : Eos pursues Kephalos at sunrise (British Museum) . Ixvii 14. Vase : Death of Prokris (British Museum) ..... Ixix 15. Delos akroterion : Boreas and Oreithyia (Central Museum, Athens) Ixxvii 16. Cylix : Phineus, Harpies, Zetes, and Kalais (Wiirzburg) . . Ixxix 17. Cylix: Aedonaia and Itys (Munich Museum) .... xciii 1 8. Cylix : Procne, Philomela, and Itys (Louvre) .... xciv 19. Cylix : Themis and /Egeus (Berlin) ...... c 20. Hieron cylix : Aithra and Theseus (Hermitage) . . . . ci 21. Bas-relief: Scenes from life of Hippothoon (Villa Pamfili, Rome) . cviii 22. Triptolemos starting in presence of Keleos and Hippothoon (Girgenti) cix 23. Chachrylion vase : Exploits of Theseus (Florence) . . . cxii 24. Hieron cylix (a) obverse, (b) reverse : Exploits of Theseus (Louvre) cxiii 25. Cylix: Exploits of Theseus (British Museum) .... cxv 26. Chachrylion cylix (centre) : Theseus and Ariadne (British Museum) cxxii 27. Rayet vase : Theseus and Minotaur (Louvre) .... cxxiii 28. Terra-cotta relief : Ariadne with clue (Corneto Museum) . . cxxiv 29. Krater (obverse) : Theseus and the Minotaur (Acropolis Museum) . cxxv 30. Krater (reverse) : Spectators at contest of Theseus and Minotaur (Acropolis Museum) ........ cxxvi 31. Franpois vase : Landing scene (Florence) .... cxxviii 32. Frai^ois vase : Chorus after slaying of Minotaur (Florence) . cxxviii 33. Kalpis : Athene and Theseus, Dionysos and Ariadne (Berlin Museum) cxxx xvi LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS FIG. PAGE 34. Cup : (a) Children of Theseus ; (b] Theseus nnd Athene (Vienna Museum) .......... cxx.xi 35. Cylix : Sleeping Ariadne deserted (Corneto Museum) . . . cxxxii 36. Chachrylion cylix : Theseus and Antiope (British Museum) . exxxix 37. Vase : Theseus, Peirithoos, and Centaurs (Vienna) . . . cxl 38. Amphora: Under-world (Munich) ...... cxlvi 39. Fragment of vase : Under-world (Carlsruhe) .... cxlviii 40. Lower Italy vase : Death of Hippolytus (British Museum) . . clii Plan of Athens ........ To face page i DIVISION A Plan of Agora at Athens, with adjacent buildings . . To face page 5 1. View of remains of Dipylon ....... 7 2. Portion of wall of Themistocles ....... 8 3. Vase with head of Akratos (Glasgow Museum) . . . .12 4. Remains of Stoa of Attalos . . . . . . . .19 5. " Stoa of the Giants " ........ 20 6. Terra-cotta akroterion : Eos and Kephalos (Berlin Museum) . . 26 7. Bas-relief : Apollo Patroos ........ 35 8. Areopagus from south-east . . . . . . . .41 9. Metroon (Central Museum, Athens) ...... 45 10. Cybele relief (Berlin) ......... 47 11. Cybele relief (Hermitage, St. Petersburg) ..... 48 12. Eirene and Ploutos (Glyptothek, Munich) ..... 66 13. Coin : Eirene and Ploutos ........ 67 14. Fragment of child : Ploutos (Central Museum, Athens) . . 68 15. Road between Areopagus and Hill of the Nymphs ... 78 16. Harmodios and Aristogeiton (Naples Museum) . . . . 8r 17. Coin : Harmodios and Aristogeiton ...... 82 1 8. Panathenaic amphora : Harmodios and Aristogeiton . . .83 19. Vase : Harmodios and Aristogeiton (Wiirzburg) .... 84 20. Hydria : Kallirrhoe (British Museum) ..... 91 21. Site of the Eleusinion, south of the Areopagus .... 94 22. Vase : Eleusinian assembly (Hermitage) ..... 99 23. Votive relief: Sacrifice of pig to Demeter and Persephone . .102 24. Head of Eubouleus (Central Museum, Athens) .... 105 25. Theseion, from the north-east . . . . . . .113 26. Hermes term . . . . . . . . . .130 27. Battle of Greeks and Amazons ....... 135 28. Vase: Theseus and Amphitrite (Louvre) ..... 148 29. North side of Acropolis . . . . . . . .151 30. Coin : Dioscuri . . . . . . . . . 153 31. Attic calendar : Dioscuri (Old Metropolitan Church, Athens) . . 153 32. Terra-cotta: Votive twins (Archaeological Society's Museum, Athens) 154 33. Vase: Initiation of Dioscuri (British Museum) .... 156 34. Relief: Dioscuri (Rome) . . . . . . . 157 35. Lekythos : Theoxenia (British Museum) . . . . . . 158 36. Bas-relief: Theoxenia (Louvre) ....... 159 37. Meidias vase : Rape of Leukippidae (British Museum) . . .161 38. Attic festival calendar : Bouzygos ...... 168 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xvil DIVISION R FIG. I'ACJE I. Coin : Eileithyia ........ . 188 2. Plan of Olympieion ........ . 189 3- View of Olympieion, showing extant columns and foundations . 191 4- Coin, with seated Zeus ....... 193 View of landmark of Hadrian T O 1 6. Stoa of Hadrian ........ *v4 195 7- Plan of Stoa of Hadrian ....... . 197 8. Gate of Athene Archegetis ....... 199 9- Tower of the Winds (north side) ..... 2OI 10. Cymation moulding ...... . 205 it. Stele dedicated to Aphrodite Ourania (Hermitage) 213 12. Aryballos : Aphrodite Ourania (Berlin) .... 214 13- Cylix : Aphrodite Ourania (British Museum) 215 14. Attic calendar : Herakleia ....... 2iy !5- Coin : .Apollo Lykeios ....... 22O 1 6. Nani relief (Berlin Museum) ...... . 22 7 17- Kallirrhoe (1888) . 228 18. Stadion Herm (Central Museum, Athens) .... 232 DIVISION C i. Amphora: Dedication of tripod (Copenhagen) 242 2. Monument of Lysikrates 3- Frieze, from Lysikrates monument ..... 2 45 . 248 4- Interior of cylix : Dionysos in ship ..... 251 5- Cylix by Exekias ........ 252 6. Dionysos in ship car ........ 253 7- Plan of Dionysiac theatre at Athens ..... 2 55 8. Return of Hephaistos (Fra^ois vase, Florence) 257 9- Return of Hephaistos (continued) ..... 2 57 10. Return of Hephaistos ....... . 258 11. Krater (obverse) : Lycurgus slaying his family 260 12. Krater (reverse) : Dionysos and attendants 261 13- Thrasyllus monument (1888) ...... 265 14. Thrasyllus monument, from Stuart's drawing . 266 ^S- Monument of Thrasyllus and Thrasykles, from Stuart's drawing 267 1 6. Sketch of inscribed stone ....... 270 17- General view of Dionysiac theatre at Athens . 271 18. View of the cavea ........ . 272 19. Conspectus of seats in theatre ...... . 276 20. Chair of Priest of Dionysos, with adjacent seats . 277 21. Attic calendar : Cock-fight in theatre ..... . 278 22. Stage of Phaedrus ........ 279 23- First relief : Birth of Dionysos ...... . 282 24. Second relief ......... . 282 25- Third and fourth reliefs ....... 283 26. View of upper portion of theatre, showing Parthenon columns 284 b 7.7.97' OF ILLUSTRATIONS FTG. PAGE 27. View of various stages, etc., showing also the two temples and fragment of polygonal orchestra wall ..... 286 28. Cylix by Hieron : Dance of Maenads (Berlin Museum) . . . 287 29. (a) Dance of Maenads ; (b] Preparation of chorus . . . 288 30. Archaic plate : Sacrifice of goat (British Museum) . . . 289 31. Dionysiac altar . . . . . . . . . .291 32. Plan of theatre of Epidaurus, showing circular orchestra . . 293 33. View of theatre of Epidaurus ....... 294 34. Coin of Athens : Theatre of Dionysos ...... 295 35. Plan of south side of Acropolis ....... 296 36. Ruins of Asklepieion ......... 300 37. View showing boundary wall with inscriptive stone, ruins of Asklepieion, and Acropolis rock behind .... 301 38. Entrance to well ......... 302 39. Interior of well of Asklepios ....... 303 40. Coin of Epidaurus : Asklepios . . . . . . .319 41. Coin of Epidaurus : Asklepios in shrine . . . . .319 42. Bas-relief from Epidaurus : Asklepios (Central Museum, Athens) . 320 43. Asklepios, with Eleusinian deities (Athens) . . . . .321 44. Coin of Athens : Asklepios. . . . . . . .321 45. Sacrifice to Asklepios (Athens) ....... 322 46. Asklepios, with sons and daughters ...... 323 47. South side of Acropolis, showing Asklepieion, Stoa of Eumenes, and Odeion of Herodes Atticus ....... 329 48. Acropolis (west and south-west slope) . . . . . 33' 49. Coin : Aphrodite Pandemos ....... 333 DIVISION D Plan of the Acropolis after the excavations (1885-1889) To face page 343 1. Facade : Nikias monument ....... ^45 2. Relief: (a) Pyrrhic dance ; (!>} Spectators (Acropolis Museum) . 347 3. South-west corner of Acropolis (1889), showing Turkish walls and (right-hand bottom corner) foundations of Xikias monument . 349 4. General view of Propylaea ........ 350 5. Plan of Propylaea ; the dotted portions were projected only . . 352 6. View of Pelasgian wall behind Propylaea . . . . .3154 7. View of Propylaea, showing double anta . . . . 3S7 8. Temple of Nike Apteros, from the south-east .... 362 9. Nike fastening a trophy (Acropolis Museum) .... 363 10. Nike and cow (Acropolis Museum) ...... 365 11. Nike and Athene crowning athlete (Acropolis Museum) . . 367 12. Pinakotheke .......... 368 13. Chiaramonti relief : Charites (Vatican) ..... 37^ 14. Coin of Athens : Charites . . . . . . . . 376 15. Hecateion (Marienbad) ........ 378 16. Charites and Hecate (Prague) ....... 379 17. Designs from robe on figure in Hecateion (Hermannstadt) . . 381 18. Sosias vase (Berlin Museum) ....... 384 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS FIG. PAGE 19. Propylaea (cast portico) ........ 385 20. Stone with Hermolycus inscription ...... 387 21. Basis of statue of Athene Hygicia ...... 389 22. Bohn's diagram of Hygieia basis and adjacent stones . . . 390 23. Athene Hygieia (Central Museum, Athens) ..... 392 24. Coin of Laodicea : Tauric Artemis ...... 397 25. Cylix : Artemis (a) interior ; (/>) exterior (Museum of Archaeologi- cal Society, Athens) . . . . . . . .401 26. Brauronian bear (Acropolis Museum) ...... 403 27. Foundations excavated within the precinct of Artemis Brauronia . 404 28. Blocks of basis by Strongylion ....... 405 29. Marble vase : Athene and Marsyas (Central Museum, Athens) . 409 30. Coin of Athens : Theseus and Minotaur ..... 410 31. Facsimile of Ge inscription ....... 415 32. Ge Karpophoros and Konon inscriptions . . . . .416 33. Coin of Athens : Contest of Athene and Poseidon . . . 422 34. Coin of Athens : Athene and Poseidon' ..... 422 35. Terra-cotta : Athene and Poseidon voting (Smyrna) . . . 423 36. Coin of Athens : Zeus Polieus (?) ...... 424 37. Hydria: Ox in shrine (Berlin) ....... 428 38. Black-figured vase : Birth of Athene (British Museum) . . 432 39. Red-figured vase: Birth of Athene (British Museum) . . . 433 40. East pediment .......... 436 41. East pediment .......... 437 42. Selene riding ; adapted from a vase ...... 438 43. West pediment (Nointel Anonymous) . . . . . .441 44. Vase: Contest of Athene and Poseidon (Hermitage) . . . 442 45. Coin of Athens : Athene ........ 442 46. Epidaurus statuette : Athene (Central Museum, Athens) . . 443 47. Varvakeion statuette : Athene Parthenos (Central Museum) . . 447 48. Coins of Athens ......... 448 49. Lenormant statuette (Central Museum) ..... 449 50. Cylix: Birth of Pandora (British Museum) ..... 450 51. Strangford shield (British Museum) ...... 453 52. Medallion: Head of Athene Parthenos (Hermitage) . . . 454 53. Amphora : Sacrifice to Athene Polias (Berlin Museum) . . 457 54. Bourgon vase (British Museum) ....... 458 55. Coin of Athens : Athene Polias ....... 459 56. Bronze Athene Polias (Acropolis Museum, Athens) . . . 459 57. Cylix by Hieron : Palladion (Hermitage) ..... 460 58. Fragment of vase : Sacrifice in presence of Parthenos (British Museum) . . . . . . . . . .46r 59. East end of Parthenon in Turkish times ..... 462 60. Parthenon, from the east ........ 463 61. Interior of Parthenon, looking east ...... 463 62. Plan of the Parthenon ........ 464 63. South-west corner of foundations of Cimon's Parthenon, as shown by the excavations (April 1888) ....... 468 64. Relief: Fallen giant and Amazon (Naples) .... 476 65. Seated Athene, by Endoios (Acropolis Museum) . . . 479 66. Erechthcion from the east, before excavations . . .483 xx LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS FIG. PAGE 67. North porch of Erechthcion ....... 484 68. Erechtheion, from Stuart's drawing ...... 486 69. Plan of the Erechtheion ........ 487 70. Doorway to the north porch of the Erechtheion .... 494 71. Archaic terra-cotta : Seated Athene ...... 495 72. Ruins of old Athene temple ....... 497 73. Erechtheion from the west ; Parthenon from the north-west . . 498 74. South-west corner of the Pandroseion . . . . .512 75. Site of excavations to north of Erechtheion . . . . .518 76. Votive relief to Athene (Acropolis Museum) . .... 519 77. Archaic statue (Acropolis Museum) ...... 520 78. Coin of Athens : Theseus raising the rock ..... 522 79. Coin of Athens : Theseus driving the bull ..... 522 80. Coin of Athens : Athene " Promachos " ..... 523 DIVISION E Plan of Dipylon and Street of Tombs . . . To face pagi 1. Plan of north wall and slope of Acropolis . . . . 2. Caves of Apollo and Pan, seen from the"05os HroXe/jLatos 3. Caves of Apollo and Pan ........ 4. Statuette of Pan (Archaeological Museum, Athens) 5. Thasos relief : Apollo and Nymphs (Louvre) .... 6. Thasos relief : Hermes and Charites (Louvre) . . . . 7. Nymphs and Charites and worshipper (Naples Museum) 8. Megara relief: Hermes and Nymphs in cave of Pan (Berlin Museum) .......... 9. Pan and Nymphs dancing ........ 10. Archandros relief (Central Museum) ...... 11. Pan and woman figure (Acropolis Museum, Athens) 12. View of Areopagus, showing cleft of Eumenides . . . . 13. Eumenides relief (Argos Museum) ...... 14. Inscribed corona (Central Museum, Athens) .... 15. Street of Tombs, showing family grave of Dexileos 16. Street of Tombs ......... 17. Grave relief of Dexileos ........ 1 8. Stele of Aristion 19. Lekythos : Siren on pillar (British Museum) .... 20. Charon stele (Hagia Trias) ....... 21. Attic lekythos : Charon (Berlin Museum) ..... 22. Attic lekythos : Entaphia (Archaeological Museum, Athens) . 23. Grave relief (Berlin Museum) ....... 24. Timokles relief (Sparta Museum) ...... 25. Hegeso relief (Hagia Trias) ....... 26. Leukothea relief (Villa Albani) ....... THE MYTHOLOGY OF ATHENIAN LOCAL CULTS PAUSANIAS was himself as well aware as any modern mythologist that, in dealing with Attic genealogies, his material was of questionable authenticity. In speaking of the parentage of Eleusis (i. 38, 7) he goes to the root of the difficulty. "The ancient Eleusinians," he says, " when they have nothing to go upon for their genealogies, think it well to invent fresh ones, and especially in the genealogies of heroes." The descent of gods was of course matter for more reverent tradition. In recounting such genealogies as were related to him, Pausanias exercised a for us unfortunate discrimination. He ends his account of the wrestling of Theseus and Kerkyon with this remark : " Such are, according to my view, the most noteworthy things to be seen and heard of among the Athenians, and from the outset in my discourse I have selected from many matters what seemed to me to be appropriate to history." We should have preferred to be ourselves the judges of what was " appropriate," but we must take our author as we find him. His account of the earliest Attic kings will be found in Book i. 2, 6 (p. 6). My genealogical table is based on the account of Pausanias, but supplemented when needful by details from Hellanicus, Apollodorus, etc., which will be noted in their place. For convenience it is given in full on page xxii., and taken section by section in the text. XX11 MYTHOLOGY AND MONUMENTS TABLE OF ATTIC GENEALOGY Kolainos Porphyrion Ogyges Actacns Erysichthon llerse Agraulos Pandrosos Kranaos I Atthis = Amphictyon ... I Athene IIephaistos = i ,, (Ge ERICI1THONIOS = Praxithca Pandion = Xeuxippe Procne = Tcrcus Philomela Butes Cecrops II Itys Pandion II Chthonia Prokris = Kephalos Oreithyia Boreas Omens l I Zetes Kalais Chione I Menestheus = (i) Aithra, (2) Medea Lykos Nisos Pallas Theseus (i) Ariadne, (2) Ilippolyte, (3) Phaedra l Hippolytus I Staphylos (?) Oinopion (?) Akamas Demophoon OF ANCIENT A 7 'HENS TABLE OF ATTIC GENEALOGY (SEC. I.) Kolainos, P., i. 3 1. Porphyrion, P., i. 14. Ogygcs, Hellanicus, Fr. 62. Erysichthon Actaeus Agraulos = CECROPS Herse Agraulos Pandrosos Kranaos I Alt/us = Ainphictyon ( Athene Hephaistos = -j , ERICHTHONIOS In treating of mythological genealogies, it is of the utmost importance to distinguish between actual mythological per- sonalities i.e., names about whom popular legends have gathered, and with whose traditions ritual practice is associated and names which are in fact mere mythological dummies, put in either to account for the name of a place or to weld together the actual personalities. In the genealogy just given the dummy names are printed in italics ; they can very briefly be despatched before the actual personalities are discussed in detail. Often, as will be seen, the real mytho- xxiv MYTHOLOGY AND MONUMENTS logical personage of one local cult becomes the dummy name of another. It has been usual to speak of the complex mythological genealogies as due to the ingenuity of Alexandrian or Athenian grammarians. The Bibliotheca of. the Athenian Apollodorus, who lived in the second century B.C., is one of the main sources of Attic genealogy ; but it must never be forgotten that, except where the grammarian is obviously patching up some rent in mythological continuity, his material is gathered from local tradition. The two names placed first, Kolainos and Porphyrion, are good instances. When Pausanias was actually at Myrrhinus he saw a statue to Kolainian Artemis, and he learnt that Kolainos was the name of a king who, according to the tradition of the people at Myrrhinus, ruled at Athens be- fore Cecrops, and he there makes the general remark that it was the opinion of many of the demes that there were kings at Athens before Cecrops. So with Porphyrion in the Athenian deme called Athmoneus ; Pausanias says, in describing the shrine of Aphrodite Ourania (p. 112), "the story is current that it was Porphyrion, who reigned before Actaeus, who founded the sanctuary of Aphrodite Ourania in the deme Athmoneus." This was one of several in- stances where legends in the demes are quite different from versions current in Athens. Small wonder if they were. Athens eventually gets the supremacy ; her local hero Cecrops must henceforth begin the line, with perhaps allow- ance made for Actaeus, but only that Cecrops may have a wife of kingly descent. Athens might reign supreme, but she could not make Athmoneus forget Porphyrion or Myrrhinus Kolainos. Had but Pausanias troubled to tell us, no doubt many another deme quietly cherished the remembrance of many another local hero. They dared not interfere with the orthodox genealogy after the civilised Cecrops ; they could only seek a place for their heroes in the dark ages before. And here it should be noted that though Porphyrion and Kolainos are printed in italics as dummy names, it is not to be supposed they were so in their own local cults ; it is only in Athenian genealogy that OF ANCIENT A THENS they are shadow kings. It is the same with Ogyges ; in his reign tradition said the great flood came, but here is an obvious interpolation of Thessalian legend. The mythological sense recognised that Ogyges and the flood story were not Attic, for though Hellanicus carefully dates him at 1796 B.C., it is universally allowed that a long interval elapsed before the coming of the really indigenous king Cecrops. With Cecrops according to Apollodorus, first king of Athens the real live mythology of Athens begins ; he is a person in art as well as in literary tradition. Cecrops gave his name not only to one of the four original Attic tribes, but also to one of the later twelve ; to him, as to some earlier Theseus, the consolidation of the State was attributed. He numbered the people, established marriage, and first erected an altar to Zeus Hypatos, and forbade the sacrifice of living things. He was to the Athenians their first civilised man. Tradition connected him closely with two great events in Attic history 1. The strife of Athene and Poseidon. 2. The birth of Erichthonios. The legend of a strife between two gods for a favoured city was not confined to Athens. Hera and Poseidon, Pausanias tells (ii. 15, 5), contended for Argos. The ancient dwellers in Argos, Phoroneus, Cephisus and Asterion were, like old King Cecrops, arbitrators in the strife ; they, like Cecrops, adjudged the prize to the goddess, and Poseidon in his vengeance took away their water from the city. The manner of the strife at Athens is always the same ; the rival gods show their o^eia, their tokens ; it is only the manner of arbitration that differs ; sometimes it is Cecrops, sometimes the Athenians who decide by vote, later, probably, when the Olympian system got the upper hand, it is the twelve orthodox Olympian gods. The rise of such a story seems easy enough : a queer crooked olive tree, too strangely shaped to be quite of natural growth, and near to it a brackish spring and an odd mark on a rock that might be a trident ; these, with the rival worships of Athene and Poseidon, were enough material in a myth-making MYTHOLOGY AND MONUMENTS age. One point, however, deserves notice ; there is, so far as I know, no trace of the myth earlier than Herodotus. May it not have been one of those invented, or at least emphasized, quite late to exalt the glory of Athene? Had the myth been popular in early days, it could scarcely have escaped representation in black and early red-figured days ; it is at least remarkable that the only representation we have (p. 442) is of very late Attic work. There is nothing in the nature of the myth to forbid its representation in the earliest art ; the figures of Athene and Poseidon were ready to hand, the combat scheme abundantly prepared. On a fine black- figured vase in the Cabinet des Medailles of the Bibliotheque Nationale at Paris (fig. i) Athene and Poseidon appear to- gether, but after a fashion that does not suggest the thought of warfare. Poseidon (PO^EIAON) holds his trident; a con- troversy is possible, but if it exists it is strictly peaceable. The vase is signed with the potter's name ; " Amasis made me" (A/VWI* MEPOIE^EN) runs down the length of Posei- don's trident. Athene (A0ENAIA), full armed, uplifts her left hand. The vase is of the very finest and most delicate black-figured style, and may probably be dated about the end of the sixth century. Archaic art, which delighted to tell the strange story of Athene's birth, knew nothing of the second act in the drama, the contest for Athens. Cecrops was connected with the strife as arbitrator, but the link is a loose one. The event was placed probably by late grammarians in his reign with a view to providing it with an early date. His connection with the birth of Erichthonios is far more intimate and vital. The whole legend is of the utmost interest, because it affords a most curious and satisfactory instance of aetiological myth-making of a special kind, of a legend that has arisen out of a ritual practice, the original meaning of which had become obscured. Apollodorus (iii. 14, 6) tells the story in full. Briefly it was this. Erichthonios was said by some to be the son of Atthis and Kranaos, by others of Athene and Hephaistos. According to this the more prevalent form, Hephaistos loved Athene, but Athene, maiden goddess as she was, rejected him. Gaia (the earth), in place of Athene, became the mother of the child of OF ANCIENT A THENS Hephaistos, Erichthonios. When the child was grown to be a boy, Gaia delivered him up to the tendance of Athene. Athene placed him in a chest or wicker basket, and gave him to the three daughters of Cecrops Herse, Agraulos, Pan- drosos with orders not to open the chest. The two sisters, Herse and Agraulos, overcome by curiosity, opened the chest, and saw the child with a snake coiled about him. Some FIG. I. AMASIS VASE : ATHENE AND I'OSEIDON (BIBLIOTHEQfE NATIONALE, 1'AKIS). said they were destroyed by the snake, others that, fearing the wrath of Athene, they cast themselves down from the Acropolis. It is at once apparent that the story is composed of two factors easily separable the birth of the child from the earth, and the quite distinct factor of the opening of the chest. The story of the birth is easily understood. The eponymous hero of the Athenians was Erichthonios, who, .MYTHOLOGY AND MONUMENTS it will be seen later, was no other than Poseidon himself: the Athenians were Erechtheidae, but also autochthonous ; hence Erich thonios must be earth-born. At the same time, it was necessary, when the worship of Athene became dominant, that he should be linked in the closest manner with the goddess. The Greek mind did not lend itself to any notion of immaculate conception. Hephaistos was worshipped in conjunction with Athene, therefore his father- hood offered fewest difficulties. But in days when Athene FIG. 2. TERRA-COTTA: BIRTH OF ERICHTHONIOS (BERLIN MUSEUM). had developed into her ultimate aspect of Parthenos, it was necessary that she should resist marriage ; all these conflicting interests were reconciled by the motherhood of Gaia. This satisfactory version of the story was, I imagine, only recently formulated when Euripides wrote his Ion. The persistence with which he makes his characters recite the creed has the flavour of recent conviction (Eur., /o/u, for they go in procession in honour of Herse, daughter of Cecrops, as Istros relates." The spelling with an a was tempt- ing, as it at once connected the name with the mystery, the unspeakableness of the ceremony ; but the e form never died out, even by the side of this plausible etymology, MYTHOLOGY AND MONUMENTS and this is strong evidence for its originality. Moreover, in the two earliest inscriptions where the word occurs (C. I. A., iii. 318, 319) it is spelt fpa-tj^opou. So strong has been the feeling that this form was original, that much ingenuity has been expended in finding a plausible mean- ing. "Epa-r] means " dew," and some say the 'Ep6poi are the dew-carriers. Preller (i. 173) speaks confidently The ceremony is conducted " ohne Zweifel mit Hindeutung auf den nachtlichen Thau und die Erfrischung der schmacht- enden Feldfruchte, denn dppTj6poi oder epo-ijtfxjpoi sind wortlich Thautragerinnen." That young maidens clad in white should carry dew-laden boughs would be a pretty enough ceremony, if somewhat unpractical ; but if this were all, why the strict secrecy ? What was the mystery in a dew-laden bough that neither priestess nor child might know, and the discreet Pausanias could not tell ? Some countenance is lent to the interpretation of Herse as the dew-goddess, and Hersephoroi as the dew -bearers, by the other sister's name, Pandrosos, if understood as meaning the all -dewy. As a fact, it may be taken as almost certain that the names of both sisters have less poetical significance. The two words, fyiwros and Zpa-r), mean not only "dew," but "young things," young animals, lambs, sucking pigs, and the like. Apollo Hersos was wor- shipped in the cave of Pan at Vari (p. 544), no doubt as god of young things. In the Agamemnon (v. 147) Artemis is addressed as the fair goddess who is kind to the uncouth offspring (Spoo-otcrt) of creatures who are fierce, where the Spoo-ot are manifestly in a kind of apposition to the sucklings (c/uAo/iao-Tot) of the next line. I take it, then, for the present that the Hersephoroi may have been the carriers, not of dew- laden boughs, but of very young animals sucklings. 3. It happens that a scholiast on one of Lucian's dialogues, quoted on p. 102, gives a full account of the ceremony of the Thesmophoria. It consisted of casting pigs into certain chasms, where the flesh was allowed to putrefy. This done, the flesh was taken up, laid on altars, and afterwards sown on the fields as a charm to produce a good crop. The same ceremony, the scholiast says, is called the Arretophoria. Clement of Alexandria (Protr. 14, 15) also says that the Thesmophoria, OF ANCIENT A THENS Skirophoria, and Arrephoria are the same in kind. In the Thesmophoria, as well as the pigs' flesh mysterious sacred objects were in use, made of the dough of wheat, and in the shape of forms of snakes and men. The whole gist of a mystery among the Greeks was the handling and transferring of mysterious symbols, among which snakes were frequent. The exact details of the Arrephoria I do not pretend to reconstruct, but given that it had a general analogy to the Thesmophoria the origin of the foolish myth of the child, the chest, and the snake is clear. The maidens of the Hersephoria carried on their heads some objects whose nature was a secret to them. We may suppose that these objects were shut up in cistae, something like the olive-crowned cista from which in fig. 4 the child springs up. From the name of the maidens (Hersephoroi), understood as explained above, and from their connection with Pandrosos we may suppose that the objects in question were in part figures (TrAao-^ara) of young things, among them possibly the figure of a human child. From the analogy to the Thesmophoria there would also be figures of snakes. If any maiden broke the rule she would see within the chest images of snakes and a child ; it was most un- desirable she should ; hence the scare story of the faithless sisters. 4. It is worth noting that the maidens carried their secret burden to a peribolos near the precinct of Aphrodite in the Gardens. Pausanias does not say where or what exactly the precinct was ; perhaps he did not know, perhaps he might not tell. The two inscriptions mentioned above give a hint of the manner of cults with which Hersephoroi were connected. In the one (C. I. A., iii. 319) we have 'E/3o-7/<^opois /?. EiAi#uz[s] eV "Ay/oats (" To the two Hersephoroi of Eileithyia in Agrae ") ; in the other, 'Epwviov). Athenaeus tells a little more. He says (Deipnosoph. xiv. 10) "There was also a song which they sing in the Aiora about Erigone, which they call Aletis. Anyhow, Aristotle, in his discourse on the con- stitution of the Kolophonians, says 'And Theodorus him- self perished by a violent death. He is said to have been a luxurious sort of man, as indeed is clear from his poetry. For the women even to this day sing his songs about the Kora.'" That lost song probably would have told the whole secret- the gist and intent of the festival. All we know now is that it was about Erigone, sung at the festival, and luxurious in its character (i.e., if we may so interpret the ydp of Athenaeus). The song was undoubtedly called Aletis (the wanderer), and it is usually supposed that this was because Erigone wandered in search of her father. I cannot help thinking that this is a gratuitous etymology, and that the song of that name had nothing whatever to do with wandering. The wanderings of Erigone, had they been important, could have been more suitably commemorated than by a song on a swing, and they really have no necessary place in the story, since, as I be- lieve, they came from the name misunderstood. Respecting the feast itself the Etymologicum Magnum (sub roc. 'AAv/ris and Auopa) has two notices which, though they are vague and unsatisfactory, cannot be neglected : " The Aiora, it is said, is a feast of Athens which they call ' well fed ' (ev8enrvov). It is said that Erigone, daughter of ^Egisthus and Clytaemnestra, . went with her grandfather Tyndareus to Athens to accuse Orestes, and when he was acquitted she hanged herself; and this became a pollution to be purified to the Athenians, and, in accordance with an oracle, they instituted the rite in honour of her." Out of this statement we get two notable points (i) the swing festival was, by some at least, distinctly regarded as a piaculum, an expiation ; (2) its other name (euSetTrvos) shows that it had a festive side. Turning to the word " Aletis '' in the OF ANCIENT ATHENS xli Etymologic um we get a step further : " Aletis. Some say that she was Erigone, daughter of Ikarios, and that she wandered about in all directions seeking her father. Others say that she was daughter of yEgisthus and Clytaemnestra ; others, again, that she was daughter of Maleates the Tyrrhenian ; others that she was Medea, who, after the death of her children, took refuge in her wanderings with ygeus ; others that she was Persephone, because when they were grinding (dAo{We<>) they offered her cer- tain cakes." In all this confusion one thing is very clear, the Greeks themselves had not the slightest idea who Aletis was. She was indifferently the "Grinder' and the "Wanderer." The Wanderer seemed the more plausible, but even that opened a wide field to the liveliest conjecture. Whatever goddess or heroine was at the time popular could, with a little ingenuity, be arranged to have wandered sufficiently. In discussing the word "Aletis" it never seems to have occurred to the author of the Etynwlogicum that Aletis need be neither Grinder nor Wanderer but a third being, more closely associated with ritual practice, more of avail when the country was polluted by a Ti-pwrrpoTraiov. But in discussing the masculine form of the word (Aleites) he all unconsciously lets out the secret: " ' Aleites ' * means ' the guilty and unjust * Since writing the above I find that Aletcs was an actual mythical person, whose history Hyginus (Fab. cxxii. ) recounts in full " Aletes, son of vEgisthus, when he had heard (by a false messenger) that Orestes, with his friend Pylades, had been put to death at Tauris, concluding that there was no one left of the stock of the Atreidae, began to get possession of the kingdom at Mycenae. Electra went to Delphi to ask about Orestes, and it happened that while she was there Orestes and Iphigenia came there too ; the same messenger who had brought the false news about Orestes said that Iphigenia was the slayer of her brother. When Electra heard that, she snatched up a burning log from the altar, and, not knowing Iphigenia as her sister, would have put out her eyes, only Orestes intervened. Recognition having taken place, they came to Mycenae, and Orestes killed Aletes, son of ^Egisthus, and would have killed Erigone, daughter of /Kgisthus by Clytaemnestra, but Diana caught her away and made her priestess in Attica." This is the same story that the Etynwlogicum Magnum alludes to ; Erigone is clearly Aletis. It is noticeable that both Aletes and Aletis are the victims of hereditary guilt ; as such the two, male and female, might well be regarded as the mythical prototypes of two dpfj.a.Koi, like those who, it will later be seen, were driven forth beyond the borders of the land in the Attic festival of the Thargelia. I am tempted to think that the whole myth of the Aiora is a " contaminatio " of primitive Dionysiac and later Apolline cults ; from the xlii MYTHOLOGY AND MONUMENTS man,' ... for the expression is used ' to take vengeance on the Aleites ' ; " and he goes on to note the form with " o," "Aloites." As a matter of fact it probably mattered as little in pronunciation to the ancient as to the modern Greek whether the word were written dAom/s or dAet-n/s, or aAvy-n/s or aAiTT;?. And if dAyrr/s meant the guilty man, why not dA?;ris the guilty woman ? Who other, indeed, should be the TTpoo-TpoTrcuov and need the piaculum ? In a word, what it comes to is this. The Athenians found themselves in possession of a swing festival which was known to be expiatory. Expiatory of what? they naturally asked. To the myth-making mind that was simple enough. Somebody had hanged themselves; somebody else must, in the most literal sense, " swing for it." That some one naturally was called Aletis (the guilty one). But " Aletis" means also " the wanderer," hence that pretty story of the loving daughter and the faithful dog. Even that dog I suspect of being, as dogs have often been, a piaculum, and then, of course, in Alexandrian days he was translated to the skies. Why the wave-offering of swinging is considered expiatory, I do not clearly know. The thing hung on the tree, the oscillum, may have been at first some special form of dedica- tion merely. But the notion of swinging as a cultus practice is not, I believe, confined to the Greeks. It must not be forgotten that there yet remains the evSenr- vos aspect of the ceremony. A banquet must have formed part of the rites, and here, no doubt, came in the luxurious element of which Athenaeus speaks. The banquet was of course part of the offering to the god ; the worshippers joined, at first accidentally, later systematically, and no doubt luxur- iously. There may have been this further significance the Aletis once swung, the piaculum was considered to have been offered ; the blight, or plague, or curse, whatever it was, was removed ; health and plenty might reign again. primitive Dionysiac side would come the idea of the wave offering on the tree, from Apollo the notion of the expiation of hereditary guilt. A number of fragments from a play by Sophocles called Aletes have been preserved by Stobaeus, but though the idea of vengeance (ri/iwp6s} is mentioned, the senti- ments expressed are too vague and trite to be any help. OF ANCIENT A THENS xliii In connection with the Aiora, I cannot refrain from noting a modern parallel, though I am far from certain that it is any distinct survival of the ancient rite. A swing festival among the Greeks at Seriphos is noted in Mr. Theodore Bent's Cyclades (p. 5): "In one of these narrow streets, on the Tuesday after Easter, the maidens of Seriphos play their favourite game of the swing (KOVVIO). They hang a rope from one wall to the other, put some clothes on it and swing, singing and swinging, one after the other. Aware of this, the young men try to pass by, and are called upon for a toll of one penny each, a song, and a swing. The words they generally use are as follows : ' The gold is swung, the silver is swung, and swung, too, is my love with the golden hair.' To which the maiden replies ' Who is it that swings me ? that I may gild him with my favour, that I may work him a fez all covered with pearls.' Then, having paid his penny, he is permitted to pass, and another comes on and does likewise." Here all sense of the ceremony being a piaculum, if it ever was, is wholly lost. The festival is joyous, and savours, as the old song did, of luxury. But Mr. Bent kindly tells me there is another swing festival of a serious and even mournful character. He writes as follows : " The swing festivals we saw at Karpathos were more elaborate than those at Seriphos, and partook more of the nature of Passion plays. They took place on each of the four Sundays before Easter, when nearly the whole village assembled at a given place, when a swing was hung up, and woman after woman swung, singing, as she moved to and fro, certain /ui^oAoyio, or death wails, such as they learn for the Good Friday night services and sing in church, around the tombs, about the sufferings and Passion on the Cross." Here, at least, the notion of the piaculum can scarcely be quite extinct. It will be seen in dealing later with the Dionysiac theatre that the sacrifice to Dionysos by Ikarios and his daughter is xliv MYTHOLOGY AND MONUMENTS the subject of one of the slabs that decorate the stage of Phaedrus. A vase-painting in the Berlin Museum (Cat., 2589) has been much discussed in connection with the festival of the Aiora. The obverse of the vase is given in fig. 6. A maiden is seated on a chair-swing, which a Satyr has just pushed high up into the air. To the right, above the maiden, are the letters AAH -aA?/. It is tempting to see in this inscription the beginning of the name 'AX^ns ; but, on the other hand, it is quite probable that they only formed part of the customary exclamation, KuX-i'j ("the beautiful one"). Of letters either preceding or following those given there is not j- . ' - _ I FIG. 6. VASE: SATYR SWINGING MAIDEN (BERLIN MUSEUM). the faintest trace. Over the head of the Satyr are seven letters, El AOEIA. The fact that they seem to form some female name strengthens the supposition that the aA?; is part of KaXtj. The question remains, Have we here a representation of the Aiora, or is it simply a genre scene, in which the Satyr, as so often, takes the place of an ordinary mortal ? I do not think a decided answer can be given. Swinging scenes which are purely genre occur not unfrequently on vases, but the fact that a Satyr appears, and still more, that he wears a very peculiar head-dress, inclines me to think a specific festival is intended. Anyhow, the picture can be taken as a charming OF ANCIENT ATHENS xlv and vivid representation of what must have gone on at the Aiora. To return to Ikarios. He never appears on vase-paintings ; his myth was probably too much that of a local deme. But in later art, when the artist began to be somewhat learned, a whole class of reliefs are devoted to the scene of his reception of Dionysos. Of these, one instance a relief now in the Louvre * is given in fig. 7. A middle-aged man is reclining on a couch, by his side a table with food, near it a snake. A V FIG. 7. RELIEF : ENTRANCE OF DIONYSOS (LOUVRE). woman is seated at the foot of the couch, a slave-boy stands at the head to serve. The man extends his hand with a gesture of surprise, for to him enters, leaning on a Satyr, the young Dionysos, holding his thyrsus in his hand. It is clear enough that this is an adaptation of the familiar " funeral banquet " reliefs. The figure of the standing attendant youth, so often found at the foot of the couch, is here supplanted by the * F. Dchneken, " Einkehr cles Dionysos," Arch. 7.eit., 1881, p. 272; S. O. Jahn, Arch. Beit rage, p. 198. xlvi MYTHOLOGY AND MONUMENTS Dionysos group. The man lying on the couch is obviously not Ikarios himself, but some real dead man pourtrayed in the character of Ikarios a special votary, no doubt, of Uionysos, and like him, Uexion, Receiver of the God. In other and later reliefs the type is extended, and the whole treatment more pictorial. For example, in a relief in the British Museum (Third Graeco-Roman Room, no. 176) the same scene is laid in the courtyard of a house, adorned with festoons, and Dionysos enters, not supported by one Satyr only but attended by a whole thiasos. The early relief given in fig. 7 cannot be before the time of Alexander, and the amplified type must be a good deal later. It must be noted that Ikarios was not alone in claiming the honour of receiving the god. Apollodorus (i. 8, i) tells that in CEtolia Dionysos was received by Orneus, and gave him in exchange the gift of the vine ; and Stephanus of Byzantium records (sub voc. Semachidae) that Dionysos was received as guest by the daughters of Semachos. ' But the story of Ikarios and Erigone seems to have got the upper hand, possibly owing to some political supremacy of the deme Ikaria. A few years back no one could certainly tell where this deme, honoured of Dionysos, lay. Now, thanks to the American excavators, all is clear. Before Theseus made his synoikia there existed in Attica a combination of three townships, called Epacria ; these were the townships of Plotheia, Semachidae, and Ikaria. If Plotheia had her local legend of Dionysos, it has perished ; that of Semachidae just barely survives ; that of Ikaria triumphs ; and the upland farm where lay the buried remains of the township still bears the name "Dionyso." Above, at Stamatovuric, the ancient Mount Ikarios rises steeply. The soil has yielded monuments that date through a period of something like 1600 years. Among them, happily, are abundant choragic inscriptions, one of which, dating about 360 B.C., may be quoted: "On the motion of Kallippos it was voted by the Ikarians to praise Nikon, the demarch, and crown him with an ivy wreath, and that the herald proclaim that the Ikarians, and the deme of the Ikarians, crown Nikon, the demarch, because he has con- OF ANCIENT A TURNS xlvii ducted the festival and contest in honour of Dionysos in a good and proper manner ; to praise also the choregoi, Epi- krates and Praxias, and crown them with wreaths, and that the herald make the proclamation, as in the case of the demarch." At Dionyso there is still ivy enough to crown the worshippers of the god, and caves for his worship, and goats to do him sacrifice, and, to guard them, " a wild-eyed shepherd boy called Dyonsjotes for the god."* A feeble attempt was made to link the usurper Amphictyon to the autochthonous line by giving to him in marriage Atthis, the eponymous heroine of Attica, but no genealogist dared to give to Amphictyon a son to succeed him. He was deposed by the earth-born Erichthonios, with whom the genealogy takes a fresh autochthonous start. Erichthonios, the earth-born, is a sort of genealogical double of Cecrops ; but he has himself a double of closer and more confusing identity Erechtheus. The personalities and priority of these two names it is impossible clearly to settle. On the vase-painting the new-born child is inscribed clearly Erichthonios, and he is manifestly distinct from the full-grown king who is present at his own birth, Erechtheus ; and herein, I think, lies the only true distinction. Erichthonios is the child hidden in the chest ; Erechtheus, no less earth-born, is the mature king, the political factor in the myth. Homer knows only Erechtheus, but then he speaks of the political founder, and is not concerned with the particulars of local legend. Where priority is stated, as in the Ion of Euripides (267 and 1007), Erechtheus is son of Erichthonios. Here, however, the identity of the two personalities seems to have made genealogists uncomfortable, for they interpolate between Erichthonios and Erechtheus a shadowy king Pandion, to make the dividing line clearer. * L. Dyer, The Nation, March 22, 1888 ; and for the inscriptions, American Journal of Archeology, iv. 4, p. 421, and March 1889, "The Choregia in Athens and at Ikaria," Carl Buck. w S O w Cj O c I-|H O t; t! P~l ' ffi rt CJ Pi a. .S a JS> IM aj 1 1i bc 5 w C (^ w 3 PQ g (1) c i-( ^ O js i^ ^i rt 0) EPOATTA), pours a parting draught. Behind his car stands Demeter (AEMETPE), with a torch in her right hand, corn-ears in her left. Behind Persephone the nymph Eleusis (EVEYZIZ) personifies the place. On the reverse beneath each handle is a seated figure : the one to the left concerns us much ; he is Eumolpos (EYMOV P POZ), with his sceptre in his hand as king of Eleusis ; he is here, not as warrior, but as eponymous of the Eumolpidae (the sweet singers), and near him, to symbolise his function, is a large swan. The circle of spectators is completed by Zeus (IEYZ), with sceptre and thunderbolt ; Dionysos (AIONYZOZ), with ivy-wound staff; Amphitrite (AN4>ITPITE), holding a dolphin ; and Poseidon ( POZ El AON), seated. Poseidon balances Eumolpos doubtless with a distinct intention, to be noted later. The vase-painting of Hieron is of great importance because of the presence of Eumolpos ; but the picture on the obverse, the sending forth of Triptolemos, must be noted first. A good deal will be said later on about Triptolemos in connection with his brother Eubouleus (p. 95); but for the present Trip- tolemos must be spoken of alone. It is a curious fact that ot all the circumstances attendant on the coming of Demeter it is the sending out of Triptolemos, and this only, that has taken real live hold on Attic vase-paintings. It cannot be denied that other scenes appear on one vase-painting of good style the uprising of Kore from the earth is figured, on many late vases the rape of Kore by Pluto. This last representation only comes in when the vase-painter begins to be learned and to cast about for material. This predominance of the type of the "sending forth" of Triptolemos is not at all what would a priori be expected ; there are other incidents, apparently more striking and cer- tainly as easy of artistic representation, which yet are absent. It only remains to accept the fact that the sending forth became a fixed type, the other scenes are scattered instances. Stephani (Cowpte Rendu, 1859, p. 82) counts forty-two instances on vase-paintings, and to these, no doubt, there might now be lii MYTHOLOGY AND MONUMENTS many additions made. Just to fix the type and show the simple character of the variations, another instance (a kalpis) is given in fig. 9, from the British Museum (Cat., E. 229). Triptolemos, Demeter, and Persephone form the central group, much as before ; the accessory figures are less minutely charac- terised. Hecate in her characteristic attitude, with outstretched arms, is inscribed ; old Plouton, with his sceptre, his white hair, and cornucopia. The maiden near him may be Artemis, the other maiden to the right with the basket is uncertain. The first thing to be noted in the type of Triptolemos is that it runs counter to all previous conceptions. Bred up as we are on Latin thought, Triptolemos is to most of us the " uncique puer monstrator aratri " (Georg. i. 19). We are even \ V\G. 9. KALl'IS : STARTING OK TRIPTOLEMOS (BRITISH MUSEUM). prepared, on the strength of this prepossession, to say that Triptolemos is, by derivation as well as function, the thrice plougher. There could be no more salient instance of the mythological value of a study of vase-paintings. Whatever Triptolemos was to Ovid, whatever he has become to us, with the forty-two vase-paintings staring us in the face one thing is certain to the vase -painter of the fifth and early fourth centuries, and the public he worked for, Triptolemos was not the exhibitor of the crooked plough, but the grain-giver who rode on the winged chariot. We are bound to renounce the thrice-ploughing origin, though we may, and probably must, retain it as a later fanciful attribution. If vase-paintings can- not teach the philologist, they can and must correct him. It is a singular instance of the force of a preconceived notion that in the article " Triptolemos " in Baumeister's Denkmdler the OF ANCIENT A THENS liii derivation T/K'S TroAew is given on one page and the representa- tions of the corn-carrier in the winged chariot on the two next. The opposing facts are absolutely confronted, and yet no con- clusion drawn. That Triptolemos was not the thrice plougher to the Athenian of the fifth century is, one might think, patent to every student of vase-paintings ; that he became the plough hero to Ovid, every schoolboy knows. How it came that he passed from one character to the other it is the merit of Dr. Otto Kern * to have discovered, and it is a vase-painting again FIG. 10. VASE: TKII-TOLEMUS IN EGYI-T (HERMITAGE). that, if it does not let out the secret, at least gives the hint. In the vase from the Pizzati collection, now in the Hermitage (fig. 10), the scene represents, not Triptolemos starting from Eleusis, but Triptolemos starting from Egypt. The painter leaves no doubt. In place of the old standing spec- tators there are grouped about the usual accessory seated figures common to most late vases Aphrodite, Eros, and Peitho, Pan with his pipes near a tree, and, in this particular scene, the two Horae ; and below winds a river with reeds and rushes, most fortunately inscribed Nile (NEIAOZ), near it a * " Do Triptolemo Aratore," Genethliacon Gott intense, 1887. liv MYTHOLOGY AND MONUMENTS cat with a bird in its mouth the tell-tale symbol of Egypt. Triptolemos is still in his winged chariot. The vase-painter dare not depart from tradition so firmly established, but in Egypt he met the arch-plougher Osiris, and from him borrowed his symbol of the crooked plough. Henceforth, for Alex- andrian poets and their Latin imitators, his function is fixed. The two personalities are fused; and Servius hints at the con- fusion in commenting on the passage " uncique puer monstrator aratri " : * " Some think that the Attic Triptolemos is intended, who, tradition says, went in a winged chariot. . . . But there is no doubt that Osiris was the first to plough with two oxen. . . . Some say it is Triptolemos ; some Osiris, which is more true. For Triptolemos portioned out grain. And Ceres is said to have loved Triptolemos, because he first in Greece, as Osiris first in Egypt, discovered the plough and the most important part of agriculture." Thus much seems to me certain. Triptolemos, at the time of the Homeric hymn to Demeter (seventh century B.C.), was one chieftain among many ; in the early fifth century, on red- figured vase-paintings, his type is fully established as the corn- sower in the winged chariot. In Alexandrian times he becomes, by confusion with Osiris, the arch-plougher. This last trans- formation I shall show later (p. 167) was, I believe, helped out by the analogy between Triptolemos and the Atlic Bouzygos. The point that still escapes me is precisely what influence led to the special popularity of Triptolemos as distinguished from the other chieftains, and what influence fixed his type on vase- paintings. I pass still in connection with the Hieron vase to Eumolpos. Eumolpos, like Triptolemos, has emerged from the group of local chieftains ; he is seated as king and equal among Olympian gods. He was the eponymous of the Eumol- pidae, to whose care was given the golden key laid on the * " Quidam putant Triptolemum Atticum dici quern in volucri curru tradunt. . . . Scd constat et arasse primum Osirin duobus bubus. . . . Alii Triptolemum atri Osirin volunt quod magis verum est. Nam Triptolemus frumenta divisit. Triptolemum Ceres dicitur amasse quia primus in Gr.iccia sicut in /Egypto Osiris aratrum et magnam agriculturae partem adinvenerit." Servius ad Virg. Georg. i. 19, and A/ythogr. Vat. iii. 7, i. OF ANCIENT ATHENS lv tongue of the initiated (Soph., (Ed. Col. 1051). His significant swan marks him out as the sweet singer. In the days at least of Philostratos a good voice was a qualification for the office of Eumolpid : he says (Vit. Soph. ii. c. 20, p. 600) that the hierophant was entrusted with the sounds (AAOZ); the striding pose is a remnant of archaic tradi- tion, and indicates flight. Eos woos Kephalos, but after a drastic fashion that admits of no refusal. There is evidently no thought of Prokris in the mind of the vase -painter, no indication even of a struggle in the pose of Kephalos ; he is borne away, willing or unwilling, by the strong goddess. The question is never raised : Ixiv MYTHOLOGY AND MONUMENTS " They know how on a time Fair-shining Eos Kephalos caught up For love's sake to the gods, and yet they dwell In heaven, nor shun the converse of the gods, And still endure, handselled methinks by Fate." (Eur., Hipp. 454.) " Caught up" (dvi'ipTrao-ev) is the keynote of the myth and ot the composition. The rape of Kephalos was one of the typical .0X.a (deeds) of Aphrodite. Hesiod (Thcog. 980) knew of the love of Eos and Kephalos, and makes the son of Kephalos a sort of double of his father rapt by Aphrodite (P- 26). If this vase-painting stood alone, it might, of course, be due to the individual fancy of the artist, but it is only one instance of a frequent and well-established type. An archaic Etruscan terra-cotta (fig. 6, p. 26) shows the same type in an earlier form, and it is known from Pausanias that the subject appeared on the throne of Apollo at Amyclae (P., iii. 18, 7)' "And there is Kephalos, who, on account of his beauty, was carried off by Hemera ; " here we have the same notion of forcible carrying off, inconsistent altogether with the story of Prokris. The Attic vase-painter certainly did not invent the type, he utilised ready-made material ; he took the type of the strong- winged woman carrying a youth, and adapted it to two stories Eos carrying off Kephalos, and Eos carrying the body of Memnon. In archaic representations I do not think, unless the design is inscribed, that we are justified in stating that Eos and Kephalos are intended. It was characteristic of Eos to carry away beautiful youths ; she carried away Tithonus and Orion, and the Tithonus story is as early as the 4th Homeric hymn; there the word dvi'ipiraa-f ("caught up ") is used of Tithonus, just, as elsewhere, of Kephalos. The identity with Kephalos only begins when Attic myths came into prominence. It is curious to note that side by side with the " rape " type is another, the " pursuit " type, more gently conceived. A good instance of this is found on a vase by Hieron, now at Neuburg, near Heidelberg (fig. TI). The inside picture OF ANCIENT A THENS Ixv shows a winged woman pursuing a youth, who seems to seek to escape. The only inscription is the word KAVOZ, but there is no doubt that the two figures are Eos and Kephalos. It may fairly be urged Does not this type, where Kephalos evades the pursuit of Eos, point to a knowledge of the story of FIO. II. HIERON CYLIX I EOS PURSUES KEPHALOS (NEUDl'RG). Prokris? Is not his fidelity implied? I think not. If the pursuit scheme had been invented to express the myth of Kephalos, the argument would have been strong ; but it also lay ready to hand, it was in use for many a god and hero and many a maiden. Possibly to some vase-painter the rape scheme, the woman carrying the strong youth, seemed too Ixvi MYTHOLOGY AND MONUMENTS drastic, so he adopted the equally appropriate pursuit scheme. My view is, I think, borne out by the remainder of the vase. On the exterior of the vase (fig. 12) are the circumstances of the rape. An elaborate hunting scene is depicted old men and young men with staves and hunting-net. One of them, FIG. 12. HIERON CYLIX (EXTERIOR) I HUNTING SCENE (NEUBURG). an armed warrior with a shield, climbs a rock ; others turn their faces upwards with gestures of wonder. I do not deny the interpretation has its difficulties. Why should the man in full armour be the one to climb the rock ; and what is he doing in full armour at a hunting scene? The altar, I think, merely adds sanctity to the scene ; it is present as the OF ANCIENT A THENS Ixvii altar is at the rape of the Leukippidae on the Meidias vase (p. 161). The general meaning of the vase is, as it seems to me, clear beyond a doubt. We have the companions of Kephalos, who was caught out hunting. And the fact that they gaze upwards in astonishment proves, I think, that the rape took place actually that Kephalos, though only pursued, was unable to withstand Eos ; she had, after all, caught him up on the high mountain the warrior is trying to climb. Had Hieron known of the Prokris story in conjunction with that of Eos, nothing would have been easier than to have introduced the figure of Prokris in the hunting scene ; but he knew only of the rape, so he chooses it as the central scene, and then adapts the groups of youths and men he loved so well to the circumstance of the hunt. One vase still remains for consideration before Eos is dis- missed the famous Blacas krater (fig. 13) of the British Museum FIG. 13. BLACAS KRATER : EOS PURSUES KEPHALOS AT SUNRISE (BRITISH MUSEUM). (Cat, E. 176), where the myth of Eos and Kephalos appears in all the glory of its cosmic setting. A bygone school of mytho- logists not only unhesitatingly stated that Eos was the dawn, which she undoubtedly is, but went on to announce that Kephalos must have an v to his name and become Knephalos (/cve 533- Apollodorus (iii. 15, 2) gives a fuller version as canonical in his days " When Oreithyia was crossing over the river Ilissus, Boreas seized her and made her his wife. She bore him daughters Kleopatra and Chione, and sons Zetes and Kalais, who were winged. They sailed with Jason, and pursued the Harpies, and died ; " or, as Akysilaos says, "They were killed by Herakles in the affair about Tenos. Phineus married Kleopatra, and had children by her, Plexippos and Pandion. And having these children by Kleopatra, he married Idaia, daughter of Dardanos, and she accused her first-born sons to Phineus, and Phineus believing her, blinded them both ; and the Argonauts, sailing there with Boreas, punished him, and Chione married Poseidon." According to Herodotus (vii. 189) Boreas attained a new popularity about the time of the Persian war " It is said that the Athenians had called apon Boreas to aid the Greeks, on account of a fresh oracle which they had received ordering them to ask help from their son-in-law. For Boreas, accord- ing to Greek tradition, had married a woman of Attica i.e., Oreithyia, daughter of Erechtheus." Then he goes on to say that they sacrificed to Boreas and Oreithyia, and their prayer being answered, they built a shrine to Boreas on the Ilissus i.e., the supposed scene of the rape. The scene varies in the several versions ; sometimes it is the Areopagus (p. 90), some- times the Ilissus (p. 226); sometimes, to make the rape more striking, Oreithyia is carried off at the moment when she is acting as kanephoros to Athene Polias. The topographical importance of the variant Ilissus and Areopagus versions will be noted in their place. For the present I have only to deal with mythology. Spite of his Attic alliance, Boreas is from beginning to end frankly no Athenian ; his children are Thracians. Zetes and OF ANCIENT ATHENS Ixxv Kalais, the winged Argonauts, are figures wholly un- Attic; so are Chione and Kleopatra. Chione's son, Eumolpos, only comes into connection with Athene via Thrace and Eleusis. Oreithyia, on the other hand though, as will be later seen, there is every reason to suppose she was originally no Athenian got very early and very thoroughly Atticised. Her myth as an Attic maiden seems to have been known to poetry as early as Simonides. Pherekydes recounted it, and both Choerilus and ^Eschylus wrote tragedies with her rape for the plot. After the destruction of the Persian fleet it would doubtless be an appropriate and popular subject. The rape, conceived both as an actual carrying off and as a pursuit scene, appears on upwards of twenty-five red-figured vases. By far the finest of these is the well-known Munich amphora * (Jahn Cat., 376). Boreas (BOPAI) has seized Oreithyia ( . REI0Y . . ) in his arms and carries her off; his hair is long and fiercely pointed like icicles, his wings large and formal, his hands clasped in the conventional knot. The hair of Oreithyia is neat and symmetrical, as became a king's daughter, and her ample raiment undisturbed ; she stretches out a hand to Herse ( . PZE), who pursues her on the right. On the other side, Pandrosos ( . . NAROZOZ) looks round amazed; in front of her a maiden, whose name is not clear, runs up to the bearded Cecrops (KEKROY), who holds a sceptre and turns away; Agraulos (AFVAYROZ), on the other side, runs up to Erech- theus (EpEXZEZ). Cecrops, although, according to orthodox genealogy, dead generations ago, is present here out of com- pliment and sympathy, just as Erechtheus is present at the birth of Erichthonios. Could anything be more clearly Attic, more blatantly autochthonous ? Be it remembered, however, that the vase is of the early fifth century B.C., just the time when, after his timely intervention against the Persians, the Athenians were inclined to be rather noisy about their son-in-law. Another * I had hoped to give an illustration of this fine vase. I am unfortunately unable, as neither the British Museum nor the Archaeological Library of the Berlin Museum contains the plates of the Nouvelles Annales of the Section Fran9aise. Ixxvi MYTHOLOGY AND MONUMENTS and earlier work of art may perhaps hint at a different aspect of the case.* On the chest of Cypselus, Pausanias (v. 19, i) saw the myth of Oreithyia " On the fourth side of the chest, as you go round from the left, there is Boreas, who has seized Oreithyia ; lie has the tails of serpents instead of feet." Boreas was repre- sented, then, somewhat after the fashion of the giants on the Pergamene altar or the Typhon of archaic art. Pausanias was of course accustomed to the stock representation of Boreas, with wings indeed but otherwise human, as he appears on vases ; hence his surprise and the special note he makes. What surprises us is not so much that Boreas should have serpents' tails, but that his rape of Oreithyia, a supposed purely Attic myth, should appear at all upon the chest of Cypselus (dating about 600 B.C.), with its mixed Corinthian and Ionian typology. So astonishing does this seem that Dr. Robert supposes Pausanias misinterpreted the representation, and that in reality what he saw was not Boreas but a Typhon or some such monster carrying off a maiden. This would be possible, and even probable, only, supposing it to be true that Boreas was repre- sented after such peculiar fashion, what made Pausanias think of Boreas at all unless there was an inscription explaining the scene ? The conclusion is, I think, certain. The rape of Boreas was represented and attested by an inscription ; and hence, appearing as it did on a Corinthian monument of 600 B.C., it proves that the rape of Oreithyia was not an indigenous Attic myth. We must look elsewhere than to Attica if we would trace its rise. Nor need we look far. The first mention of Oreithyia, though it is purely incidental and has nothing to do with the rape, is in Iliad xviii. 39. There we find her in unexpected company ; she is one of the Nereids who flock around Thetis. It may be said that this is a mere coincidence of name. Be that as it may, the fact that Oreithyia is a Nereid's name is all-important. However late and " Hesiodic " the catalogue is, it is the first mention of an Oreithyia. Now let us see if * The whole of the argument that follows is based on Dr. Loeschke's brilliant pamphlet, " Boreas und Oreithyia am Kypseloskasten," in the Dorpater Pro- gramm for 1886. OF ANCIENT A TURNS Ixxvii Boreas is ever found in like company. Iliad xx. 222 is the first account of his loves: "Then Dardanos begat a son, King Erichthonios, who became richest of mortal men. Three thousand mares had he that pastured along the marsh meadow rejoicing in their tender foals. Of them was Boreas enamoured as they grazed, and in semblance of a dark-maned horse he covered them. Then they, having conceived, bare twelve fillies. These, when they bounded over Earth the grain-giver, would run upon the topmost ripened ears of corn and break them not ; and when they bounded over the broad FIG. 15. DEI.OS AKROTEKION : BOREAS AND OREITHVIA (CENTRAL MUSEUM, ATHENS;. backs of the sea they would run upon the crests of the breakers of the hoary brine." With the strongest indisposition towards " nature myths," it is impossible not to recognise here the old fancy that the waves are the sea-horses ; the love of Boreas is the north wind sporting among the breakers. Oddly and pleasantly enough for our purpose, ancient art, though not ancient vase-painting, has preserved one single trace of the primary meaning of the myth. Fig. 15 is Dr. Furtwangler's restoration of the central akroterion of one of the fragmentary compositions that adorned the pediments of a temple of Apollo at Delos. Whatever else be uncertain, Ixxviii MYTHOLOGY AND MONUMENTS thus much is quite clear the scene is the rape of Oreithyia ; and somewhere in the composition, probably just where Dr. Furtwangler places it, was a small galloping horse. The sculp- tures are now in the Central Museum at Athens (Cat, 36-61). Dr. Furtwangler's restoration is taken from the Archaologische Zeitung (1882, p. 339). Some have attempted to explain the horse as merely a symbol of the swiftness of Boreas or as a purely decorative adjunct introduced to balance the dog in the corresponding akroterion which represents the rape of Kephalos by Eos. A simpler and more adequate explanation lies to hand. The horse, or rather mare, is, as it were, the double, not of Boreas, but of Oreithyia ; it is a reminiscence of the old Homeric form of the myth. Just as Thetis, another sea-nymph, had power at will, when Peleus attacked her, to transform herself into a lion, a dragon, and the like, so to elude her lover the sea-nymph Oreithyia had doubtless power to take the form of a mare, the symbol of her own sea-waves. And this power of transformation, as with Thetis, so with Oreithyia, is sym- bolised in art by the presence of the actual form supposed to be assumed. The stages of the story seem to have been something after this fashion. At first the north wind riots among the waves ; this, anthropomorphised, is Boreas among the sea-nymphs. Then he individualises : he loves one sea- maiden, Oreithyia ; but she still has power to transform herself into the symbolic horse. Finally, she leaves the sea altogether, forgets her horse, and becomes a mountain maiden, for Boreas blows upon the mountain too ; she comes ashore for good, and ends as an Athenian princess. But here a word must be said as to the manner of her affiliation into Attic dynasty. She is not, as is already abundantly evident, a mere vehicle to obtain an orthodox genealogy for Boreas ; not simply foisted in, like Prokris, who, as has been seen, had nothing whatever to do with Erechtheus. Rather Erechtheus and she came in together. Erechtheus was her kinsman at sea long before he became her kingly father on the land. The Erichthonios of the Iliad was unmistakably a sea-king ; and at Athens, do what they will, they cannot get rid of the stubborn fact of OF ANCIENT A THENS Ixxix Poseidon - Erechtheus. In the form of Erichthonios they give him earth, not sea, for his mother ; they make Athene conquer Poseidon. There is a noisy insistence on both these orthodox myths, and but for Oreithyia who knows? the truth might never have come out ; and yet every Athenian knew that on the altar of Poseidon in the Erechtheion they sacrificed to Erechtheus "according to an oracle," says Pau- sanias ; because they were originally one and the same, says common-sense. Poseidon -Erechtheus, the old Ionian sea- god, had a daughter Oreithyia, a sea-nymph, and Boreas loved her, and they had monstrous wind-god sons such was the old FIG. 16. CYL1X I PHINEUS, HARPIES, ZETES, AND KALAIS (\VURZDURG). story. Poseidon-Erechtheus came to Athens and turned agri- culturist, and dropped his Poseidon aspect as much as he dared, and got adopted as successor by old Cecrops, and was made foster-son to Athene. So the wild sea-nymph had to come ashore too, and gather flowers by the Ilissus or walk as sober kanephoros for Athene Polias, and all that stormy past of hers was kept for Thrace. But even at Athens, for all her flower-gathering, she loves a spring, a ftxAacro-a, the only bit of sea left her, be it the Ilissus, the Enneakrounos, or, best of all, the salt-sea spring on the Acropolis. Her children, Zetes and Kalais, must always have been a crux to the respectable Athenian mythologist. They appear on the vase-painting in fig. 16, the obverse of Ixxx MYTHOLOGY AND MONUMENTS a cylix in the museum at Wiirzburg. Their great was to chase away the Harpies who vexed the life of Phineus, the blind king. Phineus (4> . . . . Z) lies at his fateful feast, piteous, with blind eyes. In the distance two Harpies (APE) Arepuiai, as they are called in early art take flight to the sea. The sea is clearly shown by the waved lines and dolphins. After them, sword in hand, came the winged sons of Oreithyia, Zetes ( . . THZ) and Kalais (KAAIZ). In front of the couch of Phineus stand two figures, who, but for their inscription, would be quite unintel- ligible ; they are the Horae (HOPA). I confess they do not seem to me very easy to interpret. It is usual to say they express the fact that the hour of deliverance is come. That seems to me too fanciful, and I prefer to see in them rather the notion that the fertility of the seasons returns when the desolation of the Harpies is past. The front Hora holds a flower, the symbol of fertility, common to Hours, Graces, and the like. Behind the couch stands a figure, fortunately most clearly inscribed, Erichtho (ERIXOfl). She can hardly be other than the wife of Phineus, usually called Kleopatra But the name Erichtho betrays the parentage with Erich- thonios not Erichthonios of Athens, for the vase is not Athenian, but the old Ionic Erichthonios, owner of the mares. Evidence for the Ionic, non-Attic origin of the Boreas and Oreithyia story could scarcely be more complete. The myth of Kreousa, Xuthus, and Ion is a transparent piece of political genealogy-making, made evident enough by Euripides in his elaborate efforts at concealment. There was a family of lonidae of the deme of Thoricus, where from ancient days they worshipped Apollo. The simple fact that the epony- mous Ion was son of a local hero Xuthus, and had his dwell- ing, as he had even in the days of Pausanias (i. 31, 2), at Potamoi, near Prasiae, was repellent to Athenian pride. Like Kephalos, if he would come into Attic genealogy, he must be affiliated to an Athenian king's daughter. Poor Xuthus, as actual father, had to be suppressed altogether, though he was allowed to adopt Apollo's child. That child, if he was to be a power at Athens, must be the son of a god, no matter by OF ANCIENT ATHENS Ixxxi what disreputable fraud, and born in a cave beneath the sacred Acropolis rock. It is interesting to read the Ion with this political intention of Euripides clearly in one's mind. It conies as a sort of refrain " Whatever you do, don't think the simple truth, that Ion was son of Xuthus, the local hero of Potamoi. Xuthus was a stranger, and simply had Kreousa to wife as guerdon for help in war, just as Tereus got Procne." Hermes gives the keynote in the prologue (57-64) " Kreousa, she, the mother of the boy, Was wed to Xuthus, by this chance constrained. 'Gainst Athens and against Chalkodon's race, That hold Euboea, came the roar of war ; And Xuthus strove and helped them with the sword, And had Krecusa guerdon of his aid. No home-born hero he, but son of Zeus And Aiolos, Achaean." And again, when Ion questions his unknown mother as to her husband (289-295) " Ion. And what Athenian took thee for his wife ? " Kreousa. No citizen ; an alien from another land. " Ion. Who ? for a well-born man he needs had been. "Kreousa. Xuthus, of Zeus and Aiolos the offspring he. "Ion. How might a stranger have thee, a native born ! " and then she goes on to tell how the fortunes of war earned her as a bride for Xuthus. Pausanias, even when he actually saw the tomb of Ion at Potamoi, thinks it was only by chance that he came to be buried there, and says, " for he also lived in Attica, and com- manded the Athenians in a contest against the Eleusinians." It never occurs to him that Ion was buried in his own place. And again (vii. i, 2), in speaking of Aigialos in Achaia, he tells of the wars and kingship of Ion, and remarks inci- dentally that when the Athenians were at war with the Eleu- sinians they invited Ion to be their leader, and " that which was ordained (TO XP*^ V ) cam e upon him in Attica, and his monu- ment is in the deme of Potamoi." Euripides has done his work well ; to us Ion must always be, not the local hero of the Ixxxii MYTHOLOGY AND MONUMENTS sea-coast tribe, but the fair young foundling priest of Apollo, who chanted before the temple gates at sunrise. With the lineage of Oreithyia and the Ionian sea-god Erechtheus in our minds, Butes, the reputed brother of Erechtheus, is not hard to place. We are apt to think of Butes exclusively as an agricultural priest, the ox -man, the eponymous of the sacred aristocratic race of the Butadae, or, as they call themselves when encroachment made them exclusive, the .C'^butadae (the real true Butadae). The sanctity of the race is seen from their extreme care about their genealogy. Lycurgus, the great benefactor of statesmen, was one of the Eteobutadae, and in the pseudo-Plutarchic Life the fact is everywhere insisted on with constant pride. Certain names such as Lycurgus (p. 70), Lycophron, and Habron were hereditary in the family, and the whole family tree was written up on a tablet, presumably in the Erechtheion. In the Erechtheion, as will be seen, were three altars one to Poseidon- Erechtheus, one to Butes, and one to Hephaistos ; and the Eteobutadae held the priesthood of Poseidon-Erechtheus, but not, it should be noted, of Hephaistos. They claimed descent from " Erechtheus, son of Hephaistos and Ge." Erechtheus was the real cognate. Hephaistos and Ge, as has been already seen, were only ancestors by adoption. When Habron set up the tablet with the family tree, he also had painted, probably as headpiece to the genealogy, a picture of himself giving up the priesthood to Lycophron, his brother, and this was expressed by his handing over the trident. Nothing could be clearer. When we come to look at the history of Butes before he became Atticised, we find that, like Eumolpos, he had, as became a sea-god, a stormy, and for his later functions of agricultural priest, a somewhat unsuitable past. " Pandion," says Apollodorus (iii. 14, 6), "married Zeuxippe, the sister of his mother, and had two daughters, Procne and Philomela, and twin brothers, Erechtheus and Butes." He then goes on to tell the story of Procne and Philomela, to which we shall come later; and ends "And when Pandion died, his children divided their patrimony, and Erechtheus took the kingdom, and Butes took the priesthood of Athene and of Poseidon-Erichthonios." OF ANCIENT A THENS Ixxxiii From Diodorus (v. 50, i) we are able to fill up the interval, and to see that Butes, like his brother Erechtheus, was at home on the Ionian sea before he came to Athens. Speaking of Naxos, Diodorus says " They say that this island was at first called Strongyle, and that the Thracians were the first to inhabit it, and for these reasons. The story goes that Boreas had two sons, not by the same mother, Butes and Lycurgus ; and Butes, being the younger, conspired against his brother, and when it was discovered, he suffered no harm from Lycurgus, but received an injunction to take ships, he and his fellow- conspirators, and seek for another country to live in. Hence Butes set sail with the Thracians he had got together, and, passing along through the Cyclades, he took possession of Strongyle, and taking this as his dwelling-place he made raids on those who sailed by. And as there were too few women who sailed by, he seized women from the country round about. But of the Cyclades near around, some were entirely desert and some but sparsely populated. Accordingly they sailed out farther, and being beaten off from Euboea they put in at Thessaly. And the companions of Butes landed, and chanced to come upon the ' Nurses ' of Dionysos, who were celebrating their orgies to the god on the mountain called Drios, in Achaia Phthiotis. The companions of Butes made a raid on them, and some of them dropped their sacred gear and fled to the sea, others to the mountain Drios. But they seized Koronis, and forced her to be the bride of Butes ; and she, ill brooking the outrage of the rape, called on Dionysos to help her. And he sent a madness upon Butes, and he in his frenzy cast him- self into a well and so died." This story in its Naxian connection will be touched later in connection with Theseus and Ariadne. For the present it is enough to note that it places Butes undeniably in the light, not of an agricultural priest, but of a sea-pirate. He is here the double of his wild brother Lycurgus (p. 259), whose rash sacrilege against Dionysos and his " nurses " was known as early as the (possibly interpolated) account in the sixth Iliad (vide p. 259). Butes, too, was one of the Argonauts, and the only one who, sea-god as he was, could not resist the sweet singing of Ixxxiv MYTHOLOGY AND MONUMENTS the Sirens (Apollod., i. 9, 25). Why should the quiet agricul- tural priest fall before such a temptation ? Even if Butes be etymologically the ox-man a point I do not pretend to settle that does not sever him from Poseidon. Was not Poseidon worshipped as rai'peo? ; might not his trident serve on occasion as a j3ovn-Xt'i? Were not the cup- bearers at the feast of Poseidon at Ephesus (Athen., x. 25) called ravpoL ? Did not Poseidon come forth from the sea to fulfil his own curse, in the person of his vehicle the bull, to slay Hippolytus ? With Poseidon, however, we have only to do in so far as he was Erechtheus, and as his priest and second double was Butes. Next come the widely different sisters of Butes, not belong- ing to him in the least, but made his sisters for genealogical convenience, Procne and Philomela, and with them their real father, who had also nothing to do with Butes, Pandion. The story of Procne and Philomela is the most transparent of nature myths, a legend invented in part, as Keightley (Classical Mythology, p. 337) says, "to account mythically for the habits and properties of animals." Even Pausanias has a suspicion of the truth ; he adds to his account of the grave of Tereus (i. 41, 8) this reflection "The tradition of the change into the nightingale and the swallow is, I think, because these birds have a melancholy song like a lament." Procne and Philomela were honoured as ancestors by the Athenians, but they remain purely poetical conceptions, they have no cult connected with them. Only Tereus seems to have been the object of a some- what ironical ritual. Pausanias (loc. at.} tells how, when Tereus, driven to despair by the contempt of his subjects the Daulians, committed suicide at Megara, they made him a grave, and offered him yearly sacrifice, using pebbles instead of barley. The story, in part transparently a nature myth, got com- plicated by contamination and accretion, and in its later form needs some unravelling. It may be best to give the final Attic, non-original version first. Apollodorus, who, as usual, has got the matter into neat historical form, tells the story as follows (iii. 14,8): "War having broken out against Labdacus about the boundaries of the land, he (Erechtheus) called OF ANCIENT ATHENS Ixxxv in as helper from Thrace, Tereus, son of Ares, and having ended the war satisfactorily with his help, gave him his daughter Procne in marriage. He had a son by her, Itys. And having fallen in love with Philomela, he seduced her, telling her that Procne was dead, and he hid her in a wood. And having married again, he took Philomela as his wife, and cut out her tongue ; but she wove letters into a peplos, and by that means told Procne her own calamities. And she, having sought and found her sister, killed the boy Itys, and served him as a meal to Tereus, who was unwitting. And she at once took flight with her sister. Tereus, becoming con- scious of what had happened, seized an axe and pursued them. And they, dwelling in Daulis of Phocis and being in terror, prayed to the gods to be transformed into birds, and Procne became a nightingale, and Philomela a swallow ; and Tereus also turned into a bird and became a hoopoe." Various minor and unimportant modifications occur in the story as told by Hyginus, Ovid, and others, but the main outlines are con- stant the marriage of the one sister, the ruin of the other, the web, the joint revenge, the transformation. Of a nature myth nothing is left but the names and the transformation ; it is a human tragedy of wars and alliances, crime, passion, and revenge, a version that no doubt the Tereus of Sophocles fixed indelibly in the popular mind. A mythologist confronted with such a tale would be tempted to say that this is a late and tragic story; the metamorphosis is merely a fantastic completion, not an early nature myth. It happens that literary evidence makes this view impossible ; the story of the nightingale is as old as Homer. When Penelope would tell the husband she so tardily owns how weary was the night time without him, she can find no better image for her sorrow than the song of the wakeful nightingale (Od. xix. 518) " But when night comes, and sleep takes hold of all, I lie on my couch, and shrewd cares, thick thronging about my inmost heart, disquiet me in my sorrowing. Even as when the daughter of Pandareus, the brown bright nightingale, sings sweet in the first season of the spring, from her place in the thick leafage of the trees, and with many a turn and trill she pours forth her full-voiced music, bewailing her child, dear Ixxxvi MYTHOLOGY AND MONUMENTS Itylus, whom on a time she slew with a sword unwitting, Itylus the son of Zethus the prince. Even as her song, my troubled soul sways to and fro." The story hinted at here is told in detail by the scholiast on the passage. Zethus had married Aedon, daughter of Pandareus ; their children were Itylus and Neis. His mother Aedon killed Itylus by night, thinking he was the child of Amphion, and being envious of Amphion's wife because that woman had six children and she only two ; and Zeus sent a penalty upon her. But she prayed to be a bird, and Zeus made her a nightingale, and she ever laments Itylus her son. Here we have the simplest version of the story. From the first the Greek starts with an odd mistake ; he takes the male bird for the female ; the song of passion is to him the wail of lament the cry of the mother bereft of her child. The notion that a bird with a sorrowful cry was a mother bereft of her child is a simple one, and not confined to the Greeks. Mr. Lang (Myth, Ritual, and Religion, i. p. 141) says " From one end of Africa to another, the honey-bird, schneter, is said to be an old woman whose son was lost, and who pursued him till she was turned into a bird, which still shrieks his name, ' Schneter, Schneter.' " He cites also a Red Indian nightingale myth in which some one was turned into a night- ingale by the sun, and still wails a lost lover. But even in this early version, Greek mythology adds a tragic touch unknown to the modern savage. So bitter is the song, that the nightingale must have sinned as well as suffered. She had killed her son, only at first she did it unwittingly (81 uc/>/)uSias) ; but she intended a crime, she meant to slay the son of another. It should be noted that in the Homeric version, even as explained by the scholiast, though a sister-in-law is in- volved, only one woman is turned into a bird, and the Tereus element is wholly absent. The name is Aedon, not either Philo- mela or Procne, and Aedon is married to a Theban prince, she herself being daughter of Pandareus of Miletus. The story has, as would be expected in a Homeric myth, nothing whatever to do with Athens. I cannot help suspecting that its transfer to Attic mythology, or at least its exact place in that setting, is due to the similarity of the two names Pandareus and Pandion. OF ANCIENT ATHENS Ixxxvii A different version of the story was given by Boios in his Ornifhogonia, as cited by Antoninus Liberalis (Anton. Lib. 1 1), a Greek grammarian of the second century A.D. According to this, Ae'don was the wife of an artist, Polytechnos, who lived in Colophon. They had a son, Itys. As long as they reverenced the gods they prospered, but in impious fashion they boasted that their love as husband and wife was greater than that of Zeus and Hera, and Hera in consequence sent the goddess Eris to them, who aroused a rivalry as to their respective handicrafts. At the time, Polytechnos was busy at work at a chariot, and Ae'don was engaged in some spinning ; and they agreed that whichever of them should finish first should make the other a present of a slave. Ae'don, by the help of Hera, won the wager ; but Poly- technos, in the bitterness of his heart, went to his father- in-law at Ephesus and pretended he had been sent by Ae'don to fetch her sister Chelidon. Pandareus gave Chelidon to him. On his way back, Polytechnos did violence to her, and dressed her in other clothes, cut her hair off, and threatened to kill her if she betrayed his disgraceful act to Ae'don. So Chelidon, unknown to her sister, served her for a time as her slave. But one day, as she was lamenting her plight aloud by a spring, Ae'don listened to her, and the sisters recognised each other, and resolved to be avenged on Polytechnos. They murdered Itys, cut him in pieces, set him before Polytechnos as food, and fled to their father. When Polytechnos learnt from a neighbour what he had eaten, he pursued the two women, but was bound by the servants of Pandareus, daubed with honey, and thrown into a meadow. When she saw him so grievously tor- mented, Ae'don took pity on him and drove the flies away. Her parents and her brothers noticed this and would have killed her, but Zeus, who wished to ward off some greater misfortune, turned them all into birds Pandareus into a sea- eagle ; Harmothoe, the mother of Ae'don, into a halcyon ; Polytechnos into a woodpecker ; the brother of Ae'don into a hoopoe ; Ae'don into a nightingale, which for ever lamented her Itys in the woods and by the rivers ; and Chelidon into a swallow, which, by the will of Artemis, should always dwell Ixxxviii MYTHOLOGY AND MONUMENTS beneath the houses of men, because Chelidon in the hour of her betrayal had called on Artemis. This version in some respects approaches the Attic story, but the sisters are Chelidon and Aedon, not the Attic princesses Philomela and Procne. Polytechnos is the double of Tereus. In a story taken from an Ornithogonia we need not concern ourselves about the metamorphosis of subordinate figures. The notable point in this particular version is that the element of the web is present, but plays a different and much more rational part in the action. It is apparently in the Attic version that Philomela first loses her tongue, and this dumbness becomes the occasion for the web ; but the construction of the plot is distinctly forced here, and I am inclined to think the version of Antoninus is the earlier one. Rivalry was at the bottom of the old Homeric form, envy of the fertile mother by the comparatively barren one ; rivalry is again the keynote of the Antoninus version rivalry at first of husband and wife with the gods, later, as retribution, of husband against wife in their handiwork. Married couples who were too ostentatiously happy were apt to be turned into birds ; Ceyx and Halcyon were turned into sea-fowls for a like conjugal insolence. But in the Attic version there is no rivalry either between the two sisters or between husband and wife. I cannot avoid the con- jecture, though no proof can be advanced, that the "voice of the web " (>? r/}s Ke/WSos $w!}) was a purely Sophoclean inven- tion. The whole thing smacks of the drama. It was an excellent tragic motive, and was the material for a splendid stage effect, the entrance of a messenger bearing the web. The tendency, no doubt, of the Sophoclean tragedy would be to shift all blame on to Tereus, the Thracian king. Thracian shoulders in Attic myth-making are always broad ; in the version of Homer all blame lay on Aedon ; in the version of Antoninus the misery that comes is punishment for past pride ; in the plot of Sophocles no blame attaches to the sisters, save that they took vengeance in their own hands ; this, though a sin, was a highly respectable one, fit for two Attic princesses, revered ancestors. If Sophocles dealt with the Homeric material, he was quite right, from the tragic and orthodox theological point of view, to modify the situation. OF ANCIENT ATHENS Ixxxix A word is necessary as to the names in the Attic tale. We are accustomed, burdened as we are with Ovidian association, to think of Philomela as the nightingale. Such was not the version of Apollodorus, nor, so far as I know, of any earlier Greek writer. According to Apollodorus, Procne became the nightingale (cfySwv), and Philomela the swallow (xeAt&.ji'). It was Philomela who had her tongue cut out, a tale that would never have been told of the nightingale, but which fitted well with the short restless chirp of the swallow. To speak a barbarian tongue was " to mutter like a swallow " (xfAtSovt^etv). Possibly the Latin notion, common to Ovid and Horace, and transferred to modern verse, that Philomela be- came a nightingale, arose from some false etymology of the name as the "song lover." The metamorphosis of Tereus into the hoopoe seems to have been of comparatively late origin, and to have resulted from a series of curious confusions, which have been unravelled with great patience and ingenuity by Dr. Eugen Oder.* He points out that the earliest evidence for the hoopoe version is a fragment quoted by Aristotle (Hist. Anim. ix. 49 ; Din- dorf, p. 305), and by him wrongly attributed to ^Eschylus wrongly because internal evidence, such as the employment of 7/i/iKo. and a certain participial use (cnrcST/Awo-as t^ci) prove it not to be earlier than Sophocles. The passage is so circum- stantial, it may be quoted as emended by Dr. Oder : TOVTOV 8' CTTOTTT^V eTTOTTtt TMV UVTOV KdKWV TTfTToiKiXwKe K aTToSr/AoxTas t^ei Bpaa-ov TTf.Tpa.lov opvw ev o fjpi fjifv (fmvfvri StaTTfiAAei T KipKov XtTrdpyov' 8vo yap oiV yu.op 3) notes that "Kerkyon was stern to all strangers, and specially to those who did not contend with him in wrestling ; and the place was called, even in his days, Kerkyon's wrestling-ground. And Kerkyon, it is said, killed all those who wrestled with him, except only Theseus ; but Theseus wrestled with him by skill and science (cro^ia), and so over- came him ; and before the time of Theseus size and strength only were employed for wrestling." Kerkyon, who through his daughter Alope is connected closely with the Attic eponymous hero Hippothoon, looks as though, according to ancient thinking, like Skiron, he cannot have been wholly lawless. Near to the wrestling -ground of Kerkyon Pausanias saw the tomb of Alope, mother of Hippothoon ; and though it comes somewhat as a digression, as Hippothoon was one of the heroes who gave his name to an Attic tribe, his story must be told here. [It has been noticed how frequently the influence of the sea-god put mythologically as the parentage of Poseidon comes in. Hippothoon is another case in point. Alope is the daughter of the robber Kerkyon, whom Theseus slew. Kerkyon Alope = (i) Poseidon, (2) Theseus I Hippothoon She is one of the maidens whom Clement of Alexandria cites (Protrept. ii. 32) as victims of Poseidon "Summon to my tribunal Poseidon and the band of maidens he has destroyed, cvi MYTHOLOGY AND MONUMENTS Amphitrite and Alope and Melanippe, Alcyone, Hippothoe, and others that are countless." The story took its rise, no doubt, on the border-land between Eleusis and Megara, where tradition put the fight between Theseus and the robber. There Pausanias (i. 38, 4) says he saw "a heroon to Hippothoon, from whom one of the tribes takes its name," and not far away " a monument to Alope, who, it is said, was mother of Hippothoon by Poseidon, and was therefore put to death by her father Kerkyon. " The first and only author who has left us the story in full is Hyginus (Fab. clxxxvii.) "Alope, daughter of Kerkyon, was exceedingly beau- tiful, and Neptune (/.tA.oT?;s). The nurse, seated below, seems to tell the tale, and point the moral to a youth and bearded man who approach ; the youth is possibly Theseus. This Roman sarcophagos is of interest because of the detailed manner in which it tells the story ; but naturally, in considering Hippothoon as an eponymous hero, the evidence most wanted is a bit of genuine Attic work. Fortunately this is forthcoming. The design in fig. 22 is from a vase (of the FIG. 22. TRIPTOLEMOS STARTING IN PRESENCE OK KELEOS AND HIHI'OTHOON (GIRGENTI). shape known as oxybaphon) found in an Agrigentine tomb, and now in the museum at Girgenti. It represents the thrice familiar scene of the starting of Triptolemos. The centre figure of Triptolemos on the winged car bearing the corn is common to all representations ; the goddess Demeter pouring out the parting wine is also usually present, and her daughter Persephone standing behind the car. The composition is usually filled up with figures of subordinate interest at either side. Happily in this instance the two figures present are inscribed Keleos and Hippothoon. Hippothoon, son of the lawless Kerkyon, is somehow incorporated into the sacred assembly of Eleusinian kings, just as was Eumolpos, king MYTHOLOGY AND MONUMENTS of Thrace, who made war on Athens. The cases are almost exactly parallel. In the Homeric hymn to Demeter they are named together " Eumolpos and Dolichos and great- souled Hippothoon." Only in this case Hippothoon is always a chief, the son of a chief; he never has been a priest.] Returning from this digression on Alope we come to the last exploit of this set, the slaying of (f) Prokrustes or Damastcs or Polypemon, in the country known as Korydallos probably near the modern Daphne monastery in the pass between Eleusis and Athens or, according to Pausanias, by the banks of the Cephissus itself (i. 38, 5). Prokrustes had, according to the detailed version of Hyginus (Fab. xxxviii.), two beds ; if a long traveller came, he placed him on the short bed and lopped him till he fitted ; if a short traveller came, he put him on the long bed and stretched him. His name Prokrustes seems to mean the " lopper," not the stretcher. The details of these adventures have been gleaned from the earliest literary sources, as follows : Apollodorus . . . 2d century B.C. Diodorus .... ist century B.C. Plutarch .... ist century A. D. Pausanias .... 2d century A.D. But were these our only authorities, it would be impossible to state that these exploits were matter of popular faith in the fifth century B.C. Fortunately, art comes to our aid. The metopes of the temple of Hephaistos (built soon after the Parthenon) are decorated with these exploits, and the sculptures are still extant ; and of still earlier date we have a series of vase-paintings, which it will be necessary to examine.* This series is uniformly red- figured, and ranges from the earliest to the perfected style. Fortunately, some of them are signed by well-known masters, and can be approximately dated. * A list of the vases decorated with Theseus' exploits will \x found in the Museo Italiano di Antichita classica, vol. iii., part i., in an interesting paper by Professor Milani, who publishes the Chachrylion vase with several others, and fully discusses their relation. OF ANCIENT ATHENS cxi All cannot be here discussed, but only sufficient to show that the type of the several exploits was clearly fixed. The earliest vase known that is decorated with a series of the Troezenian exploits is a cylix by Chachrylion now in the Museo Greco Etrusco at Florence (fig. 23, a, l>, and ;va?os, as will be seen, cannot be restored certainly ; but it FIG. 23. CHACHRYLION VASE : EXPLOITS OK THESEUS (FLORENCE). MYTHOLOGY OF ANCIENT ATHENS CXlll may point to a sort of outburst of patriotism in the artist when he treated for the first time myths redounding to the glory of the great Athenian hero. Considerably more advanced in style is the second cylix FIG. 24. HIERON CYLIX (a) OBVERSE, (f>) REVERSE : EXPLOITS OF THESEl'S (LOUVRE). chosen by Euphronios (fig. 24, a and b] ; it is now in the Louvre. Euphronios and Chachrylion worked in conjunction, but Euphronios is the later of the two. The interior of the cup depicts another adventure in the life of Theseus, discussed h cxiv MYTHOLOGY AND MONUMENTS later (p. 147). The obverse and reverse of this cylix have each two exploits. On the obverse (a), Theseus (9e/eus) is hurling Skiron (almost as carefully as in the Chachrylion cup) into the sea ; to the right he is slaying Prokrustes (PROKPOYITEI). On the reverse (/;), Theseus is wrestling with Kerkyon (KEPKYON), and to the right he (OelEYI) is binding with a cord the Marathonian bull. The group of Theseus and Kerkyon closely resembles that of Chachrylion ; the Marathonian bull is markedly different. A good deal later in style, and far more complete as to the number of exploits, is a cylix (fig. 25) now in the British Museum (Cat., E. 53). It is decorated inside and out with the labours of Theseus ; but the inside pictures only are reproduced here. Beginning with the top group and going round to the right, the exploits come as follows : (i) The wrestling with Kerkyon. The two wrestlers seem to be much more lightly engaged than in either of the two previous vases ; their attitude seems chosen rather for effect and elegance than for force. (2) Next follows Pro- krustes ; he is lying on his bed, as in the Chachrylion vase, and Theseus, in a fine dramatic attitude, swings his axe over him. (3) Skiron is seated on his rock. Theseus is about to hurl at him his own washing-cylix. This is probably a pleasant fancy of the vase-painter's to make the death of Skiron more effectually retributive. Behind the robber grows a neat tree, and up the rock climbs a large tortoise. It will probably at once be urged that here we have the tortoise version of the legend. I think not, but I believe here we have the origin of 'the tortoise version, which is quite another thing; the artist who drew this vase was distinctly of pictorial tendency. The other vase-painters noted introduced no scenic effect beyond essentials to the story, such as a pine for Sinis, a rock for Skiron. This artist gives Skiron an extra tree, and he wants to show that the robber was going to be hurled into the sea. How should he symbolise the sea of the Skironian gulf; how better than by a tortoise?* It is noticeable, and confirms this * Mr. Cecil Smith suggests this in his discussion of the vase, Journal of Hellenic Studies, vol. ii. p. 64. OF ANCIENT A THENS cxv view, that on the metope of the temple of Hephaistos which depicts Skiron's fall, a crab is introduced in place of a tortoise. Later logographers were accustomed to see this tortoise in art depictions, and modified the myth to suit its presence. The tortoise appears also on the slightly earlier vase of Duris in the FIG. 25. CVLIX : EXPLOITS OF THESEUS (BRITISH MUSEUM). British Museum (Cat., E. 49). (4) Next comes the Marathonian bull. The representations of this scene on vases call for no comment except in one instance, in the fragmentary Theseus De Lynes vase of the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris.* The hero, instead of being triumphant, is prostrate beneath the feet of * The fragments of this vase 1 am about to publish in the forthcoming number of the Hellenic Journal (1889). CXVi MYTHOLOGY AND MONUMENTS * the bull ; Athene advances to drive the bull off with her aegis. It is not necessary to suppose any special literary version of the story. (5) Next comes Sinis, about to be bound to his own tree. It may be noted that the vase-painter never intro- duces two, always one pine. It is amusing to see that, owing to the similarity of the types, the artist has begun to sketch on Skiron's tortoise, and then remembered, scarcely in time, that he was doing Sinis. (6) Close upon Sinis comes Phaia. The attitude of sow and woman are noticeably parallel. More- over, every effort is made to give to the woman a rude and beast-like appearance ; her hair is rough and disordered ; her arms spotted. Clearly here the vase-painter halted between two opinions, whether Phaia was sow or woman ; for safety he made her both. Theseus approaches to slay them in a sensational " Harmodios " pose. Thus the cycle is complete, and more than complete. It will be observed that into this cycle the vase-painter admits at will the capture of the Marathonian bull, in literature placed after the arrival of Theseus at Athens. He also admits the adventure with the Minotaur, and he observes no sort of chronological order. One exploit he uniformly omits, though in literature it seems to have been canonical i.e., the slaying of Periphetes, the club-man. It would have been easy to depict this, and I am inclined to think from its absence that it was not known in the fifth century B.C. It may have been added advisedly to make the series more completely parallel to that of Herakles i.e., to make it open with an adventure which supplied the hero with a characteristic weapon. Be- tween Kerkyon and Prokrustes, in the last vase, a club hangs up, but I cannot take this as shorthand for the adventure. The main point of interest, from the mythological side, in these vase-paintings is that they establish beyond a doubt the fact that early in the fifth century B.C. the set of exploits depicted was known of and popular at Athens. Further, that they appear in art, with the exception of the Minotaur type which, as will be seen, is black-figured somewhat abruptly just at the time of the rise of red-figured painting. This fact is so distinct and pronounced that critics have OF ANCIENT A THENS cxvil always cast about for some explanation of it. It is variously maintained that these red-figured Theseus types are due to the influence of contemporary art, either plastic or pictorial. The metopes of the temple of Hephaistos (the so-called Theseion) were long supposed to have furnished the needed inspiration. As the temple is now known to have been later than the Parthenon, unless the metopes belong which is possible to some earlier structure, this is out of the question. The resemblance, however, between the metopes and the known vase-paintings does not seem to me to be near enough to base any argument upon it. To discuss the influence of the paintings of Mikon and Polygnotus if any existed of these particular exploits seems to me, as such paintings no longer exist, quite fruitless. Still, as the types are so clearly- marked and present only unimportant variations, some dis- tinct formulating source must, I think, be presumed. This source I believe to be, not works of art, but mimetic represent- ations of mythological scenes. It is well known that, quite apart from regular dramatic performances, one frequent amusement of the Greeks was to watch myths danced in pantomime. Lucian, in his treatise on dancing, enumerates pretty well all the important myths current in his day as the proper subject for the careful study of the dancer ; among them he mentions, of course, " all that is reported concerning Theseus and ^geus." Lucian may be a late authority, and the humorous character of his dialogue may make one hesitate to use it as serious evidence ; clearly a great deal of it is not to be taken literally. Still, had it not been the custom to represent myths in mimetic dances his dialogue would have had no point. No one will object to the testimony of Xenophon. In his Symposium he carefully describes in full detail an entertainment in which the myth of Bacchus was danced after a dinner-party. It greatly interested and excited the guests, and was considered by Socrates educationally of much more value than gymnastic dances (Xen., Symp. vii. 5). It is always usual to point to the palaestra as a great source of artistic inspiration, but the influence of these danced myths seems never to have been taken into account. And yet the whole history of theatrical representations shows that nothing is so traditional as cxvni MYTHOLOGY AND MONUMENTS pantomime, nothing so tends to the formation of fixed type. Athenaeus expressly says (Deipnosoph. xiv. 629), in speak- ing of the great educational importance of dancing, " there are in the images of the ancient artificers remains of this dancing of old days." He means, no doubt, in pose and gesture ; and if remains were to be seen in statuary, why not in painting ? To take the instance in hand. Supposing the exploits of Theseus about to be acted. As in each case the dramatis personae were the same, a young hero and a mature robber, and as no speech was apparently permitted, naturally some definite posture or wrestling scheme would be adopted for differentiation. Kerkyon would be known at once by the adoption of some typical wrestling throw ; Pro- krustes, if his bed was not introduced, by his prostrate attitude ; and Theseus swinging the double axe. The scenery adopted would be just the sort of simple attributive adjuncts that vase- paintings deal with a podanipter, a simple bed, and the like ; just the machinery of a primitive dumb crambo. Sup- posing the influence of these mimetic representations to have been felt, we have, I think, at least a partial and satisfactory explanation of the fixity yet variety of vase-types. The actors would not trouble to get into precisely the same attitudes, and probably would not maintain them long, as though they were tableaux vivants ; they would be content with a general analogy, just what the vase-painter likes. Had he drawn his inspiration exclusively from works of art, he would have tended to become a copyist. I do not intend to deny that sculpture and painting had their share of influence, but I am inclined to think it was quite subordinate to that of mimetic representa- tion. The suggestion applies, of course, to all myths as well as the particular exploits in question, but these present such well-marked types that they afford a good instance. With reference, then, to Theseus, the case seems to stand thus. After the Persian war there was a great revival, or rather enhancement, of his fame. He had appeared to aid the Athenians at the battle of Marathon. His bones were brought by Cimon from Skyros in 469 B.C., and with every circum- stance of solemnity buried in the newly erected Theseion. This was no doubt the culminating act of a long revival. The OF ANCIENT A TH ENS myth of the slaying of the Minotaur had probably been danced for centuries. It now occurred to some ingenious teacher of dances to represent new scenes gathered from Troezenian legends. At a time when patriotic fervour was at its height, when there was every desire for the aggrandisement of the hero who had been chosen to represent the demos, he was sure of popular applause. Once danced, the exploits would speedily crystallise into fixed types readily recognisable and available as first-rate material for the vase-painter. In Plutarch's systematic account of the life of Theseus there are no blank spaces. The Troezenian exploits and the adventure with the Minotaur are carefully welded together by a sequence of events which are too elaborately intentional to concern the mythologists in detail. After slaying the various monsters of the Isthmos, he is suitably purified by the Phy- talidae, so that he may enter Athens without the guilt of blood upon his head. This was of course necessary to any one about to become leader and king. At Athens he finds /Egeus married to Medea. Medea tries to poison him, but /Egeus recognises his son by the token of the sword, and dashes down the cup of poison. The poison was spilt near to the place Delphinion, where the palace of /Egeus was. Another tradition as to the coming of Theseus is preserved by Pausanias (i. 19, i ; p. 184). Even after he was recognised as heir, the dangers of Theseus were not over, he had to contend with the Pallantidae, who hoped to succeed to the kingdom. To court the favour of the people he went out against the Marathonian bull, and when he had slain it he sacrificed it to Apollo Delphinios. The figure of Medea seems to have been introduced by some dramatic writer, probably by Euri- pides ; he wrote a play with the title &geus, and in his Medea the alliance of /Egeus is made a prominent feature. With a plot the real interest of which centred at Corinth, an Attic playwright would feel bound to invent, if he did not find to hand, some link with Athens. The famous child- lessness of ^Cgeus is again used up, and /Egeus figures in the stock Attic attitude as the beneficent protector of the oppressed stranger. Of course, wherever Medea was present, cxx MYTHOLOGY AND MONUMENTS some story with a cup of poison in it was essential. Save for one somewhat enigmatic instance, Medea as the wife of /Egeus is wholly absent from Athenian vase-paintings. This one exception is the famous Codros vase in the Bologna Municipal Museum, a vase by no means easy of inter- pretation.* On the obverse of this vase is the following scene. Theseus (0HSEYS) says farewell to ^Egeus (AITEYZ); Medea (MEAEIA) stands behind Theseus, holding a helmet, which seems to belong to the bareheaded warrior who strides up behind her, Phorbas (4>OPBAZ); behind Phorbas, with her arms folded, Aithra (A 10 PA) stands quietly looking towards Medea. Had the figures not been inscribed, they might have been simply anybody. Theseus is starting somewhere, but where I do not think can be determined. It has been con- jectured that he is going after the Marathonian bull, but the presence of Phorbas looks much more like the adventure with the Amazons. The vase belongs to the latter end of the fifth century B.C., a time at which the vase-painter was be- ginning to concern himself more with the skill of his grouping, the graceful pose of his figures, and the dexterity of his draw- ing than with his mythological intent ; he has taken the scheme of a parting scene, filled it out to extend round the half of a cylix, and put names together which were of Attic celebrity. The only point of importance to the mythologist in this vase is that it shows clearly that by that time some connection of Medea and ^Egeus was known and currently accepted. Medea looks by no means hostile to Theseus. The remainder of the vase will be discussed later. The Marathonian bull, as already noted, is but the double of the Cretan bull of Herakles; indeed, according to the telling of Pausanias (i. 27), it was the very same bull. In connection with this it should be observed that, once Theseus fairly landed at Athens, there are persistent traces of a desire to connect him with Apollo. One form of the story said that Theseus drove * I had hoped to give an illustration of this vase, but the British Museum library unfortunately does not contain the number of the Uebungsbliitter (Serie i. Taf. 49) in which it is published. OF ANCIENT A THENS the bull to the Acropolis (P., i. 28) and there sacrificed it to Athene, but the version of Plutarch says that it was sacrificed to the Delphinian Apollo. A great effort seems to have been made to "contaminate" Theseus myths and Apolline cults, and nowhere is this better seen than in the next exploit. The Myth of the Slaying of t/ie Minotaur. This legend is undoubtedly the oldest that is connected with Theseus. Like that of the rape of Helen, it is part of the epic stock; and like that, it also, in the matter 'of Ariadne, presents Theseus in no favourable light. It will be seen later that ancient art seemed to offer a conscious apology for this. The story of Ariadne and Theseus was known to Homer, though whether he connected it with the Minotaur it is not possible to say. " I saw fair Ariadne," says Odysseus, "the daughter of wizard Minos, whom Theseus on a time was bearing from Crete to the hill of sacred Athens, yet had he no joy of her, for Artemis slew her ere that in sea-girt Dia by reason of the witness of Dionysos " (Od. xi. 320). The Iliad (xviii. 591) also knew of Ariadne in Crete " The glorious lame god did devise a dancing- place, like unto that which once in wide Knosos Daidalos wrought for Ariadne of the lovely tresses." The Odyssey mention looks as if the epic version were quite other than that current later at Athens. Artemis slew Ariadne before she became the bride of Theseus, and apparently at the instigation of Dionysos. This looks as if she belonged to Dionysos before, not after, Theseus took her, and indeed this would redound more to the glory of the god whose cult was pre- eminent at Naxos. There seem indeed to be three factors in the legend the Cretan story of the Minotaur, the Naxian story of Dionysos and Ariadne, and the Athenian legend which introduced Theseus ; when and how they blended cannot be determined. In later days the whole was modified retiologically to account for certain ceremonies in the Apolline festivals of the Thargelia, Pyanepsia, Oschophoria, Delphinia. The form of the legend current in the fifth century B.C. may best be seen by following its course as depicted on vase-paintings. The death of Androgeos, which in the complete canonical legend is always stated as the cause of the human tribute, nowhere CXX11 MYTHOLOGY AND MONUMENTS appears. Androgeos was the object of a local cult at Phalerum. Pausanias (i. i) saw there an altar of Androgeos, son of Minos, which only bore the name of a hero-altar ; but he adds " Those who take pains to know about their native antiquities accurately, know that it is the altar of Androgeos, son of Minos." Possibly Androgeos was a hero of high note till the Theseus FIG. 26. CHACHRYLION CYLIX (CENTRE) : THESEUS AND ARIADNE (BRITISH MUSEUM). legend got the upper hand, then the Androgeos cult would naturally sink, and it would be considered wiser not to give his altar a name become obnoxious. As early as Simonides, if we may trust Plutarch, the agree- ment about the diverse coloured sails was known. Simonides says that ^Egeus gave a scarlet, not a white sail to be set up OF ANCIEN7 ATHENS in token of success. The ship and the token of the sail do not appear on vase-paintings, and I am inclined to think the whole story was setiological, and invented in order to give special sanctity to the theoric ship sent to Delphi and to account for the use of white and scarlet in the Eiresione. That together with the heroon of ^geus at the foot of the Acropolis, would be quite material enough. Arrived at Crete, Theseus met and loved Ariadne. This scene of the meeting of Theseus and Ariadne was depicted on FIG. 27. RAYET VASE: THESEUS AND MINOTAUR (LOUVRE). the chest of Cypselus. "Theseus holding a lyre, and near him Ariadne holding a crown in her hand" (P., v. 19, i). The scene has been astutely recognised by Professor Milan! in the device in the centre of a cylix (fig. 26) signed by Chachry- lion, and now in the British Museum (Cat., E. 14). A youth holding a lyre stands to the left ; to the right, immediately facing him, a maiden. Unfortunately, what she holds in her right hand is uncertain, as the painting just at this point is much de- faced ; it may be merely a branch. Above is written x a '^ < CXX1V MYTHOLOGY AND MONUMENTS ( + AIPE IY) "Hail thou." The scene has usually been interpreted as merely genre, but confronted with the description of Pausanias it is at least highly probable that we have Theseus and Ariadne. Of course the meeting may be either after or before the combat with the Minotaur. Passing to this the central action of the story, it is easy to fix the type selected by artists. Scarcely any other sub- ject is so popular with vase - painters, both black and red- figured. Out of countless instances I have selected the drawing (fig. 27) from a deep cup now in the Louvre, once belonging to M. Rayet's collection, because of all those known it repre- sents the scene with most pictorial amplitude. The upper part of the picture alone need be considered. Theseus, standing upright, seizes the Minotaur by one horn, and plunges a sword into his heart. The Minotaur is in the act of falling with one knee bent. This attitude came ultimately to be char- acteristic, but the earliest known representation of the scene, on a gold ornament in the Berlin Museum, has the Minotaur standing perfectly erect. To the left, behind Theseus, is Ariadne, his constant companion in the scene. She is draped in a long stiff mantle, from which proceeds a spiral coil, which cannot be other than the famous clue. This appearance of the clue on vase-paintings is, so far as I know, unique ; it is depicted also on an ornament, worked in relief, belonging to a large terra-cotta vase in the museum at Corneto (fig. 28).* The coil in the terra-cotta relief is very large and prominent, and uncurls itself below the feet of Theseus. FIG. 28. TERRA-COTTA RELIEF : ARIADNE WITH CLUE (CORNETO MUSEUM). This and the gold ornament mentioned above are discussed by Dr. Furtwangler, Archdologische Zeitung (1884), Taf. 9, p. 106. OF ANCIENT ATHENS Possibly it fell out of use in Athenian vase-paintings, as being irrelevant to the main point, which was, not the love of Ariadne, but the prowess of Theseus. Possibly also the coil was at first merely a decorative spiral, and itself gave rise to the element of the clue in the myth. In the Rayet vase, behind the Minotaur, neatly arrayed in two rows one above the other, are the " bis septem quotannis Corpora natorum " very feelingly introduced as spectators of the scene. The maidens are slightly, though sufficiently, distinguished from the FIG. 29. KRATEK (oBVERSF.J : THESEUS AND THE MINOTAUR (ACROPOLIS MUSEUM). youths by their white faces and feet. They are obviously intended to stand in two rows side by side. The reverse of the vase does not here concern us, but it may briefly be said that the mounted warrior is a purely decorative motive ; the flying or rather falling figure decorative, but with a possible suggestion of Icarus. The vase can scarcely be later than the early sixth century B.C. For contrast I have chosen a vase of the perfect Attic, red-figured style, a krater recently found on the Acropolis at Athens (fig. 29). To the right, the Minotaur (MINOTAYPOI) CXXV1 has fallen quite on one knee. He is trying to get away the hand of Theseus, who is evidently hurting his horn. Theseus (OEZEYZ), with his sword, is in the act of striking. Behind is Ariadne (API ANNE) with the wreath ; behind her again her father, Minos (Ml N[os]). The whole scene is included between two delicate Ionic columns, which no doubt indicate the building of the labyrinth. On the reverse (fig. 30) the artist naively exhibits his genealogical leanings. Four ancestral kings, collateral ancestors of Theseus, are present to witness the prowess of their descendant. Orneus (OPNEYZ) extends his hand in admiration; Pallas (PAVVAZ) is seated with FIG. 30. KRATER (REVERSE): SPECTATORS AT CONTEST OF THESEUS AND MINOTAUR (ACROPOLIS MUSEUM). an air of some indifference; Nisos (NIZOZ) and Lykos (VYKOZ) both gaze attentively. It is noticeable that when Pallas does appear, he, "the harsh rearer of a giant race," is always somehow characterised as peculiar ; either, as in the vase in fig. 31, he is standing aloof while others jun, or, as here, he is seated when others stand. Orneus, it will be seen later, was founder of a stock hostile to Theseus. The vase of course precedes in date the play of Sophocles, and the genealogical knowledge displayed cannot be due to his influence. As a rule, but little trouble is taken to indicate the labyrinth ; in fact, it is somewhat markedly ignored. But for the one vase OF ANCIENT ATHENS cxxvil in fig. 25, the exterior designs of which have been previously discussed, one would be tempted to think the vase-painter was but vaguely informed as to its character. Here, however, in the centre design, there is an unmistakable though very crude attempt to signalise the labyrinth by a decorative pattern of squares and lines ; the line pattern is just like the device which on the coins of Crete is supposed to symbolise the labyrinth. It seems to me just possible that some such device, misunder- stood, gave rise to the whole story. It would not be a solitary instance in which misunderstood myfaography gave rise to elaborate mytho/^'. The centre of this British Museum cylix has another claim to attention. Theseus is not actually fighting with the Minotaur, he is dragging him out of his labyrinth. It is worth noting that on the throne of Apollo at Amyclae, Pausanias saw, and was surprised to see, a type that must have been somewhat similar to this (iii. 18) "The Minotaur is represented by Bathycles (I do not know why) as being bound and led alive by Theseus," a deviation so marked from the current combat type that even Pausanias noticed it. If my supposition is correct, and the Minotaur myth, with the other exploits of Theseus, was danced in a mimetic representation, one can well conceive there might be two scenes in so important an act the actual combat, and the dragging away of the monster. It seems possible that the man-bull form of the Minotaur may have been suggested by the necessities of a mimetic dance, the part of Minotaur being taken by a man with a bull-head mask. It should always be distinctly borne in mind that the name " Minotaur " was never so rigidly compounded that its elements were forgotten. If the form most in use is Minotaur (Mtvoravpos), the other forms also occur, ruiyjos Mivwios and 6 TOV MtvcD raiyjos, also the simple form Ta{y>os (" the bull "). On coins of Knosos the symbol is sometimes the labyrinth pattern, which has a bull's head in the centre ; he may have been simply a bull to whom human sacrifices were made. Those who care for the rationalisation of the myth must read Plutarch's account, taken from Philochoros, and to his remarks one may add what has been noted before (p. Ixxxiv.), that MYTHOLOGY AND MONUMENTS youths who were cup-bearers at a 'certain festival of Poseidon were called Tai'/>ot. The death of the monster was celebrated by a festal dance. Plutarch relates that this took place at Delos after the desertion of Ariadne, and that the dance was that practised by Delians to this day. It consisted of involutions and evolutions, in imitation of the mazes of the labyrinth ; possibly some sacred dance connected with the theoria to Delphi helped FIG. 31. FRANCIS VASE \ LANDING SCENE (FLORENCE). out the tradition of the labyrinth. The dance was called the Crane, and was danced round the famous Delian altar of the horns. Vase-painters, however, depict the dance in closer and more cheerful context with Ariadne. Perhaps the most de- lightfully fresh and naive of all the scenes depicted on the Frangois vase is that which shows the beginning of this festal dance; it is given in figs. 31 and 32. They should be con- no. 32. FRANCOIS VASE : CHORUS AFTER SLAYING OF MINOTAUR (FLORENCE). secutive, but the long frieze is divided for convenience. To the left (fig. 31) is a ship with its excited crew. The ship is close to land ; one eager sailor can wait no longer, and plunges swimming to the shore ; the rest gesticulate with joy. The main interest of the scene centres in the right portion of the frieze (in fig. 32). A little group of the principal actors stand on a raised ground. Theseus (0ESEYI) in long gar- ments plays his lyre, and facing him is Ariadne (APIA . . . ); near her, her diminutive nurse (OPOOI); behind Theseus OF ANCIENT A TURNS cxxix seven pairs of dancers, each a man and a maiden, join hands for the dance that in a moment will begin. They have each their names, but these, being purely the vase-painter's pleasant fancy for the moment, need not be detailed. Here clearly Ariadne is by no means left behind. The vase-painter knew better. In the well-known Archikles and Glaukytes vase (Munich, 333) the scene is depicted after a similar fashion, but the actual slaying of the Minotaur occupies the centre. In speaking of Butes it has already been hinted that very possibly the Theseus saga was influenced by the ancient tradition of the rape of Koronis at Naxos. Dr. Boehlau sees in this representation of the Francois vase a " contaminatio " of the two.* The Butes saga, he thinks, gave rise not only to the element of the landing at Naxos and the interposition of Dionysos which is, I think, almost certain but also to the tragic end of vEgeus, which seems more remote. As regards the Frangois vase, it is certainly noticeable that not one of the figures about the landing ship is inscribed, whereas all those of the xo are. It looks as though the vase-painter had borrowed a type from another i.e., the Butes myth, but had not quite the face to clinch his plagiarism by putting definite names ; he leaves it to the spectator to do that if he likes. The ancient artist did not wholly shirk the scene of de- sertion, it was too beautiful a motive ; but he could not at once arrive at its perfect expression. Unlike the scene of the slaying of the Minotaur, the desertion type is wholly absent from black-figured art. It did not redound, as already noted, to the credit of Theseus, and it required to take a particular form before it could be appropriate subject-matter for Attic art. This was possible in the days of the pronounced and intentional glorification of Theseus. The matter was then arranged ; he deserted, but expressly by the command of the gods. Peisistratos, according to Plutarch, began the work ; he changed a line from Hesiod in which the desertion of Theseus was attributed to mere fickleness. * I have only had access to a brief report of Dr. Boehlau' s original view, which he laid before the April meeting of the Archaeological Society at Berlin (1889). It is reported in the Philologische \Vochcnschrift, May 4. MYTHOLOGY AND MONUMENTS I have said above that, relying on the passage of the Odyssey, I believe the epic form of the myth made Ariadne the actual bride of Dionysos only, and by divine inter- position prevented the impious intention of the lawless Theseus. The interpretation of the scholiast on the passage is biassed by Athenian prejudice. But by the beginning of the fifth century B. c. Theseus had it all his own way ; if the local Naxian legend did not fall in with Attic intention, so much the worse for it. Theseus had Ariadne to FIG. 33. KALPIS : ATHENE AND THESECS, DIONYSOS AND ARIADNE (l)ERLIN MUSEUM). wife, and then, being ordered to leave her in Naxos, she fell to the share of Dionysos. The Athenian vase-painter puts it quite plainly. There was no getting out of the fact that Ariadne was the bride of Dionysos ; she had to be ultimately and permanently ceded. Her grave and her grove where she was worshipped as Aphrodite Ariadne were in Naxos for evidence, and she had a local festival ; but for the Attic vase- painter, Theseus came first. On a red-figured kalpis (fig. 33), of severe style, now in the Berlin Museum (No. 2179), the scene is thus conceived. The young Theseus ( . . EY), a mere boy, is escaping to the left by the clear mandate of OF ANCIENT A THENS cxxxi Athene (Al A . . 0A); Ariadne (API AN E) the painter of this vase spells insecurely with some slight show of reluctance, is seized by Dionysos (ZOZYNO . A). The intention is clear, almost dogmatic. If any one knows that Ariadne is the bride of Dionysos, let him also know that she is so only because the pious Theseus, at the bidding of the gods, ceded her. It is the very embodiment of the statement of the scholiast on the Odyssey passage, because Athene stood over him and bade him (firta-rao-a. 8c 'Adrjva. KeAet'et, av-n/v is 'A#?yi>as). But here, as so often, the vase- FIG. 34. CUP: (a) CHILDREN OF THESEUS; (6) THESEUS AND ATHENE (VIENNA MUSEUM). painter is the earliest source for a euphemistic form of the legend. The same type, though circumscribed, appears on the obverse of a deep cup (fig. 34) in the museum at Vienna. On the ob- verse (/>) Theseus ( . . ZEYZ) rushes hurriedly off, again at the bidding of Athene, who, as a charming maiden figure, extends her city's olive-branch. On the reverse (a) is the sequel of the story. A woman figure, holding a well-grown boy, presents him to another woman. A standing boy also extends his imploring hands. Over the figure of the recipient woman is written Nyphe (34>YN), clearly meaning Nymph. The children of Ariadne, deserted by their father Theseus, are given to be reared by the Nymph of the place. These children were for the most part said to be called Oinopion and Staphylos, local cxxxn MYTHOLOGY AND MONUMENTS heroes of Naxos. Their names of course betray them as sons of Dionysos, but Attic tradition claimed them, as here, for Theseus. On a cylix (fig. 35) in the Corneto museum the mandate of the gods is made equally clear, but a new and lovely motive is introduced a motive destined to wide popularity. Ariadne lies upon a rock, in deep sleep ; above her an ample vine spreads its branches. Theseus has just risen, and having picked up his sandal is about to depart. Hermes with his kerykeion takes the place of Athene, and bids him hurry and begone. Above the head of Ariadne hovers a winged figure holding a wreath. The design, though in the main clear, is FIG. 35. CYLIX : SLEEPING ARIADNE DESERTED (CORNETO MUSEUM). not without minor difficulties. What is meant by the motive of Theseus and the sandal? Some critics have seen in the action a deliberately comic intent. Theseus is going to carry his shoes in his hands, that he may make no noise as he goes. My own feeling is that the sandal action simply emphasizes the fact that Theseus is going. He has taken his sandals off while he slept ; he is not going to leave them behind ; he will want them, as he is going far, so he picks them up. A more serious controversy has been waged about the winged figure over Ariadne's head. At first sight probably every one would call him a love-god, but the question is not so easily answered. There is on black-figured vase-paintings no single representation of the sleeping Ariadne, Intt the type adopted for this scene OF ANCIENT A Til ENS already existed i.e., the type of the sleeping giant Alkyoneus, whom Herakles is about to slay. Any one who will compare the Ariadne vase with the Herakles and Alkyoneus vase in the same museum at Corneto will scarcely dispute this. We have the sleeping figure in just the same pose, turned over on the side ; we have the winged figure hovering, and the spreading vine tree behind; we have even the two figures to the left, one stooping and one upright. In the Alkyoneus type the winged figure is undoubtedly Sleep (Hypnos), and Sleep would be appropriate to Ariadne. Still more appropriate, however, is the winged Eros. My own opinion stands half- way between the two views. I hold that the figure is Eros, but that the type is undoubtedly that of Hypnos, and this additional adaptation only makes the whole transfer of type more complete. Taken, then, that the winged figure is Eros, it opens up a matter for consideration not discussed before. If Artemis played her part in the myth, much more so Aphrodite. Pausanias, in his account of Boeotia (ix. 40, 2), takes occasion to enumerate the works of Daidalos, and mentions that one of them was a figure of Aphrodite at Delos. It was not very large ; the right hand was much the worse for wear. It ended in a square shape instead of feet. Pausanias says he believes that it was this image that Daidalos gave to Ariadne, and when she went with Theseus she took it with her ; and the Delians said that when Dionysos carried Ariadne off, Theseus dedicated the statue to Apollo, that he might not, by taking it to Athens with him, be ever reminded of the lost Ariadne, and so ever find his wound renewed. This image of ancient Cypris, Callimachus says in his Hymn to Delos (v. 307), was weighed down with garlands at the yearly festival. At Argos Pausanias (ii. 23, 8) saw a temple of the Cretan Dionysos, where it was fabled Ariadne was buried, and it is noticeable that close by was the temple of Aphrodite Ourania. Plutarch records a very curious and interesting tradition from Paeon of Amathus, in which Ariadne seems to play a part akin to that of Eileithyia. Theseus, according to this legend, was driven to Cyprus by a storm. Ariadne, who was with child, suffered from the tossing of the sea ; he set her on shore and left her MYTHOLOGY AND MONUMENTS while he attended to the ship. The women of the island were kind to her and tried to comfort her with letters, feigning they had come from Theseus. She died in childbed. Theseus came back and heard the news with great sorrow. He left money with the inhabitants, and ordered them to pay Ariadne divine honours ; he had two small statues made of her one in silver, one in brass. Her festival was celebrated yearly, and with a curious custom. A young man was made to lie down and imitate the cries and gestures of a woman in labour. A parallel custom is not unknown, I believe, among modern savages. The people of Amathus, Plutarch goes on to say, call the grave on which her tomb is, the Grave of Ariadne Aphrodite. The story, of course, is setiological. The facts are clearly these. At Amathus was a worship of Aphrodite Ariadne. She had two images and a ritual clearly pointing to her function as Eileithyia. Eileithyia was, accord- ing to the ancient poet Olen, mother of Eros, a transposition of actual fact only intelligible by supposing that Aphrodite and Eileithyia were interchangeable. In fact, what it all comes to is simply this. The essential of a divinity in quite early days was that he or she could do anything and everything. A small local cult could not afford to keep up a god or goddess with one or two functions only. Asklepios had on occasion to mend broken jugs, Poseidon to attend a harvest festival, Demeter to superintend a divining mirror. It was only the great orthodox Olympians who in their ultimate supremacy could indulge in a perfect specialisation of attributes. Aphro- dite was, then, also Eileithyia ; further, she was the eldest of the Fates ; and again, she was, as the bride of Dionysos, Ariadne, whose precise function and certainly the mean- ing of whose name I cannot define. This local goddess became a princess, daughter of a great sea-king, Minos. She also became to minister to the pride of Athens the bride, if only for a season, of the national Attic hero. A myth so com- plex, so diverse in its divine and human elements, might well puzzle the early mythographer. As soon as he began to make conscious analysis, it was too much for him, he was driven to the expedient of two Ariadnes one who was human, for sorrow ; one divine, for joy. OF ANCIENT A THENS CXXXV The sequence of the narrative from this point on seems to me to be for some distance clearly and systematically aetiological. The Athenians in the month of Pyanepsion (October -November) practised certain ceremonies forming part of a kind of final harvest festival which they connected with the cults of Athene, Dionysos, and Apollo ; and when Theseus worship came in, it seemed to them possible to explain these ceremonies in a manner sure to be popular, by linking them to the exploits. These ceremonies were chiefly (i) The Pyanepsia. On the 7th day of the month Pyanep- sion it was the custom to boil together in a pot various kinds of grain. Harpocration, commenting on the word, expressly says that nearly all writers concurred in stating that the feast was in honour of Apollo. What connection it had with him does not appear. The popular explanation was that on landing from Delos, Theseus and his companions boiled together promiscuously in a pot all the remainder of their provisions. To such bald nonsense is orthodox aetiology often reduced. Another part apparently of this same feast, or at least a ceremony enacted on the same day, was the (2) Eiresione. During this feast it was customary for young men to carry round branches bound about with purple and white wool and with all manner of fruit, loaves, and oil jars tied to them, and to beg from door to door singing " Eiresione brings figs and cakes, And a bowl of honey, and oil for aches, And sleepy and strong is the wine she takes. ' The Eiresione, or branch itself, was either dedicated in a temple of Apollo or fastened up in front of the door of a private house, if the procession was a private one. It hung there, withered and dead, till the next year's feast came round. The ceremony was regarded as a defence against famine (UTTOT/JOTTI) Ai/iou). No doubt the begging ceremony was a sort of propitiatory under -statement, in the case of a good harvest. The youth carrying the Eiresione stands as symbol of Pyanepsion in the Attic festival calendar (p. 168, fig. 38). This Eiresione, according to aetiology, commemorated the fact that when the messenger of Theseus met those who came cxxxvi MYTHOLOGY AND MONUMENTS with tidings of the death of ^Egeus, and they would have crowned him with flowers, he twined them about his staff. The Eiresione * seems to have been a popular festival, and retiologists contended for it ; some said it was enacted in honour of the Herakleidae. It seems obviously to have been some sort of harvest festival, and reminds one of the spring chelidonismata, or begging swallow songs. In this feast was also celebrated the (3) Oschophoria, which may have been merely part of the Pyanepsia. Originally, however, there is no doubt it was in honour of Dionysos and Athene. Certain chosen youths started from a temple of Dionysos at Athens, and ran to the temple of Athene Skiras at Phalerum, bearing boughs. Two of them at least seem to have been dressed as maidens, and a story was required to account for this i.e., that Theseus had disguised two of his friends as maidens and taken them with him to Crete. The young men on their arrival were met by women carrying food, Deipnophorai. These were supposed to represent the mothers of the young men and maidens on whom the lot fell, who brought them food to keep up their spirits. At the solemn libation which was part of the feast the herald made a double cry, "Eleleu, lou lou," of which Eleleu expressed "joy," lou "distress." This was to express the confusion of joy and sorrow at the coming of Theseus and the death of ^geus. Most important of all, we have the (4) Theoria to Delos, when the sacred ship crowned by the priest of Apollo started from Phalerum on the 6th of Munychion, or as near as the omens would allow. It will be seen that tradition ascribed a similar theoria to Erysichthon (p. 186). It seems possible that in early days a human sacrifice may have been sent, at least in the milder sense that Plutarch suggests />., that certain young men and maidens were consecrated as compulsory temple slaves for ever. If so, this would be sufficient in imaginative myth -making days to account for the whole * A very full and interesting account of the Eiresione and the Pyanepsia, and a comparison with the German Erntemai, will be found in Mannhardt's Wald-und Feldkulte, c. iv. The full consideration of the Eiresione belongs to the Apollo cult and early agrarian ceremonies generally, and the custom is only noted here from its eetiological connection with the Theseus myth. OF ANCIENT ATHENS cxxxvil Minotaur legend. Part of the Apolline festival of the Thargelia was the driving forth and the beating with fig-tree branches of two human sacrifices ((f>dp/j.aKoi), who, no doubt, were originally killed. It may have seemed to the cultured Athenian of the fifth century B.C. more likely that such a custom arose in Crete than in Athens. It was this originally Apolline theoria, wrested to the glory of Theseus, that ultimately so influenced the character of the Panathenaic procession (p. 565). With this ship festival may have been associated the (5) Kybernesia, or pilot ceremonies. What these ceremonies were, or originally in whose honour, we are not informed. Nor do we know the exact date ; but Plutarch tells an getiological story to account for it, and its heroes Nausitheus and Phaeax had monuments at Phalerum. Last, mention must be made of the (6) Epitaphia. That these were connected with the supposed Theseus feasts is clear from the Ephebi inscriptions, in which they are repeatedly mentioned together (C. I. A., ii. 467 seq.} rots rt 0r/OPBAI). cxl MYTHOLOGY AND MONUMENTS Here the Attic personate is quite complete. Peirithoos leads to (2) The Fight with the Centaurs. Peirithoos and the Cen- taurs are at home in Thessaly : but in order to bring him into easy connection with Theseus, we have the story of his attempt to drive off the oxen from Marathon and the subsequent meet- ing and plighted friendship. This friendship, further, lent grace- ful occasion for Theseus to appear as combatant against the Centaurs. A single instance of this popular myth must again suffice, taken from a vase at Vienna (fig. 37). It is chosen because it is the fullest and most completely pictorial, though by no means the finest of the almost countless Centaur vases. FIG. 37. VASE: THESEUS, PEIRITHOOS, AND CENTAURS (VIENNA). The only figure inscribed is that of Peirithoos to the left in the second row. The design is divided for convenience, but extends in reality all round the vase. I incline to think that the next figure to the right is Theseus, but there is nothing to make the identification certain. The scene is one of wild confusion carpets spread, wine-jar overturned, pillows lying hap-hazard, terrified women escaping through the palace-door, an altar burning. One seems to see the " Banquet of Philo- sophers," or to hear the warning words of Horace " At ne quis modici transiliat munera Liberi, Centaurea monet cum Lapithis rixa super mero Debellata." OF ANCIENT ATHENS cxli Next after the adventure with the Centaurs is usually placed (3) The Rape of Helen. The two friends, Plutarch says, had seen the little Helen, then only nine years old, in the temple of Artemis Orthia at Sparta. They cast lots who should take her to wife ; the lot fell on Theseus. They jointly carried her off to Aphidna, and placed her in charge of Aithra, the mother of Theseus. Theseus and Peirithoos meanwhile accomplished another exploit their descent into Hades, to be noted later. While they were absent, Menestheus stirred up rebellion against Theseus. Just at that time, the two Dioscuri missed their sister and came to demand her back. Some say Menestheus invited them to invade the country ; anyhow, it was favourable to his designs. Aphidna was taken, Helen with Aithra was captured, and Athens in danger ; the Dioscuri were conciliated, made citizens, and even initiated, as will be seen (p. 156), into the lesser mysteries at Agrae. Following Dr. Robert,* I believe the story of the rape of Helen to be an old Laconian legend. Aphidna, the main centre of the contest, is usually held to be an Attic place a deme in the tribe of Leontis ; so it is, but there was another Aphidna, no doubt the original one, in Laconia. Stephanus of Byzantium (sub voc\ after mentioning the Attic deme, says " And there is also an Aphidna in Laconia where were the Leukippidae Phoebe and Hilaeira " (eWi KGU -nys Aa/cuvi/o^s o0er ?}(rav at AevKWTTri&s <&oi/3r] KCU 'lAaetpa). I think the legend cannot have been either Attic or Troezenian, because Theseus in it appears as no better than a highway robber, and, more- over a more important matter his deed is attended with public shame, not glory. The rape of Helen by Theseus seems to have been known in poetry as early as Alcman. I make no account of the two Homeric allusions, as they are usually taken as interpolations. Pausanias, in giving the history of a certain Timalcus (i. 41), says "How, if he (Timalcus) had gone there (to Aphidna), could he have been considered to have been slain by Theseus ? for * C. RolxM't, Aits Kydathen, p. 101, note 8. cxlii MYTHOLOGY AND MONUMENTS Alcman, in his ode to Castor and Polydeuces, records that they took Athens and carried the mother of Theseus into captivity, and yet states that Theseus was absent." Pindar also gives an account not differing much, and says that until Theseus went forth on his ambitious attempt with Peirithoos against Persephone, he wished to be allied by marriage to Castor and Polydeuces. "But," adds Pausanias, "who- ever made up this genealogy knew how easily deceived the Megareans were, at least if (as is stated) Theseus was a descendant of Pelops." The Megareans have not been alone in finding a difficulty as to arranging for the appearance of this myth of the rape of Helen in the mythology of Theseus. In the account of Plutarch the story of the rape * is intimately bound up with the revolution of Menestheus, and both seem clearly to point to the fact that the popular hero was not wholly popular. There were oligarchs before the days of Theophrastus (Char, xxix.) who would be ready to say, " How detestable that set of demagogues is ! Theseus was the beginning of the mischief to the State. It was he who reduced it from twelve cities to one, and undid the monarchy. And he was rightly served, for he was the people's first victim himself." Such oligarchs it was who came in when Theseus was absent on his various disreputable adventures. There was another hero of royal lineage, great-grandson of Erechtheus himself, ready and willing to lay hands on the government, Menestheus. He is mentioned in the Catalogue of the Ships (Iliad, 2, 452) as the hero " Menestheus, son of Peteos," who led the Athenians. It is possibly in this capacity that he appears on the somewhat learned Kodros vase, one side of the exterior of which has been already discussed. On the other side is an analogous parting scene. Aias (AIAZ) takes leave of Lykos (AYKOI); Athene (A0ENAIA), behind Aias, seems to beckon on Menestheus (MENEI0EYZ), who advances with a spear. * The story appears but rarely on ordinary Attic vase-paintings, but it is told in full on two curious cups from Tanagra, now in the Museum of the Archaeological Society at Athens, published in the 'E^/uepts 'Apx- USS-i) Utv. 5. OF ANCIENT ATHENS cxliii On his head is a travelling hat. His action is exactly parallel to that of Phorbas on the opposite side. Behind him stands Melite (MEAITE). From the joint presence of Aias and Menestheus, this looks as if a start were being made for Troy. Why Lykos should receive the farewell of Aias, and why Melite should be standing as a spectator, I confess I do not understand. The indefinite quasi-historical character of the vase is well seen on the centre device. Kodros, last king of Athens, a personality who hovers uncomfortably between fact and fiction, is apparently taking farewell of an old white-haired man. Both figures are inscribed Kodros (KOAPOZ) and Ainetos (AINETOZ) but the situation is no further char- acterised. Who Ainetos is, I am unable to say. He is probably the eponymous hero of some Athenian family of which particulars have not reached us. It is possible, of course, that Kodros is supposed to be starting out for the battle in which he devoted himself to save his city ; but certainly, if the vase-painter intended this scene, he might have expressed it more clearly. It is tempting, with a vase of this class, to think that the vase-painter had a lean- ing to scenes of farewell, and cared little about the actuality of the situations. His weakness would have been more pardonable had he not also had a leaning to the precision of inscriptions. Something will be said of Kodros when we come to his grave at the south-east foot of the Acropolis, just outside the ancient city precincts. Of his sons and their work of colonisation, Pausanias tells in detail in his account of Achaia (vii. 2). It remains to note what Theseus had been doing while Menestheus was seizing his kingdom. This brings us down to the last of his exploits, the famous (4) Descent into Hades. Peirithoos had helped Theseus to get Helen ; Theseus must in his turn help Peirithoos in a more perilous enterprise the rape of Persephone, whom the sacrilegious Peirithoos desired to have to wife. The solemn pact of Peirithoos and Theseus seems to have been connected especially with this adventure. The scholiast on Aristophanes (Eq. 7, 85) says there is a stone called the Laughterless among cxliv MYTHOLOGY AND MONUMENTS the Athenians (n-apa rots 'A&jratois), where they say Theseus sat when he was about to descend into Hades ; but he gives the alternative that it might have been so called because Demeter sat on it when her daughter was lost. This makes it uncertain whether the stone can be identified with that mentioned in the (Edipus Coloneus, where apparently there was a cleft or hollow basin in the rock (Soph., (Ed. Col. 1593). The pact was, however, sometimes supposed to have been made before the heroes started for Lacedaemon. The Hades adventure was so entirely undertaken at the instigation of Peirithoos that a word must be said of him. We associate him perhaps exclusively with Lapiths, but it should be borne in mind that he was the eponymous hero of an Attic deme. Harpocration (sub voc.} distinctly states " Perithoidae, it is a deme of Oineis;" and yEschines (Or. i, 156) speaks of Perikleides as "the Perithoid "- i.e., of the deme of Perithoos. The whole story of the rape is freely rationalised by Plutarch. Hades is Aidoneus, a king of the Molossians ; Cerberus is a savage dog, with whom he ordered all the suitors of his daughter to fight ; and so on. But the myth can be traced back too early for this to be any satisfactory explanation. How it arose, is not easy to say ; it may be merely a replica of the descent of Herakles. If so, Theseus in this matter plays a very poor second to Herakles ; indeed, the rescue of Theseus and Peirithoos became a glorious adjunct to the exploit of Herakles. Theseus and Peirithoos are no part of the Hades Odysseus saw. They are mentioned in the Odyssey (xi. 630, 631), but the line is an interpolation; so, again, is the passage in the Iliad (i. 265). According to Pausanias (x. 29, 4), their story was told by Panyasis, an epic poet of the first half of the fifth century u. c., and it may very well be that his poem inspired the fresco of Polygnotus, which Pausanias there describes. The fresco was in the Lesche at Delphi, and among the other dwellers in Hades Polygnotus had painted Theseus and Peirithoos after the following fashion. They were both sitting on seats, and Theseus was holding both the two swords, that OF ANCIENT A THENS cxlv of Peirithoos as well as his own ; and Peirithoos was gazing at the swords. " It might be conjectured," Pausanias says, " that Peirithoos was grieving at the swords being now useless, and no longer of any service to them for deeds of valour." Then he goes on to state " Panyasis wrote that Theseus and Peirithoos were held to their seats in a peculiar way, not by fetters, but as if the very flesh of their bodies had grown to the rock." This notion seems to have been turned to comic account, if we may trust the scholiast on Aristophanes (Nubes, 1368). The situation does not seem a very dignified one, though Virgil makes a fine thing of it in his " sedet, aeternumque sedebit Infelix Theseus." As to whether Theseus did sit in Hades for ever, authorities differed. Some said he was brought back by Herakles alone, leaving Peirithoos ; some said they both came, others neither. The most popular version seems to be that Theseus was rescued alone. Perhaps even the oligarch did not care to go so far in his vengeance as to leave the hero there for ever. This version occurs on vase-paintings. Clearly, from the painting of Polygnotus, the myth was known in the fifth cen- tury B.C. It may, however, have originated with Panyasis, and the influence of his poem and the fresco of Polygnotus would take some time to work. .Be that as it may, the myth is wholly absent from Attic vases, either black or red -figured, belonging to the fifth century B.C. On the much later class, usually known as " Lower Italy vases," it appears as a fixed type. Among this class there are to be found upwards of seven the design on which presents a sufficiently close analogy to suggest a common inspiration. They all represent scenes from the lower world. Fortunately, one of them is inscribed, and from it we are able to name with certainty most of the personages represented on the others. A good example of this class is given in fig. 38. In the centre is the palace of Hades, like a small Ionic temple ; within it Plouton and Persephone. This takes the place of the little heroon, or shrine, so frequent on Lower Italy vases. This typical little k cxlvi MYTHOLOGY AND MONUMENTS house or temple is taken to represent the skene on vases with dramatic representations. The design, as usual at this date, occupies several tiers. To the left is seated Megara, and with her, her two boys " Megara, daughter of Creon, haughty of heart, whom the strong and tireless son of Amphitryon had to wife ; " below them Orpheus, advancing with a dancing step to the sound of his own lyre ; behind him a group of a man, a woman, and a child that I cannot name. In the centre of the & FIG. 38. AMPHORA '. UNDER-WORLD (MUNICH). lowest tier is Herakles "lifting the hound of hell," while Hermes points the way and a Fury lights him with her torches. To the left of this group, Sisyphus, " in strong torment, grasping a monstrous stone with both his hands," the while a Fury lashes him on. To the right is Tantalus, "in grievous torment," reaching out to grasp the bright fruits, " whereat, when that old man reached out his hands to clutch them, the wind would toss them to the shadowy clouds." Above Tantalus, in the second row to the right hand, is Minos, "glorious son of OF ANCIENT ATHENS cxlvii Zeus, giving sentence from his throne to the dead ; " and with him two other judges whom Odysseus does not name Trip- tolemos and probably Rhadamanthus. This collection of figures shows sufficiently that the picture is not untouched by Homeric influence ; but the scene to the right hand on the top tier the only one which intimately concerns us, is non-Homeric. A youth stands erect, with his traveller's hat behind his head, his staff in his hand, as if in the act to depart. He extends his hand to a seated figure, who seems to drop something into it. The seated figure also wears a hat ; he sits upon a rock, and leans on his club. By his side a figure intently watches him ; she carries a drawn sword. It had already been con- jectured that the group of parting heroes represented Theseus and Peirithoos Theseus departing to the upper air, Peirithoos doomed to remain ; they offer their parting pledge. The woman, however, remained something of a mystery. Unfor- tunately, on the inscribed vase from which the other figures have been named, this group did not appear. The question was, however, happily set at rest by the discovery of some fragments of another Lower Italy vase, also inscribed ; these are given in fig. 39. The seated figure is inscribed Peirithoos (PEIPIQOOZ), and near him is the woman with the sword, Dike (AIKH). Justice has been done, and she sits there in actual personality to denote her function. The attitude of Peirithoos is noticeable. He is not only fast seated to the rock, but his hands appear bound behind him. This reminds one of the variant tradition that he was both bound and rooted. Of course, it is impossible to say whether the vase-painter intended to indicate the rooted pose, but the binding is certain. In this design Peirithoos wears a sword, in contrast to the painting of Polygnotus, where Theseus held both swords. Theseus is absent all together, unless indeed he appeared to the right of Dike, which, I think, is not probable. The rest of the design does not concern the present argument, but it may be noted that in the second fragment Eurydice (EYPYAIKH), a figure also non-Homeric, appears. These fragments are considerably earlier than the complete vase in fig. 40. The inscriptions make it probable that they belong to the fourth century B.C. The work is much cxlviii MYTHOLOGY AND MONUMENTS less mechanical and stereotyped than that of most " Lower Italy " vases. The question has been much discussed as to whether these vase-paintings have any distinct connection with the fresco of Polygnotus; and if so, presuming, as we are compelled to, some common inspiration, what was it ? This question can only be FIG. 39 FRAGMENT OF VASE I UNDER-WORLD (CARLSRUHE). partially answered. It should be noted though this fact only comes clearly out after a careful examination of several of the series in succession that it is more probable that the common sources of inspiration were not one but several* e.g., * The latest discussion of this question will be found in P. HarUvig, "Neue Unterweltsdarstellungen auf Vasen," A. Z. (1884), p. 253. OF ANCIENT A THENS cxlix on the vase selected (fig. 40), the right-hand top corner is occupied by the Theseus and Peirithoos scene, on another by a scene from the mythology of Myrtilos. Next, the description of the fresco of Polygnotus happens to survive (P., x 29 seq.\ and we find, when it is possible to make a comparison, as in the Theseus case, that though there is some identity of persons, there is little of motive. It is certain, however, that there were many other notable " under-world " compositions. There was the "Nekyia"of Nikias (arc. 320 B.C.), and no doubt countless others, some of them nearer at hand for a vase-painter working, say, at Tarentum. Plautus makes one of his char- acters say (Capt. 5, 4, i) "Vidi ego multa saepe picta, quae Acherunti fierent cruciamenta." The point of importance for the present argument is that literary tradition, as regards the under -world adventure of Theseus, begins, so far as known, with Panyasis, artistic with Polygnotus, and that the myth did not take hold of popular art in vase-paintings till the fourth century, and that in Lower Italy. By this time the best days of the democracy were over, and perhaps at no time was it held really derogatory to take your place as a notable criminal in Hades. The rest of the story of Theseus, told circumstantially by Plutarch, is so much careful aetiology. Theseus had to be released ; Herakles does it. He returns to Athens, finds his affairs desperate, and takes refuge at Skyros. Lykomedes, the king, for one cause or another, was hostile ; he threw Theseus headlong down from a steep cliff, or, some said, Theseus threw himself. When Cimon took the island, by the omen of an eagle he found the grave of Theseus and a giant heroic body; it was brought, with every circumstance, to Athens, was buried "in the midst of the city near the Gymnasium," his sanctuary became a democratic refuge, and his festivals were celebrated on the 8th day of every month, a fact diversely explained. What shines out clearly from this is that Theseus dead, as Theseus living, was brought from abroad (7r>/Ai>s). There was no tomb of his originally at Athens ; the most daring mytho- logist did not venture to assert it. He was wanted, and cl MYTHOLOGY AND MONUMENTS had to be fetched ; he was wanted because, after the fall of the Peisistratidae, the national feeling demanded a democratic, 7/0-native prince. The hero of the Minotaur sufficed them. As to the connection with Skyros, I cannot clearly determine it. There may have been some local myth easily adapted to Theseus. Cimon in all probability did find a famous tomb with a huge body in it ; the rest was easy of arrangement. For convenience' sake, to keep the thread of the canonical life of Theseus clear of lengthy digression, the myth of Hippolytus has been omitted. To that I now return. It has to be placed after the death of Hippolyte, the Amazon queen, and before the descent into Hades. After the triumph over the Minotaur an alliance with Crete is concluded, and Theseus is married to Phaedra. By her he has the two sons, Demophoon and Akamas, who seem invented to link him with the Trojan war. It is their mission to bring back from Troy their captive grandmother, Aithra. No story of ancient mythology is better known than the myth that tells of the love of Phaedra for Hippolytus. If not from the Hippolytus Crowned of Euripides, at least from the Phedre of Racine, it is familiar to all. This fame began in ancient days. Pausanias says that even a barbarian, if he knew Greek, had heard of the story. Its wide popularity is doubt- less due to its strongly emphasized pathos and the fine dramatic situation it offered. So dominant is the interest of this pathos, that the myth has usually been taken en bloc, with no consideration of its local origin, or discrimination of its several elements. If, desiring to be exact as to the classical form of the story, any one looks up "Hippolytus" in an English Dictionary of Mythology, he will find something after this fashion : " Hippolytus, son of Theseus by Hippolyte, queen of the Amazons, or her sister Antiope. Theseus after- wards married Phaedra, who fell in love with Hippolytus ; but as her offers were rejected by her step-son, she accused him to his father of having attempted her dishonour. Theseus there- upon cursed his son, and requested his father (/Egeus or Poseidon) to destroy him. Accordingly, as Hippolytus was riding along the sea-coast, Poseidon sent forth a bull from the water. The horses were frightened, upset the chariot, and OF ANCIENT A THENS cli dragged Hippolytus along the ground till he was dead. Theseus afterwards learned the innocence of his son, and Phaedra, in despair, made away with herself. Artemis in- duced ^Esculapius to restore Hippolytus to life again." Such a version as this has not even the advantage of being strictly Euripidean. It omits the tragic element that Phaedra hanged herself on hearing that Hippolytus refused her, and left a letter on the evidence of which Theseus cursed and banished his son. The main defect, however, of any such resume of the tale is that it wholly neglects the consideration of the local form of the myth, and accepts without question the version based on Attic tragedy. Such a version, it may perhaps by this time be evident, is almost always based on conscious adaptation of a myth for tragic purposes, and is always biassed by Attic prejudice or Attic self-glorification. It is also, most fatally of all, biassed by the determination to make of the drama, in the fullest sense, a morality. It will be best in this instance to take first the somewhat negative evidence of vase-paintings, and then proceed to the examination of the local form of the myth. In the case of a story " known even to barbarians," it may seem surprising that one vase, and only one, is known on which the story of Hippolytus is depicted. It is in the British Museum, and is given in fig. 40. In the centre of the lower row of figures is Hippolytus with his four-horse chariot. To the right, a Fury with a torch seems to goad the horses to madness. Behind, an old psedagogue stretches out a despairing hand. Below the horses there issues from the foreground the upper part of a quiet-looking bull ; this figure of the bull leaves no possible doubt as to the interpretation of the scene. Above is the usual group of divinities. In this case they are some of them chosen with a certain degree of appropriateness Poseidon, with his trident, to the right, for by him came the curse ; Aphrodite, the remoter agent, next him ; Athene, with helmet and spear, for the story is connected with Athens ; last, to the left, an unmeaning group of Apollo and Pan. Apollo is not wanted, Artemis is very much. The vase-painting is not chosen from any intrinsic merit ; the drawing, composition, intention are as mean as anything could well be. Its import- clii MYTHOLOGY AND MONUMENTS ance lies in the fact that it, an indifferent specimen of Lower Italy ar,t, is the one and only instance in vase-painting of this so famous myth. To the vase-painter of the fifth century, un- influenced by tragedy, it was, I think we may safely conclude, practically unknown. With this clue we may turn to local legend, and, as before with Theseus and Troezen, Pausanias lets out quite uncon- K1G. 40. LOWER ITALY VASE t DEATH OF HIPPOLYTUS (nRITISH MUSEUM). sciously a good part of the secret. In his account of Troezen he says (ii. 32, i seq.) "To Hippolytus, the son of Theseus, there is a conspicuous temenos and a temple in it, and the image is ancient. And they say that Diomede instituted these, and, moreover, that he first sacrificed to Hippolytus. And among the Troezenians there is a priest who is consecrated for his whole life, and yearly sacrifices have been instituted, and they also observe the following custom. Every maiden, OF ANCIENT A THENS cliii before she is married, cuts off a lock of her hair, and having shorn it she carries it to the temple and dedicates it there. And they will not allow that he was torn by horses, nor do they know his tomb or show it ; but they hold that the con- stellation called the 'Charioteer' is this Hippolytus of theirs, and that he has this honour of the gods." A little farther on, he saw in another part of the temenos " a stadion called after Hippolytus, and a temple (iVep avrov) called the temple of Aphrodite who looks down ; and from thence, they say, when Hippolytus was exercising, Phaedra gazed at him. And there also is the myrtle tree whose leaves, as I described before, are pierced through ; and when Phaedra was distraught, and could find no ease from her love, she pierced the leaves of this myrtle tree. And there is the tomb of Phaedra, and it is not far from the monument of Hippolytus, which was made at no great distance from the myrtle tree. And the image of Asklepios was made by Timotheos. And the Troezenians say that it is not Asklepios, but that it is a statue of Hippolytus. And I saw also the house of Hippolytus. . . ." It is clear that Pausanias heard from the local priesthood an account very different from that which, through the drama of Euripides, had become canonical. At Troezen Hippolytus was a god with a priest and yearly sacrifices ; he was a con- stellation in the sky ; he had not perished miserably by the seashore. A charioteer he was a horse-lover as his name proclaimed, but after a glorious celestial fashion. More- over, he was closely connected with Asklepios the great Epidaurian healer, and their types in art were liable to con- fusion. This connection comes out in another passage of Pausanias. In the precinct of Asklepios Pausanias (ii. 27, 4) saw an "ancient stele on which it was inscribed that Hip- polytus dedicated twenty horses to the god." Apropos of this, Pausanias quotes the tradition that when Hippolytus died Asklepios raised him to life again ; but Hippolytus would not pardon his father ; he left Hellas in anger and went to Aricia, and there built a temple to Artemis ; and the prize there for a victory in single combat was to become a priest of the god- dess. Of course, this is merely the attempt of Aricia to glorify its analogous local cult by linking it with the famous legend of cliv MYTHOLOGY AND MONUMENTS Hippolytus. But we have the raising to life again, and the ascetic touch that the prize for athletic victory was to become the priest of the goddess. The earliest recorded mention of Hip- polytus, the only extant epic tradition, is given by Apollodorus (iii. 10, 3). In his list of those raised from the dead by Asklepios he includes Hippolytus, and quotes as his authority the author of the Naupactica. Hippolytus was, then, known to epic tradition, but we have no grounds for stating that the story of Phaedra was linked with his ; all that Apollodorus states is that he was raised to life again by Asklepios. It may be taken, then, that Hippolytus was at Troezen a hero worshipped as a god a hero possibly at first of no more local importance than the analogous Saron, but about whom miraculous legends somehow clustered, and who was liable to confusion with the god of healing ; a hero also of miraculous purity, to whom the maiden before marriage offered her hair ; the devotee of Artemis, and presumably her priest. Now about such a hero it would be natural that some scandalous story should grow up to emphasize this purity. Hence the Phaedra element, as old as Joseph and Potiphar's wife a story not told of Hippolytus alone, even among the Greeks (witness Bellerophon) ; a story peculiarly dear to the drama. I am distinctly inclined, on this account, to believe that the Phaedra story was part of the original Troezen legend ; they had all the local o-r/^eia of Phaedra the tomb, the temple, the perforated myrtle. The worshippers of Hippolytus re- sented the story of the bull and the horses ; but I feel by no means sure that this also was not latent at Troezen. Euripides lets out more than Pausanias knew of. Theseus, when he condemns his son, breaks out into bitter taunt against him for his excess of piety ; he twits Hippolytus with the fact that he mas of the Orphic sect " Come, look thy father in the face, forsooth ; Pollution now has come even to thee Thou the companion of the gods, a man Above, beyond, chaste, unassailed by evil. Thy boasts shall not persuade me, thinking ill To charge the gods with folly who know thee not. OF ANCIENT A THENS civ Come, plume thyself, and haggle about food That's lifeless ; now's thy time. Come, revel away With Orpheus for thy king, honouring the smoke Of words. Now thou art caught." All the rage of ordinary flesh and blood against the prig, the vegetarian comes out here ; no doubt Theseus is made to utter the spirit of the men of his day. If to some Hippolytus was a god, to others he was some- thing of an impostor, a would-be saint, a man over-much a profligate in the garb of an ascetic, who met his violent death as the just punishment of his deeds. One can imagine the two parties at Troezen the one adoring the local saint, telling how holy his life, how he had visions of the goddess and mystic communion with her, how he was sorely tempted yet prevailed, how, after death, miracles of healing were done at his tomb, and how pious maidens flocked to the shrine ; the other hating him and his Orphic doctrines, and his fasting and priggish purity. I cannot forbear the con- jecture that the legend of Hippolytus had to contend with orthodox theology, that he was in some sense an upstart. Poseidon was the great god of Troezen, and it is noticeable that, according to the Euripidean and in part the local version, it was by Poseidon's curse he fell. May not the story em- body the struggle of the orthodox Poseidon worshippers to put down a new and popular form of asceticism, a form of Artemis cult ? It is as the friend, the dear servant of Artemis, not as the rebel against Aphrodite, that we think of him at last. There is a tumult of huntsmen and horses and hounds about the palace gate, but silence falls for a space before the little shrine while the young, pure hero uplifts the flower -wreath to his unseen mistress " For thee this woven garland from the sacred, the sequestered Meadow-close, O Mistress, I made ready and I bring ; Never there came mower's scythe, nor shepherd's flocks were pastured, Nor wanderer tracks it but the bee that ranges it in spring. clvi MYTHOLOGY OF ANCIENT ATHENS And Reverence is gardener there, with dewy river water, And they may come into the place whose soul in every way Is pure in her own being with a virtue never taught her, Even such may come and gather flowers ; the wicked never may. But thou, O dear my Mistress, take for thy tresses golden, A coronal to bind on them, gift of a pious hand ; For this to me thou gavest, from all other men withholden, To be with thee, to talk with thee, to hear, to understand ; Hearing indeed the speech of thee mine eyes have not beholden, And so, for me, be age fulfilled, even as boyhood planned." To face page i ' Lycabettos \\ H y m e t t o s Walter & Caiitati Si. MYTHOLOGY AND MONUMENTS ANCIENT ATHENS THE description of Athens by Pausanias falls, according to the route he adopted, into five natural divisions, as follows : A THE ^.GORA AND ADJACENT BUILDINGS LYING TO THE WEST AND NORTH OF THE ACROPOLIS, FROM THE CITY GATE TO THE PRYTANEION (C. i. 4 TO C. xvm. 3). B THE CITY OF HADRIAN AND THE DISTRICT OF THE ILISSUS, FROM THE SERAPEION TO THE STADION (C. xvm. 4 TO C. xix. 6). C THE ROAD IMMEDIATELY EAST AND SOUTH OF THE ACROPOLIS, FROM THE STREET OF TRIPODS TO THE SHRINE OF DEMETER CHLOE (C. xix. 7 TO C. xx. 3). D THE ACROPOLIS, FROM THE PROPYLAEA TO THE STATUE OF ATHENE LEMNIA (C. xx. 4 TO C. xxvm. 2). E THE WEST SLOPE OF THE ACROPOLIS, THE AREOPAGUS, AND ACADEMY SUBURB (C. xxvm. 3 TO C. xxx. 4). MYTHOLOGY OF ANCIENT ATHENS These larger divisions have been divided, for the convenience of the reader, into twenty-five smaller sections as follows : A SECT. I. THE CITY GATE THE KERAMEIKOS. II. STOA BASILEIOS TEMPLE OF APOLLO PATROOS. III. METROON THOLOS. IV. EPONYMI STATUES OF HARMODIOS AND ARISTOGEITON. V. ODEION TEMPLE OF ARTEMIS EUKLEIA. VI. TEMPLE OF HEPHAISTOS SANCTUARY OF APHRODITE. VII. STOA POIKILE VARIOUS ALTARS. VIII. GYMNASIUM THESEION. IX. ANAKEION PRYTANEION. B X. SERAPEION OLYMPIEION AND PYTHION. XL DISTRICT OF THE GARDENS THE STADION. C XII. STREET OF THE TRIPODS TEMPLES AND THEATRE OF DIONYSOS. XIII. THE ASKLEPIEION THE SHRINE OF DEMETER CHLOE. D XIV. THE PROPYLAEA. XV. HERMES PROPYLAIOS PERSEUS BY MYRON. XVI. SANCTUARY OF ARTEMIS BRAURONIA VOTIVE BULL OF THE AREOPAGUS COUNCIL. XVII. LACUNA PASSAGE ZEUS POLIEUS. XVIII. THE PARTHENON. XIX. BRONZE APOLLO PARNOPIOS ATHENE BY ENDOIOS. XX. THE ERECHTHEION PANDROSEION. XXI. STATUE OF LYSIMACHE LEMNIAN ATHENE. E XXII. PELASGIKON PAN'S CAVE. XXIII. AREOPAGUS. XXIV. STREET OF TOMBS. XXV. ACADEMY KOLONOS. DIVISION A THE AGORA AND ADJACENT BUILDINGS LYING TO THE WEST AND NORTH OF THE ACROPOLIS, FROM THE CITY GATE TO THE PRYTANEION (C. i. 4 TO C. xvm. 3). I. THE CITY GATE THE KERAMEIKOS ... 5 II. STOA BASILEIOS TEMPLE OF APOLLO PATROOS . 22 III. METROON THOLOS ..... 38 IV. EPONYMI STATUES OF HARMODIOS AND ARISTOGEITON 55 V. ODEION TEMPLE OF ARTEMIS EUKLEIA . . 85 VI. TEMPLE OF HEPHAISTOS SANCTUARY OF APHRODITE 112 VII. STOA POIKILE VARIOUS ALTARS . . .124 VIII. GYMNASIUM THESEION , . . .143 IX. ANAKEION PRYTANEION . . . .150 Existing Ancient Buildings Existing Modern Buildings Eukleiu. & Aristoboule Pane/em os For larger view of Di pylon see plan to division E. PLAN OF AGORA AT ATHENS, WITH ADJACENT BUILDINGS SECTION I THE CITY GATE THE KERAMEIKOS TEXT, i. 2, 4, 5, 6. i. 2, 4. AT the entrance of the city is a building used for the apparatus of the processions, some of which take place every year, others at longer intervals. Near is a temple of Uemeter, contain- ing images of the goddess herself, her daughter, and lacchus holding a torch ; an inscription on the wall in Attic letters declares these to be works of Praxiteles. Not far from the temple is a Poseidon on horseback, throwing his spear at the giant Polybotes, the hero of the Koan story about the pro- montory of Chelone ; the inscription in my time assigns the statue to some one else, and not to Poseidon. i. 2, 5. Colonnades lead from the gate to the Kerameikos, and in front of them are statues in bronze of such men and women as have a substantial reputation. One of the colonnades contains sanctuaries of the gods, and a gymnasium called the Gymnasium of Hermes. Within it is also the house of Poulytion, where, at the time of the festival at Kleusis, the mysteries were enacted by some Athenians, men of a certain note. At the present time it is dedicated to Dionysos. This Dionysos has received the surname of Melpomenos, from a legend similar to that which gives Apollo the title Musegetes. Within the precinct there are statues of Athena Paionia, Zeus, Mnemosyne and the Muses, an Apollo, the work and offering of Eubulides, and Akratos, one of the divinities who accompany Dionysos ; this last is only a face built into the wall. Next to the precinct sacred to Dionysos is a building con- taining images of clay ; also a representation of Amphictyon, the king of the Athenians, feasting Dionysos and some other gods. Pegasos of Eleutherae is there also, who introduced the worship of Dionysos into Athens ; he was aided in so doing by the Delphic oracle, which reminded the Athenians 6 MYTHOLOGY AND MONUMENTS niv. A of the sojourn of Dionysos in Attica in the time of Ikarios. i. 2, 6. The way in which Amphictyon came to reign is as follows. It is said that the first king to reign in what is now called Attica was Actaeus ; on the death of Actaeus, Cecrops suc- ceeded to the kingdom, having married a daughter of Actaeus. Cecrops had three daughters, called Ilerse, Agraulos, and Pandrosos, and a son named Krysichthon. This son was never king of the Athenians, but as he died in his father's lifetime the rule of Cecrops passed to Cranaos, the most powerful of the Athenians. One of the daughters of Cranaos was called Atthis, and from her the land of Attica took its name. It had formerly been called Actaea. Amphictyon rose against Cranaos, although he had married his daughter, and drove him from power. But later he was himself ex- pelled by Erichthonios and those who joined in his rebellion. Erichthonios had, so the tale goes, no mortal father, but was the son of Ilephaistos and Ge. COMMENTARY ON i. 2, 4, 5, 6. This account of his entrance into the city is one of the most unsatisfactory portions of the narrative of Pausanias. It is, to say the least, disappointing, that he does not tell us at the outset by which gate he enters. The choice lies between the Peiraeus Gate and the Dipylon ; the balance of probability seems to be in favour of the Dipylon. It is true Pausanias is coming up from the Peiraeus, but it does not at all follow that he entered by the Peiraeic Gate. He was not hurrying home by the shortest possible route, but starting on a series of leisurely walks, and he was, as will constantly be seen, an orderly sightseer. Even for the casual Athenian it seems to have been quite usual to return from the Peiraeus through the Dipylon : the friends in Lucian's dialogue, The Ship or the Wishes, took this way. 1 Pausanias, whose object was to see systematically the principal sights of the city, was scarcely likely to enter otherwise than by the principal entrance, specially when to do so took him but little out of the direct route. As the Dipylon is the one Athenian gate of which there are still substantial remains, it maybe well, whether Pausanias entered by it or not, to note briefly its structure. A view of the remains still extant is given in fig. i. The gate, as its name suggests, is double ; there are in fact two gates, which, with the walls that connect them, enclose an oblong space. 2 Each gate had double doors hinging on a centre pier. The view in fig. i is taken OF ANCIENT ATHENS from the rising ground just outside the Dipylon, about two minutes due east of the Hagia Trias. From this point the student can best see the lie and extent of the gate. Immediately in front is the centre pier of the outermost gate (A) ; this pier, with the monument-basis in front of it, is the part most easily identified. To the right of the spectator, not in sight in the view, is the other pier of the southernmost door of this same gate, and also considerable remains of the south tower which defended the gate. IP DIPYLON, The north side and tower of this outermost gate can no longer be made out; but as the span of the one door is known, the other can be measured to correspond. The wall (B) that extends to the right from the tower dates from the time of Themistocles. About fifteen paces along this wall away from the gate, the student will, if he takes the trouble to pull aside a thick growth of nettles, find a boundary stone forming part of the wall " the boundary of the Kerameikos " (opos KepapeiKov) cut in beautifully clear letters, " pillar fashion " (i.e., one vertically above the other). Only a little more than half the inscription is now (1888) above ground O P O Z K P A MYTHOLOGY AND MONUMENTS DIV. A Another similar boundary stone was found on the other side of this same gateway, but not in situ at the time ; the inscrip- tion is reported to have been destroyed, and probably the stone was long since removed. The wall in which the boundary stone stands is of special interest, as being the best preserved portion now remaining of the original Themistoclean fortification ; it must not be confused with the much later wall that runs parallel to it but outside the gate (C). The Themistoclean wall can easily be traced through the complicated mass of ruins through which it runs to where, about a minute's walk from the Dipylon, it ends in FIG. 2. PORTION OF WALL OF THEMISTOCL the hill-side, as seen in fig. 2. The fine polygonal masonry of the lower portion is here plainly to be seen. It may be noted that although the main outline of the Athenian walls seems to have been traceable in Leake's time and is given in the map of Curtius, this is the only satisfactory piece of the wall that can now be seen. The remainder of the circuit and the position of the other gate are completed from various literary inferences, and from slight indications in the neighbourhood of the Museion and Nymph hills. Returning to the Dipylon, we have to find the second gate. Standing on the first centre pier, the second centre pier is easily seen straight ahead. It can be identified by a round stone altar :! OF ANCIENT ATHENS that stands immediately in front of it (towards the city), bearing the inscription in letters of the fourth or third century " Of Zeus Herkeios, of Hermes, of Akamas." Zeus Herkeios, guardian of the city enclosure ; Hermes, god of the gateway ; Akamas, the tribe hero of the Kerameikos. AlOS 'K[pKlo]li A/CU/iOU'TOS. The restoration is quite certain, but at the present time (1 the upper part of the stone is broken away, and slight traces only remain of the letters bracketed. It would be beyond my purpose to attempt any discussion of the complex of walls of every date which lie round about the Dipylon ; they offer to the topographer some of the most perplexing of Athenian problems. It can only be said here that it is conjectured that the foundations marked P may be the Pompeion mentioned by Pausanias, and, further, that the walls marked E, long held to be the Sacred Gate, are shown by Dr. Dorpfeld to be no gate at all, but merely a water- course in fact, the outlet of the Eridanus. Close by ran a small road, too insignificant to have been the Sacred Way. The term " Sacred Gate " is used only once, and by Plutarch, when speaking of the ravages of Sulla ; and if we suppose him to mean the Dipylon, the passage presents no difficulties. From Plutarch also we learn that the Dipylon once was called the Thriasian Gate, 4 because it led to the Eleusinian deme Thria. Anthemokritos, he says, was buried near the Thriasian Gate, which they now call the Dipylon. It seems likely that until Athens was fortified by Themis- tocles the gate was quite unimportant, only one among many. It would then become apparent that this low-lying bit of the city needed walls of special strength and a double gate a gate, as Livy says, "major aliquanto patentiorque quam ceterae." 5 It is not to be supposed that before the time of Themistocles the city had no boundary wall. It may have been inadequately fortified, but a wall certainly existed. Thucydides says (i. 93) " Thus did the Athenians fortify their city in a short space of time. And to this day it is evident from the character of the masonry that it was run up in haste, for the foundations are of all sorts of stones, and not regularly laid but thrown down, just as each person brought them up ; and there were many stelae from tombs and wrought stones built in, for the boundary of the cily was extended in all directions, and they all set to at the work, sparing nothing in their haste." MYTHOLOGY AND MONUMENTS Between the city gate and the Kerameikos Pausanias notes the following monuments : 1. The Pompeion. 2. The temple of Demeter, with various statues. 3. Group of Poseidon and Polybotes. 4. Colonnades containing sanctuaries and statues, chiefly relat- ing to Dionysos. There can be no doubt that the building spoken of as " used for the apparatus of the processions " is the Pompeion mentioned by other writers. Vessels in use for processions were called "pompeia," and it was here they were stored. They formed an important item in the State revenues. Demosthenes, in the speech against Phormio, 6 speaks of thousands of bushels of wheat as being measured out in the Pompeion. By the time of Pausanias it may have been despoiled, but it once contained a portrait statue of Socrates " and a painting of Isocrates. 8 Of the temple of Demeter we know nothing certain. The image of lacchus, a mystical form of Bacchus, was carried in procession to Eleusis at the Eleusinian festival. It is possible that the worshippers started from this temple. Plutarch mentions an laccheion, which may very prob- ably be this temple. Near it the grandson of Aristides 9 used to sit, and, being very poor, he made a living by interpreting dreams out of a little book. No doubt he chose some much frequented spot. The three statues by Praxiteles serve to point a moral for Clement of Alexandria " I tell you you are plainly forbidden to exercise an art that is deceiving . . . unless indeed we are to receive all gods, the Demeter and Kore, and the mystical lacchus of Praxiteles." 10 The statue of Poseidon on horseback (Poseidon Hippios) was well in place near the temple of Demeter. At Colonos, sacred to Poseidon Hippios, there was a hill of Demeter Euchlous; 11 and Poseidon, together with Athene, had conjoint honours with Demeter and Kore in the Sacred Way. 1 - Poseidon on horseback appears on a coin type and in contest with the giants in vase- paintings. The particular story of the contest with Polybotes is told by both Strabo 13 and Apollodorus. 14 Apollodorus says " Poly- botes fled from the pursuit of Poseidon through the sea and came to Cos. Poseidon broke off a piece of the island and threw it at him, and the piece thus broken off became the island Nisuros." The stoiy was of course one likely to arise wherever there was an island that looked like a handy missile for a sea-god. ir> The notice- SEC. i OF ANCIENT ATHENS n able thing about the statue seen by Pausanias is that its inscription had been altered. Some wealthy Roman no doubt had wanted an equestrian statue of himself, and so what had once been the image of a god (ayaA/zu) became a 'mere portrait statue It is not clear whether the colonnades mentioned next by Pau- sanias were on both sides of the road, or merely in succession on one only. He proceeds to describe the contents of "one of the colonnades," but it is quite possible he may have passed on to the contents of the other and forgotten to note the transition. There is a passage in Himerius 10 which describes the road or course (dromos) along which the Panathenaic ship was taken in procession ; he says, " through the middle of the Dromos, which makes a straight and gentle descent from the higher ground and divides asunder the colonnades on either side, in which the Athenians and others buy and sell." If we were sure that this Dromos was the road taken by Pausanias, the arrangement of the colonnades would be secure, but this is not proved. Pausanias says nothing about the places for buying and selling. It is possible, however, that they stood mainly on one side, and that he noticed only the other colonnade, in which were sanctuaries of the gods. Within one of the colonnades was a building which had once been the house of Poulytion, and was in the days of Pausanias a precinct sacred to Dionysos. Near it was another building closely connected with the worship of the god, for it contained representa- tions of the reception of Dionysos by the King of Attica. This leads Pausanias to a digression on the genealogies of the Athenian kings, which has been already noticed. The Athenians "of a certain note" to whom Pausanias alludes are undoubtedly Alcibiades and his companions. Authorities differ as to the actual house in which the mock ceremony was enacted. Thucydides ir says simply " in private houses " (er oiKicus) ; Plutarch, 18 quoting the actual accusation against Alci- biades, says "in his own house" (eV r?/ ot/cia rrj eairrov), but a servant Andromachos, cited by Andokides 19 in his speech on the mysteries, says " the mysteries were enacted in the house of Poulytion." Anyhow, Poulytion was deeply involved. Alcibiades kept the best part, that of hierophant, for himself ; but Poulytion played the second best, that of torch-holder. Probably Alcibiades lived close by, and the drunken rout may have passed from house to house. Anyhow, it seemed fitting that the dwelling of Poulytion noted, as Plato says, 20 for its splendour should be devoted as an 12 MYTHOLOGY A A 7 D MONUMENTS anathema, an expiatory votive offering, to the god in whose name and strength the horrid sacrilege was done. Dionysos Melpo- menos, god of the ordered dance and song, was the special patron of the theatrical artists (re^vcrou). The priest of Dionysos Melpomenos, chosen from the artists, had an inscribed seat in the Dionysiac theatre at Athens (/'e/jews AioviVoi; MeATro/^evou ex Te^i'irwv) ; and a priest of Dionysos Melpomenos, of the race of the Euneidae, had also a seat (leptws MeATro/^evov eg EweiSwv). These Euneidae were the presidents at certain festivals. Athenaeus speaks of a precinct of the artists of Dionysos in which sacrifices were performed, and it seems quite possible that this precinct of Dionysos is intended. The house of Poulytion would thus become a natural place for offerings to Dionysos in his aspect of artist. Eubulides the sculptor made and set up Apollo, and others offered statues of Mnemosyne and the Muses. How Athene, the healer, and Zeus came in is not so apparent. Upon these sober and musical gods and goddesses there looked down from the wall, whether of the precinct or the house we cannot say, the face of the dae- mon of wine unmixed, Akratos, a satellite of Dionysos, whom Poulytion himself may well have worshipped. In the excavations at Dionuso, near Athens, a head of Dionysos has been found, worked flat at the back, and evidently intended to be fixed against a wall, and it may sug- gest an analogy for this face of Akratos. It seems to have been customary in painting also to represent the head of Akratos only. A vase from Lipara, 21 now in Glasgow, is decorated with a head of Akratos, fortunately inscribed. It is sketched in outline only (fig. 3), and about it are ivy tendrils. The custom of setting up the head only seems to have been quite ancient, as Pliny describes a head of Diana by Boupalos and Athenis thus : " The face of Diana placed high up, whose expression seemed sad to those who came in and cheerful to those who went out." FIG. 3. VASE WITH HEAD OF AKRATOS (GLASGOW MUSEUM). SEC. i OF ANCIENT ATHENS 13 To the daemon of wine unmixed in the Acharnians -- Dikaiopolis gulped down the " amystin," the deep, long, breathless draught.- 3 It is impossible to pass by the votive offering of Eubulides without noting a famous controversy. 24 In 1837, during the laying of the foundations of a house just opposite the Peiraeus station, the workmen came upon pieces of a monument made of great blocks of poros stone, three heads, and a colossal torso. Among the blocks was a fragment of blue Hymettian marble bearing an inscription, which, from the analogy of an inscription already in the Louvre, could be restored : EuJ^eipos Kpon'iS?/? firoii It was long thought that this was the monument seen by Pau- sanias. The remains of the monument, with the exception of the inscribed block and the sculptures, were speedily covered up, so the controversy has always been in an unsatisfactory condition. Of course, if the identity could be proved, we should have here a most valuable fixed point in the topography ; but I follow Dr. Lolling in thinking that all the available evidence points the other way, and that the monument dug up is simply one of many other signed works of Eubulides that were scattered over Athens, Eubulides lived about the end of the Roman Republic. The monuments mentioned by Pausanias relate so far un- deniably to the worship of the three closely allied deities, Demeter, Persephone, and Dionysos. This certainly strengthens the sup- position that he entered by the Dipylon, which, as has been seen, was also the Sacred Gate. The predominance of the worship of Dionysos led the learned to invent an eponymous hero for the Kerameikos Keramos, son of Dionysos and Ariadne. It does not of course in the least follow that the whole way traversed by Pausanias was formally sacred ground. On the contrary, it was mainly secular ; mixed with occasional precincts there would be private houses, colonnades, booths for shops, and the like. By the time of Pausanias the fame of the precinct of Dionysos in the Marshes (ev Aip.vais 'ArTuAoi'] /cat /?a[o-<.Aio-]o-7;s 'A7roAAd;i'[i5os] (" King Attalos, son of Attalos and of the Queen Apollonis "). This leaves no doubt that the building was the work of Attalos II., King of Pergamos, who reigned 159-138 B.C. Prof. Acller, in his very full monograph" on the subject, points out that the building has three special claims to archaeological interest : 1. Its date is certainly known. 2. It belongs to a transition combining certain features of new and old styles. C 1 8 MYTHOLOGY AND MONUMENTS niv. A 3. It is a good representative of an important class of ancient civil buildings, the stoai or porticoes of which we have but few, and these very fragmentary examples. It is on this account that it is described here in somewhat fuller detail than would otherwise be attempted. Attalos seems to have pulled down pre-existing buildings and utilised the foundations. His portico was 370 feet long by 63 feet 8 inches wide ; it was raised four steps from the ground. The main structure was of poros stone, but the front was Pentelic marble, and the pavement and wainscotting of the rooms were of Hymettian marble. Architects pronounce the masonry to be ex- cellent ; it is of the sort that Vitruvius calls pseudisodomum i.e., with courses alternately equal and unequal. This can be well seen at the north-east corner, where a small portion of the cornice remains. The building had two stories. The lower story was planned as follows : About a third of the breadth of the building was taken up by a row of rectangular chambers which opened out, through a door to each, into a colonnade in front. These chambers were also lighted by windows in the east wall. They probably served as shops, and Prof. Adler thinks he has discovered traces of the supports for shelves round the walls. The colonnade in front of these rooms was double. There were originally 105 pillars, 35 in a row; they supported the upper story. The foremost row was Doric, but with late Ionic fluting ; the second was Corinthian, with capitals of palmetto and lotus pattern and Attic bases. Between the third row of columns and the west wall of the rooms was a passage 19 feet wide, at either end of which was an unclosed doorway. The colonnade of the upper story seems to have been similar, but one row of columns was Ionic, the other Corinthian ; more strictly, they are not columns at all, but consist of a rectangular pilaster with two half-columns. The intercolumniations were filled up to the height of 3 feet with a grating or lattice of Pentelic marble, in which four distinct patterns can still be made out. The best specimen of this lattice- work is preserved in the Archaeological Society's Museum. The site has not yet been completely cleared, but, besides the general plan of the building, which is sufficiently clear, it has yielded a number of inscriptions, some of them with reference to the Ephebi. It seems to have been customary to set up Ephebic inscriptions 31 of a public character in this Attalos Stoa. All those found are of late pre- SEC. I OF ANCIENT ATHENS Roman date. Some expressly state that the decree is to be set up in the Agora, so that they furnish additional evidence for supposing the stoa to lie within its boundaries. In modern times the building has suffered many reverses. Under the Dukes of Athens it was filled with broken stones and gravel, and made to serve as a fortification. Later on, much of its building material and that of monuments near at hand was used to build up four towers, the foundations of which can still be traced. They gave their name to the Church of our Lady of the Tower (Panagia Pyrgrotissa), the ruins of which still stood in FIG. 4. REMAIN'S OF STOA OF ATTAI.OS. 1 86 1. At present a narrow street divides the stoa into two unequal portions. Twelve chambers stand on one side, two and a half only on the other. The larger portion lies to the north of the dividing street and is easily accessible ; the smaller portion to the south is not accessible from the dividing street ; it has been fenced in, and the door opening on the o^os rwr VTOMV is kept locked. The view in fig. 4 shows the south end of this smaller portion. The anta to the right with the door close at hand shows the limb of the colonnade. The door in the back wall communicates with the back chambers. The solitary mention of this Stoa of Attalos is in Athcnaeus. 3 - Athenion, when he is about to harangue the people, mounts upon MYTHOLOGY AND MONUMENTS " the bema which is in front of the Stoa of Attalos, and which was built for the Roman generals." Such a harangue would naturally be in the Roman agora. Of the circumstances of the building we know nothing. It was, of course, at all times a popular act to adorn the market with the like useful buildings. The intention of the Stoa of the Giants is quite obscure ; ex- cavation has so far only shown that in all probability what remains at present is built up out of fragments of an earlier building. The principal remains of this stoa, if stoa it be, are four bases, two of which are still surmounted by colossal figures, half human, half serpent. They are, in fact, something after the FIG. 5. STOA OF THE GIANTS. fashion of some of the Pergamene giants. Similar figures at one time surmounted the other bases. A third figure was found de- tached from its basis. On the front of each of the two bases is carved a tree with a serpent winding round it (fig. 5), indicating no doubt the olive tree and the sacred serpent of the Acropolis. The giant statues are late Roman work, and the bases even later, which is evidence in itself that the building was put together out of already existing material. Probably the giant figures supported a roof, and fronted a stoa. This is all that can be said. They have given to the adjoining street the name of o8o is used of it). According to Thucydides, the older Peribolos must have been narrower in extent on all sides." Page II "I believe that the T^utcos AIOPWTOI; was distinct from the house of Poulytion. The r^nevos was, in my opinion, the sanctuary of Dionysos tv Aifj.va.is. This sanctuary was opened only once a year, and hence was closed when Pausanias described Athens. The building with the terra-cotta figures stood near the precinct and belonged to it, for the Dionysos who was the guest of Amphictyon was Dionysos Lenaios i.e., tv SECTION II STOA BASILEIOS TEMPLE OF APOLLO PATROOS TEXT, i. 3, i, 2, 3, 4. i- 3' ! THE place called the Kerameikos derives its name from the hero Keramos, also * connected with Dionysos, as he is said to he the son of Dionysos and Ariadne. The first colonnade on the right-hand side is called the Royal Portico. Here the king archon sits during his year of office, called his kingship. On the tiled roof of this colonnade are terra- cot ta images representing Theseus hurling Skiron into the sea, and Hemera carrying off Kephalos. Kephalos, being the fairest of men, was loved, they say, by Hemera, and carried away by her to heaven, and their child was Phaethon, [whom Aphrodite] made guardian of her temple. Among other authorities for this story is Hesiod in his poem about women. i- 3. 2 - Near the portico are statues of Konon and his son Timotheos, and Evagoras, king of the Cyprians, who induced Artaxcrxes, the king, to give the Phoenician triremes to Konon. Evagoras acted thus as being an Athenian ; Salamis was the home of his race, for he traced his ancestry back to Teucer and the daughter of Cinyras. There are also statues of Zeus Eleutherios and the Emperior Hadrian, the last of whom showed even more than his usual beneficence towards his subjects in his conduct to the city of the Athenians. i- 3> 3- Behind is a building, a portico containing pictures of the gods spoken of as the Twelve Gods ; on the wall opposite are depicted Theseus, Demokratia, and Demos. This *picture expresses the fact that it was Theseus who gave to the Athen- ians equality of political rights. There are other instances of the prevailing popular belief that Theseus surrendered the control of public affairs to the people, and that the democracy * See P. , i. 2, 5, end. MYTHOLOG Y OF ANCIENT A Til ENS 23 was established in his time and lasted till the rebellion and tyranny of Peisistratos. A great many untrue legends are current among the populace, who do not study research and believe all the stories they have heard in choric poems and tragedies from their childhood, and Theseus is no exception. For Theseus himself was king, and after the death of Menestheus the descendants of Theseus reigned to the fourth generation. But if I were interested in family histories, I could give the complete list of the kings from Melanthos to Kleidiskos, the son of Aisimides. i. 3, 4. In this portico there is also depicted the action at Man- tinea of the Athenians who had been sent to the aid of the Lacedaemonians. The history of the whole war has been related by Xenophon as well as by other writers the capture of the Cadmeia, the defeat of the Lacedaemonians at Leuktra, the invasion of the Peloponnese by the Boeotians, and the despatch of the Athenian contingent to join the Lacedaemonians. The picture represents the cavalry en- gagement, where the greatest distinction was won by Gryllus, the son of Xenophon, on the Athenian side, and among the Boeotian cavalry by Epaminondas the Theban. Euphranor painted these pictures for the Athenians, and he also executed the Apollo called Patroos in the temple close at hand. Of the statues in front of the temple, one was the work of Leochares, the other, called Alexikakos, that of Kalamis. Story says that the god received this name because by an oracle from Delphi he stayed the pestilence which distressed Attica during the Peloponnesian war. COMMENTARY ON i. 3, ^ i, 2, 3. 4. Pausanias, as he enters the Kerameikos, is concerned to explain the name an eponymous hero Keramos was of course necessary to any systematic mythologist. It has already been said that the place took its name from the potters, who from the earliest days had plied their craft before the citadel gate. Clay lay here ready to their hands ; and here outside, not within the ancient city, they drove their trade with foreign merchants. Theirs was no doubt the chief industry of the ancient Athenian people, and where they dwelt and worked there would grow up a natural market- place. Fortunately Pausanias distinctly tells us the building he first saw was on the right ; he links together as all close at hand the following : i. The Stoa Basileios. 24 MYTHOLOGY AND MONUMENTS 2. A portico (Eleutherios) with paintings by Etiphranor, and near it statues of Konon, Timotheos, Evagoras, Zeus, and Hadrian. 3. Temple of Apollo Patroos, with statues by Euphranor, and in front of it statues by Leochares and Kalamis. As to the position of the Stoa Basileios, he himself a little later on gives us a fuller clue. He says (i. 14, 5) " Beyond the Kerameikos and the stoa called Basileios is the temple of Hephaistos." The temple of Hephaistos is, as will be seen, the so-called " Theseion ;" we shall certainly not be far wrong if we put the Stoa Basileios lying just beneath the Kolonos hill on which the " Theseion " still stands. The date of its first building is not so clear. There is evidence that it existed in the year 506 B.C. In that year the Athenians conquered the Chalcidians, and certain agreements as to the letting of their land were set up near the Stoa Basileios. /Elian 33 says " The Athenians conquered the Chalcidians and let out their land in two thousand allotments i.e., the territory called Hippobotos and they consecrated certain lands in the place called Lelantos to Athene, and the rest they let out in accordance with the stelai which contained the record of these leases, and which stand in front of the Stoa Basileios." It was the chains of these same Hippobotae that Herodotus saw hanging on the blackened walls of the Athene temple in the Acropolis. The Stoa Basileios had in later days associations exclusively sacred ; it was the regular place of business of the archon basil- eus. In him were vested all the priestly functions of the king. Such legal power as he held was in the main connected with matters of religion. He presided over the celebration of the Eleusinian mysteries, and had the general direction of the public sacrifice. Even his wife, who bore the title of Queen (/^ao-iAivva), had authority to perform certain "most holy and mysterious rites," 34 and as priestess her character must stand above suspicion. The general superintendence of religion brought with it certain legal duties. All suits for impiety (eVSet^ets ucre/iJct'a?) were, in their preliminary stages, heard before him ; and because homicide was to the Greeks a special offence against the gods, all cases of murder, manslaughter, wounding, incendiarism, were within his jurisdiction. It cannot be forgotten that in the Stoa Basileios the charge of impiety was brought against Socrates. It was within that portico that he met Euthyphro, 35 and the two talked together on piety and impiety. Euthyphro was there to bring the SEC. ii OF ANCIENT ATHENS 25 charge of murder against his own father, Socrates accused of contempt against the gods. 30 Within the Stoa Basileios also the Council of the Areopagus met. 87 Certain cases involving secrecy could not be tried in the open air ; for these the Stoa Basileios was the regular place. The functions of the archon basileus shrank with those of the Areopagus before the reforms of Ephi- altes (460 15.C.). Before this, and even after it, he must have had a wide direct political as well as religious influence. He was the descendant of the king, his house the outcome of the kingly palace, as well no doubt in form as in functions a form it handed down to the basilicas of Christian days. Unlike the other porticoes, it was, there is little doubt, a house with a roof, a megaron divided by rows of columns, and probably fronted a colonnade. It must have been large enough to contain the hundred members of the Areopagus. Pausanias does not seem to have gone inside. He says nothing of the laws re-written upon the walls ys in consequence of the measure brought forward by Tisamenos, nor does he even mention the altar outside, on which, in accordance with ancient custom, the archons took their oath to receive no bribe ; ;i he only notes the terra-cot ta groups upon the roof. If the Stoa Basileios was, as has been conjectured, a roofed building something after the fashion of the naos of a temple, it would be natural to suppose that the terra-cotta groups were the akroteria ornaments that stood on the apex of the pediments. Such ornaments were common enough, but in the days of archaic art it was more usual to make them of terra-cotta than of marble. Probably it was because they were of terra-cotta and archaic in style that they caught the eye of Pausanias. The art of making these terra-cotta akroteria was, Pliny 40 says, carried to special perfection in Etruria, and it is from Etruria that an illustration can be drawn for one of the Stoa Basileios groups. There is in the Berlin Museum, 41 in the small room of Etruscan antiquities, set up high on the right-hand end wall, an akroterion (fig. 6) found at Cervetri behind the old theatre. Its style dates it about the sixth century B.C. It represents a winged woman carrying a youth in her arms across the sea, and is the earliest representation we have of the Eos and Kephalos type. We shall not be far wrong if we think that the group seen by Pausanias was something of this sort. The same subject, though very differently treated, was represented in an akroterion belonging to the temple of Apollo at Delos, the re- maining statues of which are now in the Central Museum at Athens 26 MYTHOLOGY AND MONUMENTS (Nos. 56-61). It has been ingeniously suggested that the group of Eos and Kephalos occupied the east pediment apex, as being the more appropriate subject, and the downfall of Skiron was towards the west; but this seems over- subtle. We have no instance remaining of Skiron as an akroterion, but it was a sub- ject not unfit for such a position, as the scene, like the rape of Kephalos, took place more or less in mid-air. A passage, which seems to be that referred to by Pausanias, occurs in the Theogony- ; it is possible, however, that it may have FIG. 6. TERKA-COTTA AKKOTER1ON : EOS AND KEl'HALOS (BERLIN MUSEUM). been repeated in the poem on women, now lost. The passage in the Theogony is as follows (986-991) : "To Kephalos she bore a glorious son, Strong Phaethon, a man like to the gods ; And him, while yet his boyhood's fresh young bloom Forecast great manhood, Aphrodite rapt On high, and of her secret, inmost shrine Made him the spirit guardian." The five statues next mentioned i.e. , those of Konon, Timotheos, Evagoras, Zeus Eleutherios, and Hadrian probably SEC. ii OF ANCIENT ATHENS 27 all stood together. The god and the four mortals had this in common, that they were " saviours " of Greece. Pausanias says the statues stood near the stoa (Tr\tyrLov 5e) he had just left i.e., the Basileios ; their connection, however, is obviously with the stoa immediately following, which we know from other sources was called the Eleutherios. The statue of Zeus probably com- memorated the victories over the Persians. Possibly Hadrian's statue, too, bore the title of Eleutherios, as in the theatre there is a chair inscribed for the priest of Hadrian Eleutherios (tepews 'A.8piavov eAet'^epuiws, sic}. Turning to the three statues of Konon, Timotheos, and Eva- goras, we have a group whose close connection needs no apology. The statues were all set up during the lifetime of the heroes. One, that of Konon, we know from Demosthenes to have been of bronze ; probably the other two were of the same material. Konon and Timotheos had also statues on the Acropolis. To tell in detail the history of these three men would be to recall the whole melancholy story of the latter part of the fifth and the first half of the fourth century B.C., the disastrous struggle of Athens with Sparta. It is in part, no doubt, because the background is so gloomy that the figures of these three heroes stand out in such bright relief. Beginning with the elder pair, Konon and Evagoras, we have names indissolubly linked in an alliance at first most glorious for Athens, later fraught with danger. From the disastrous defeat at yEgospotami (405 B.C.) Konon alone escaped, if without glory, at least without disgrace. He took refuge with King Evagoras at Salamis in Cyprus, and from that date the two work conjointly for the restoration of Athens. The story of their friendship is so glow- ingly told by Isocrates in his encomium on Evagoras 43 that, though we must bear in mind that the discourse is avowedly an encomium, and as such liable to discount, no better record of the joint work of Evagoras and Konon can be quoted. As Isocrates himself says, "the portrait of a man's character is a better memorial than an image of his body." The orator, in Pindaric fashion, goes back to the story of the mythological past. Evagoras has this triple claim on Athenian enthusiasm he is the descendant of the heroes of Sala- mis ; his kingdom is the outpost of Western civilisation against Eastern barbarism ; he adopts a policy fundamentally Attic. The military glory of Konon culminated in the victory over Sparta in the great sea fight at Cnidus (394 n.C.). It is impossible to forbear noting that, according to the conjecture of its discoverer, 28 MYTHOLOGY AND MONUMENTS niv. A Sir C. T. Newton, 44 the colossal stone lion which he brought with such difficulty from the promontory of Cnidus, and which now stands in the Elgin Room of the British Museum, was a monu- ment over the graves of the fallen in this momentous fight ; if so, it has to be associated for ever in our minds with the name of Konon. To his military glory he had yet to add a crowning civil distinction. Athens, though victorious at sea, still lay in ruins. Konon, again with the help of Evagoras, was to be its second founder. The great king, skilfully manipulated by Konon and Evagoras, was persuaded to undertake the cost of restoration ; Cyprian, Cilician, and Phoenician workmen 45 were furnished by Evagoras ; they worked in friendly rivalry with Athenians and Boeotians ; the fortifications of the Peiraeus, the long walls con- necting the seaport with the city, were speedily rebuilt. On the shoulders of Konon and Evagoras fell the mantle of Themistocles, Cimon, and Pericles. In an outburst of gratitude the city set up the statues of its joint benefactors ; in the Peiraeus was built the sanctuary to Aphrodite to commemorate the victory at Cnidus (Paus., i. I, 3). Athens had, " as by the touch of magic, been trans- muted from a poor and impotent district town into a wealthy and powerful city, the ally of the great king as well as of the rich and fortunate prince in Cyprus" (Curtius, Ward, iv. 283). The pro- sperity of Konon was brief ; he fled in voluntary exile to the court of Evagoras, and died how it is not known about 389 B.C. It is in part to the ingratitude of Athens that we owe incidentally an eloquent tribute to the memory of Konon. Demosthenes, 46 in his speech against Leptines (about 355-352 B.C.), opposes the author of a law to abolish hereditary immunities conferred on public benefactors. To stir the popular sympathy he can think of no better cause celebre than the enactment in honour of Konon. "Of him, and of him only," the orator says, "is this written on the stele, that 'Konon set free the Athenian allies.' Such is the inscription a glory to him in your eyes, to you before the eyes of all Hellas. For this cause our ancestors gave to Konon not only exemption from burdens, but also a bronze statue, as before they gave to Harmodios and Aristogeiton. For they deemed that it was no small tyranny he had put an end to, even this lordship of the Lacedaemonians." Timotheos no doubt started life with the prestige natural to his father's son, but if we are to believe the portrait left us by his intimate friend Isocrates, he had ample personal claims for dis- tinction. He won his chief laurels in connection with the Naval SEC. ii OF ANCIENT ATHENS 29 Confederation of Athens (378 B.C.). It fell to him to win over Euboea to the new association, a task he achieved with singular prestige. He seems to have been as modest as he was successful, ydian 47 tells a story of a picture in which his modesty was turned to humorous account. The successful general always said his victories were due to Tyche (Fortune), so the painter represented him asleep in his tent while the goddess Tyche hovered in air above him dragging in a long fishing net the confederate cities brought into alliance by Timotheos. Like his father Konon, Timotheos soon fell out of favour with the ever- fickle Athenian public. At last (358 B.C.) he was formally accused of cowardice in " shirking " a fight in the Hellespont, and a fine of one hundred talents imposed. He left Athens, and died three years later (354 B.C.) at Chalcis. The rights of this famous case will never be known. Its chief interest to us is that incidentally it led to a panegyric on Timotheos by his constant friend and supporter, Isocrates. A year after the death of Timotheos, in his oration On the Antidosis, Isocrates thus writes (sees. 101-139) : 4S "Special stress has been laid upon my friendship with Timotheos; and since the interests which he so long controlled were so great, especial pains have been taken to slander him. I therefore, who am supposed to have been his adviser and teacher, cannot be silent. If he is shown to have been a bad man, let me share the blame. If he is proved to have been incomparable as a general and as a citizen, let the honour be his alone. Now, in the first place, no general ever took so many or such important cities. Corcyra, important in regard to the Peloponnesus ; Samos, for Ionia ; Sestos and Krithote, for the Hellespont ; Potidaea, for Thrace, were taken by him with slender resources. He forced Lacedaemon into the present peace (i.e., the peace of Callias, 371 H.C.), the most advantageous ever concluded by Athens. In a word, he took twenty-four towns at a smaller outlay than the single siege of Melos cost our fathers. These exploits were achieved at a time when we were weak and our enemies strong. By what qualities did Timotheos achieve them ? He was not of the ordinary type of your generals ; neither of robust frame, nor trained in the camps of mercenaries. But he knew against whom and with whose aid to make war ; how to form and to use a force suitable for each attempt ; how to bear privations and to remedy them ; how to win for Athens the trust, the love of Greece. A general who, like Lysander, has one brilliant success, is less great than one who for years deals wisely with ever-varying 30 MYTHOLOGY AND MONUMENTS DIV. A difficulties. Yet Timotheos was brought to trial for treason ; and although Iphikrates took the responsibility for what had been done, Menestheus for what had been spent, they were acquitted, while Timotheos was fined in an unheard-of sum. Ignorance, envy, excitement, go far to explain this result ; but it must be owned that the character of Timotheos contributed to it. He was no anti-democrat, no misanthrope, not arrogant, but his un- bending loftiness of mind made him liable to seem all this. Against my advice he refused to conciliate the speakers who sway the ekklesia and those who direct the opinion of private circles. These men made it their business to frame falsehoods about him falsehoods which, had I space, I could bring you to see and hate." It is pleasant to know that the esteem of statesman and orator was mutual. In front of the temple at Eleusis there was a statue of I socrates made by the great sculptor Leochares and set up by Timotheos. It bore the following inscription: "Timo- theos, for the sake of his friendship and in honour of hos- pitality, dedicated this statue of Isocrates to the two goddesses. The work of Leochares." " Behind " (these statues), says Pausanias, " is a building, a portico." He does not here say that the portico went by the name of the Stoa Eleutherios i.e., the porch of Zeus the Deliverer. His eye seems to have been immediately caught by the pictures of Euphranor, and he goes on at once to describe them. As has been already noted, there is little doubt that the great statue of Zeus was set up after the victory over the Persians, and the stoa was probably built at the same time. Plutarch tells us that on each anniversary of the battle of Plataea " there is a general assembly of the Greeks at Plataea, and the Plataeans sacrifice to Zeus the Deliverer for the victory." 49 Every future triumph, whether military or political, would be associated with fresh thanksgivings and votive offerings to the god of freedom. Zeus Eleutherios was worshipped far and wide throughout Hellas. Coins inscribed with his name and stamped with his image are found at Metapontum, Aetna, Agyrium, Alaesa, Syracuse, Magnesia. It was a natural and beautiful custom that the Athenian soldier who specially distinguished himself should hang up his shield in the portico of the deliverer god. Pausanias tells us elsewhere 50 of two such shields. To one a special pathos attaches. In the great battle (279 B.C.) against Brennus and his Galati "the Athenians exhibited more valour than all the other Greeks, and specially Cydias, who was very young, and now fought for the SEC. ii OF ANCIENT ATHENS 31 first time. And as he was killed by the Galati, his relations hung up his shield, with the inscription that follows, to Zeus Kleutherios : ' Set here I yearn for Cydias, dead so young, His shield, a hero's, sacred now to Zeus, Through me, his first, then was his shield-arm slung When on the Gaul the War-god's wrath broke loose.'" The inscription remained till the soldiers of Sulla took away the shields from the portico as well as all the other spoil from Athens. As Sulla sacked Athens in 86 B.C., the shields had of course dis- appeared long before the days of Pausanias. We hear also of the shield of another warrior, Leokritos, 51 whose shield was dedicated by his grateful countrymen. The Macedonians had taken refuge in the Mouseion, and Leokritos was the first to scale the wall and leap in amongst the enemy. So they dedicated his shield, and wrote on it " his name and his valorous deed." Like the other porticoes, the Stoa Eleutherios was a pleasant lounging place for the idle Athenian. Socrates 5 - finds Ischo- machos there, and expresses surprise to see this model young husband hanging about like the ordinary trifler : " Seeing him sitting one day in the portico of Zeus Eleutherios, I went up to him, and as he seemed at leisure I sat down by him and said, ' Ischomachos, why are you sitting about idle ? It is not like you. I usually see you occupied about something, and certainly not wasting your time in the market-place.' " And the virtuous Ischo- machos makes answer : " And indeed you would not see me unoccupied, Socrates, but I have got an appointment with some strangers, and I am waiting for them." And then, as they sit together in the portico, follows the notable discourse on married life. The exact site of the Stoa Eleutherios cannot be fixed any more certainly than that of the Stoa Basileios. Pausanias only says the Stoa Eleutherios was behind the statues. Har- pocration 53 says the two porticoes stood side by side (-Trap' ttAX?)Aas) ; but this condition would be quite well fulfilled if they stood as on the map. Sulla's soldiers had carried oft" or destroyed the votive shields, but they do not seem to have taken the trouble to efface the frescoes which decorated all three walls of the stoa. The frescoes were by Euphranor, and were of great note in antiquity. The subject was three- fold 32 MYTHOLOGY AND MONUMENTS mv. A 1. The twelve gods. 2. Theseus, with the figures of Democracy and Demos per- sonified. 3. The cavalry battle at Mantineia. If we suppose that the cavalry battle took up the long side wall, the picture with Theseus faced that of the twelve gods at the other end. This arrangement is almost necessitated by the words of Pausanias. The only clue he gives to the position of the pictures is that he says that of Theseus is " on the wall opposite " (eTTt Se rco TOi^y TO> Trepav). It seems most natural to take this as meaning opposite the picture already described as that of the twelve gods ; as soon as the spectator faced round after looking at this, the Theseus picture would by this arrange- ment be on the wall opposite, thus Cavalry battle. - H As regards the picture of the twelve gods, we have scattered notices of three of the figures. It does not advance us much to be told of the Zeus that Euphranor drew his inspiration from Homer's description of the god " shaking his ambrosial locks," which he heard by chance in a school. 54 The same is said of the Zeus of Pheidias. It was no doubt the stock traditional senti- ment about any famous statue or painting of the god. Of the figure of Poseidon we learn that it was equal to that of Zeus. Tradition 55 said Euphranor painted the figure of Poseidon first, and having exhausted his skill upon it, tried to excel it by the Zeus, but failed. The hair of the Hera seems to have been famous for its colouring. When Lucian 50 is about to put the finishing touch to his ideal image, he calls in the aid of the most noted painters Polygnotus, Euphranor, ^Etion, and Apelles ; and of these he says, " Euphranor shall furnish us with the hair, like the hair of his Hera." When he turns to the opposite wall to look at the picture of Theseus with Democracy and Demos, Pausanias is, as usual, SEC. II OF ANCIENT ATHENS 33 more interested in the subject-matter than the style. It is specially provoking to be furnished with a worthless dissertation on the authenticity of theTheseus legends, when we would have given much to have some idea how the personifications of Demos and Demo- cracy were conceived. These abstract conceptions were not, as a rule, popular with the Greeks, at least until late times. The figure of Demos must, however, have been thoroughly popularised by the comedies of Aristophanes. The Knights appeared in 424 B.C., more than a generation before the days of Euphranor. The name of Demos recalls to us the burlesque figure of the old Athenian bully, the incarnation of a testy, capricious mob selfish, suspicious, and yet, in the same breath, easy-going, easy to be cajoled the "John Bull of Athens," as Frere calls him. No doubt the picture of Euphranor was conceived on widely different lines. He would represent the ideal glory of the sovereign people, the lordship of Athens, a lordship already, in the days of Euphranor, dying, if not dead. It was, as some one aptly said who saw the picture, " the Demos of great-hearted Erechtheus, whom on a time Athene nurtured, daughter of Zeus." And yet what the critics tell us about Demos has a touch of the John Bull about it. Plutarch says that Euphranor himself contrasted his own Demos with the Demos of Parrhasios ; the Demos of Parrhasios had, he said, the look of a man fed on roses, his o\vn that of a man fed on beef. "When Athens allied herself with Rome (228 B.C.), she seems to have resumed her right of coining silver money, lost during the Macedonian supremacy, and she then issued a series of coins bearing the inscription Demos side by side with the old monogram of Athens, A0EO AEMOZ, and stamped with the image of Harmodios, who fought for the people of old :I (Head, Hist. Num., p. 318). If the picture of Theseus, Demos, and Democracy faced the twelve gods, considerations of symmetry would probably demand that the three figures should be supplemented by others, no doubt of inferior interest. Turning from the theological picture (of the twelve gods) and the mythological picture (of Theseus), we come to the third and probably largest composition which represents a matter of plain history, the cavalry fight at Mantineia. The story of the great fight is told in full, as Pausanias notes, by Xenophon, 57 the father of the young knight Gryllus. " The real honours of the day," Grote says (x. 108), "lay with Epaminondas and the Thebans ; but the Thebans, when they found their great general was dead, were D 34 MYTHOLOGY AND MONUMENTS niv. A panic-stricken and let their enemies escape, and so the Athenians too claimed the victory, and trophies were erected on both sides. There is much confusion as to who really killed Epaminondas, but the Athenians claimed the honour for Gryllus." Pausanias says in his description of Mantineia &8 " And the Mantineans say that Epaminondas was slain by a Mantinean, by name Mach- aerion ; but the Lacedaemonians say that the Machaerion who slew Epaminondas was a Spartan." But the version given by the Athenians and confirmed by the Thebans is that Epaminondas was mortally wounded by Gryllus, and this corresponds with the painting of the battle at Mantineia. The Mantineans also, it would appear, gave Gryllus a state funeral and erected a statue- we learn elsewhere that the statue was equestrian in memory of him, on a pillar at the place where he fell, he being the bravest man in the army. On the other hand, Machaerion, though the Lace- daemonians mention him, had no special honours paid to him as a courageous man either at Sparta or at Mantineia. The painting here mentioned as at Mantineia was a copy of the one in the Stoa Eleutherios at Athens. Pausanias later saw and noted it."' The only clue to the style of the picture is in Plutarch's account From it we gather that the representation was character- ised by a vivid realism. This is not the place to gather together all the scattered notices respecting the manner of Euphranor. It is enough to note that he came about midway in that great series of painters whose activity extends from the end of the Peloponnesian war to the time of Alexander, the characteristic of whose art is an ever- increasing technical dexterity and consequently an always minuter realism. Euphranor was an all-round artist, as famous for sculpture as for painting. Mr. Murray {Hist. Sculp., ii. 329) says of him in his capacity of sculptor that " forcible characterisation " may be accepted as a feature in all his work. With this he com- bined various technical accomplishments and great fertility of conception. If Pliny's criticism, 01 that he first expressed the dignified traits of heroes (dignitates herouni), means anything, he had in the Kerameikos fresco a subject for which his genius was peculiarly apt. With Euphranor still in his mind, Pausanias passes to a build- ing close at hand, the temple of Apollo Patroos (Apollo the father or ancestor). By some such title as this he was worshipped in such Greek cities as claimed Ionian descent. Apollo Patroos was, Demosthenes 02 expressly says, the same as the Pythian Apollo " I OF ANCIENT ATHENS 35 invoke Apollo the Pythian, who is the Patroos of our city." Within the temple stood In front 1. Apollo Patroos, by Euphranor. 2. Apollo, by Leochares. 3. Apollo Alexikakos, by Kalamis. The statues of Euphranor, like his pictures, ranked high in an- tiquity. When Zeus is settling the question of Olympian etiquette among the various statues of the gods, Lucian (i3 makes him give precedence to " the works of Phei- dias, Alcamenes, Myron, and Euphra- nor, and the like ex- cellent artists;" but of this particular statue we know no- thing, nor can we even fix the artistic type of Apollo as Patroos. The only certain Apollo Pat- roos we possess is a bas-relief (fig. 7) from an altar at Athens. 04 The inscription says the altar was dedi- cated "to Apollo Agyieus (of the streets and ways) and Patroos, to the god of Pytho and of Claros and of the whole Ionian race." He is represented as a naked long-haired youth playing on the lyre. We are equally ignorant of how the god was conceived by Leochares, the con- temporary of Scopas. Kalamis was chiefly famed for the grace and austere beauty of his women figures. By the side of the work of Euphranor and Leochares, his Apollo, dating at least a century earlier, must have had a severely archaic air. The worship of Apollo as Alexikakos (averter of evil) was widespread. He was the god who sent the plague, and he alone could avert it. As FIG. 7. BAS-KEI.IEF : APOI.LO I'ATROOS. 36 MYTHOLOGY AND MONUMENTS DIV. A early as the days of the Iliad^ we find Apollo the far-darter aiming his shafts of pestilence against the host of the Achaeans ; and when the hecatomb is offered and Chryseis restored, he stays the plague. It is to Apollo as King Paian the Healer that the chorus pray when death lays his hand on Alcestis (iti : " O them King Paian, find some way to save ! Reveal it, yea, reveal it ! Since of old Thou found'st a cure." It was Apollo Epikourios the Helper who saved the Phiga- leians from the pestilence that fell on the rest of the Peloponnese, and they built a temple to him, calling him Epikourios, Pausanias 07 says, just as the Athenians for the like deliverance called him Alexikakos. In the frieze of this temple of Phigaleia, in the British Museum, Apollo Epikourios advances in a chariot with his sister Artemis to help the Lapiths in their fight with the Centaurs. The same notion comes out on a coin from Selinus (Head, Hist. Ntim., p. 198, fig. 91), where Apollo, or the healing god, stands in a chariot by Artemis and discharges his arrows to stay the pestilence that had beset the marshy city. Of course the Apollo of Kalamis was not in a chariot, but we shall probably not be far wrong if we conceive of the statue as a formal figure holding a bow and lustral branch. Pausanias mentions no altar, but naturally there would be one ; and as Plutarch mentions an altar to Apollo in the agora, its natural place would be in front of this temple. This altar, in accordance with an oracle of the god, was gilt by Neoptolemos 08 the actor (circ. 347 B.C.). The archons, when first elected, sacrificed to Apollo Patroos. To the date of the temple we have no clue. Probably, in some form or another, it had existed from very early times. Pausanias remarks that Apollo got the name of Averter of Evil (dXfgiKaxos) when he stopped the plague (430 B.C.) at the time of the Pelo- ponnesian war. If this were so, the Apollo of Kalamis cannot have been originally called Alexikakos. There is no doubt that the plague which broke out in 430 B.C., and of which Thucydides has left us so terribly realistic a description, was attributed to Apollo. Thucydides oy says " In their troubles they naturally called to mind a verse which the elder men among them declared to have been current long ago : A Dorian war will come and a plague with it.' . . . Further, the answer of the oracle to the Lacedaemonians SEC. ii OF ANCIENT ATHENS 37 when the god was asked ' whether they should go to war or not,' and he replied 'that if they fought with all their might they would conquer, and that he himself would take their part,' was not for- gotten by those who had heard of it, and they quite imagined that they were witnessing the fulfilment of his words. The disease certainly did set in immediately after the invasion of the Pelopon- nesians, and did not spread into Peloponnesus in any degree worth speaking of, while Athens felt its ravages most severely." The orthodox, no doubt, honestly believed the plague was sent by Apollo, and the Spartan party at Athens used it as an engine against Pericles. The fact that the plague and its removal were attributed to Apollo only goes to show that he was already regarded as Alexikakos, if not actually so named. It may be that when the god, in very tardy fashion, did stay the plague, his worship was renewed with additional honours. SECTION III METROON THOLOS TEXT, i. 3, 5 ; 5, r. i- 3, 5- THERE is also a building, the sanctuary of the mother of the gods, containing the statue made by Pheidias, and near is the Council Chamber of the Five Hundred, the name given to the Athenian counsellors who hold office for a year. In this building is set up a wooden image of Zeus Boulaios, an Apollo by Peisias, and a Demos, the work of Lyson. The picture of the Thesmothetae is by Protogenes of Kaunos, and it was Olbiades who painted Kallippos, the general who led the Athenians to Thermopylae to guard the pass against the invasion of Greece by the Galati. A digression follows on the Galati. i. 5, i. Near the Council Chamber of the Five Hundred is what they call the Tholos. Here the prytanes offer sacrifice ; and it also contains some images made of silver, of no great size. COMMENTARY ON i. 3, 5 ; 5, i. Pausanias comes next, but with no connecting link, to a group of three buildings which, as he distinctly says, are near (nX^a-Lov) to each other : 1. The Metroon, or sanctuary of the mother of the gods. 2. The Bouleuterion, or Council Chamber of the Five Hundred. 3. The Tholos or Skias. It seems certain that, at least as early as the middle of the fourth century B.C., the Bouleuterion was actually within the SEC. in MYTHOLOGY OF ANCIENT ATHENS 39 precinct of the Metroon. The orator Lycurgus, 70 just before his death, when he will defend himself against the accusations of his enemy Menesaichmos, has himself carried " into the Metroon and the Bouleuterion," that there he may render up his last account. /Eschines 71 speaks of the Metroon as " beside the Bou- leuterion " ; and a scholiast in the passage adds, " The Athenians made the Metroon part of the Bouleuterion." This is, of course, the reverse of fact ; the pious Athenians would not include a religious foundation in a secular precinct, but vice versa. Probably what happened was this : the Bouleuterion had to be enlarged ; it trenched on the temenos of the mother of the gods ; the only way out of the difficulty was to consecrate the Bouleuterion to her and thereby get the necessary land, and add a new sanctity to a building whose purpose was political. The Tholos, being merely subordinate a place for dining, and its necessary accompaniment sacrifice would be naturally in the same enclosure. If, therefore, we can fix the site of the Metroon, the other two follow with it. The safest clue we have is a passage in Arrian, 7 -' which, it will be seen, is of the utmost importance in fixing the topography of Pausanias just at this point. He says, speaking of the statues of Harmodios and Aristogeiton " They now stand in the Kerameikos at Athens where we go up to the Acropolis, about opposite to the Metroon, not far from the altar of the Kudanemoi." We cannot certainly fix the situation of the altar of the Eudanemoi. Some points about the Eudanemoi will be noted in connection with the Areopagus. They were connected with Eleusinian ceremonies, for Arrian adds, as explanatory of their function, that "whoever has been initated at Eleusis knows the altar of the Eudanemoi on the floor there." Setting aside, then, the question of this somewhat obscure altar, what we gather from the passage is 1. Wherever the statues of Harmodios and Aristogeiton were, there, about opposite to them, was the Metroon, and vice versa. 2. Both stood on the regular road up to the Acropolis. The great question here to be settled is Where was this road?" 3 It has been almost universally assumed that the regular ap- proach from the agora to the Acropolis was to the east of the Areopagus. Further, it is usually held that the road from the agora to the Pnyx ran also between the Acropolis and Areopagus. The questions are, of course, distinct. It does not follow that 40 MYTHOLOGY AND MONUMENTS uiv. A because a road led from the agora to the Acropolis west of the Areopagus, there was not another road leading east of the Areo- pagus to the Pnyx. It may perhaps be clearer if I state dis- tinctly the view I have adopted, and then proceed to enumerate the cumulative arguments. Pausanias follows, as we should expect, the regular road from and through the agora up to the Acropolis. This road is the same in the earlier part as the road from the agora to the Pnyx. Starting from the level below the " Theseion," it follows the course of that hill, and then -winds round the -west sJioulder of the A rcopagus. Along this road Pausanias goes till he is almost due west of the Propylaea. He then turns, because he reserves the Acropolis for a future discussion, and coming back by the same road finds himself quite naturally near the temple of Hephaistos (the Theseion). Consequently all the monuments between the Metroon and the Hephaistos temple (i. 3, 5 to i. 14, 6) must be round about the west and south-west shoulder of the Areopagus, between that hill and the Ko'.onos (Theseion hill) on the one side, and the Mouseion and Pny.v hills on the other side. The monuments to be disposed in this space are, as will be seen The statues of the Eponymi. Amphiaraos and Eirene. Lycurgus and Callias. Demosthenes. Temple of Ares. Harmodios and Aristogeiton. The Odeion. The Enneakrounos. Temple of Demeter and Kore. Temple of Eukleia. All nearer determination of their several sites will be given under each heading. The new theory adopted is revolutionary. It simply changes the whole lie of the agora, making a great part of it face up to- wards the Pnyx instead of towards the Acropolis. At present, from the lack of actual remains, it cannot be said to be demon- strated ; but as it is justified by the whole lie of the ground, as it simplifies the explanation of the narrative of Pausanias, and as SKC. Ill it throws additional light on several passages in classical authors, and, so far as I am aware, contravenes none, it cannot be denied a high measure of probability. The chief reasons in favour of it are A. Considerations from the lie of the ground itself. The ascent between the Areopagus and Acropolis is steep and narrow. It is, of course, easy enough for foot-passengers to go up, but at the present day the carriage road to the Propylaea goes round the west of the Areopagus. The distance starting from the FIG. 8. AREOPAGUS FROM SOUTH-EAST. " Theseion " is very little greater, and it is amply made up for by the gradual nature of the ascent. In connection with this it must be distinctly noted that, though the difference is slight even now, it would be still slighter in ancient days. Before the time of Pericles the Pelasgic fortress with its nine successive gates must have stretched out far to the west, so that in all probability, so long as that fortress was standing, the west road was actually in distance as well as practically in time the shorter. A road once established by custom and sanctified by the erection of countless public monuments and buildings would not lightly be changed. 42 MYTHOLOGY AND MONUMENTS niv. A />'. Considerations arising from the interpretation of classical passages. These relate chiefly to the road from the agora to the Pnyx, but are connected, as will be seen, with the argument about the road to the Acropolis. In the Bis Accttsatu s " 4 of Lucian, Hermes, when he is about to summon the people from the agora to the Pnyx, goes up to the Acropolis to do so the more easily from the height ; but, before he leaves Dike- in whose presence the assembly is to take place he tells her distinctly to sit down on the hill (the Areopagus) and look towards the Pnyx, so as to watch the people as they come bustling up. Now if any one will take the trouble to sit on the Areopagus (fig. 8) so that he can see the Pnyx, he will at once own that just beneath him lies the very piece of road that has been described the hollow between the Areopagus and Pnyx, along which to this day the carriage road to the Acropolis runs. There is, of course, no doubt that the hill on which Dike is seated (eVt TOV Trayov) is the Areopagus, as it is to the Areopagus distinctly that the people are bidden to come. She and Pan watch them come up from the agora, and finding the assembly is to be at the Areopagus instead of the Pnyx, they leave their direct and easy road and have to scramble straight up the steep rock. Had the usual road gone to the east instead of west of the Areopagus, Dike, by looking as she was bidden towards the Pnyx, would simply have turned her back or at least her left side to the scrambling mob. In connection with this passage must be taken a much-quoted statement by yEschines ""' in his speech against Timarchos. The runaway slave, Pittalakos, came into the agora and sat down on the altar of the mother of the gods. Timarchos and Hegesandros, knowing that a crowd of people were hurrying along up to the Pnyx for the ekklesia, were afraid he would be seen, and went and implored him to get up and go away. The Metroon was there- fore on the road to the Pnyx. If this road went to the west of the Areopagus, the Metroon must have lain in that direction also. Now, as has been before seen, wherever the Metroon was, there, just opposite, were the statues of Harmodios and Aristogeiton ; but it is distinctly stated that they stood at the point where the road went up to the Acropolis, therefore the road up to the Acropolis lay in the same direction as the road to the Pnyx i.e., to the west. This somewhat complex argument rests, of course, on the SEC. in OF ANCIENT ATHENS 43 premise that the road to the Pnyx lay west, and this, so far as literary evidence goes, apart from general probability, rests on the Lucian passage. It may, however, be noted that, had the whole agora not been placed by commentators too far east, the error of supposing that the road to the Pnyx lay between the Areopagus and Acropolis could never have arisen. The agora was placed a good deal east of the " Theseion " hill entirely with the hope of bounding it by exist- ing remains />., of the Stoa of Attalos and the giant figures which, as they are too late to be of any service, should never have come into the argument. C. It will be seen in the course of this narrative that the order in which Pausanias mentions the building and monuments of the agora is, if we adopt this new view, a perfectly simple and natural one, whereas, according to the former view, he makes needless digressions. This will be best seen in following his route in detail. To return to the Metroon, which may safely be placed on the west side of the Areopagus. Pausanias gives no hint as to how- near the Metroon stood to the last-mentioned temple (of Apollo Patroos), but as he passes straight on from the one to the other we may conclude they were not far asunder. We have no evidence that the Metroon was ever a temple. Pausanias mentions it as a sanctuary, Pliny 7G as a shrine (ilclu- bruvi) ; that there was a sacred precinct we are sure, and, as has been already seen, an open-air altar. Pheidias, or his con- temporary Agorakritos, made a statue for the Metroon, but there is nothing to prevent our supposing that it was an open-air statue like the bronze Athene of the Acropolis. We have abundant evidence that in the latter part of the fourth century B.C. the State archives of the city were kept under the guardianship and within the precinct of the Great Mother. Much astonishment has been felt that an Asiatic goddess like Rhea Cybele, whose name is associated with all manner of Oriental license, should have thus early had a temple within the precincts of the agora ; still more surprising did it seem that she should have within her temenos the council chamber of the State, and, as will be seen, hold the custody of important public documents. The difficulty arises really out of a confusion of thought. In later days the priests did introduce the worship of Cybele, with all its attendant license ; but the worship of an earth-goddess, mother of 44 MYTHOLOGY AND MONUMENTS DIV. A gods and men, did not arise exclusively in Asia Minor. The figure of Gaia, mother of Erichthonios, and hence mother of the Athenian people, had from very early days been familiar at Athens. We can no more suppose that the Greeks were without their worship of mother earth until they met Cybele than we can suppose they knew no goddess of love till they met the Babylonian Astarte. That in both cases the two conceptions, starting independently in East and West, met and fused, there can be no reasonable doubt ; that ultimately the Oriental goddess prevailed, is unhappily too true ; but that the Athenians, even as late as the days of Pheidias, enthroned in their agora a Babylonian goddess, and gave to her charge their city's records, there is no cause to suppose. By an examination of the three buildings in turn Metroon, Bouleuterion, and Tholos it will readily be seen that the associations of the wh6le temenos are Hellenic, not Asiatic. The Metroon. All that Pausanias notes is the statue of the goddess, which is, he says, by Pheidias. Pliny, on the contrary, says that " in the shrine of the Great Mother was a work by Agorakritos." Agorakritos, the younger contemporary of Pheidias, is a sculptor whose personality is almost completely shrouded by that of the greater artist. He worked as pupil and colleague of Pheidias ; and as regards style, it is of little importance to which sculptor a statue is attributed. Happily, we are able from a description by Arrian, 77 coupled with certain existing bas-reliefs, to form a tolerably just notion of the attitude and attributes of the statue. Arrian says, in speaking of a statue of Rhea seen in the "journey round the world" "She holds cymbals in her hand and has lions beneath her throne, and is seated as the statue by Pheidias is seated in the Metroon at Athens." The three reliefs 7S (figs. 9, i o, 1 1 ) give not only some idea of the statue described, but also, if carefully examined in connection with literary testimony, they afford the clearest possible picture of the attributes and worship of the goddess. Upwards of twenty-five votive reliefs of similar kind are known, many of which come from the Peiraeus, where the goddess had a temple ; these reliefs, dating in style from about 500 B.C., are testimony enough, if any w-ere needed, to the deep hold the Great Mother had on the popular mind. The first relief (fig. 9) was found at the Peiraeus, and is now in the Central Museum at Athens. It is in the form, as the majority of them are, of a small shrine (murKos). Because the OF ANCIENT A THENS 45 goddess is represented as seated in a temple, we are not justified in saying that the relief is an actual copy of a temple statue. FIG. 9. METROON (CENTRAL MUSEUM, ATHENS). But if such a temple statue is otherwise known to exist, as in the present case, there is a large presumption that the craftsman who 46 MYTHOLOGY AND MONUMENTS mv. A made the relief drew his inspiration from it, certainly in such matters as pose and attributes. The " Great Mother " is here represented seated. She wears a modius (a head-dress common to the other earth goddess, Demeter) and long veil ; her feet rest on a footstool, as was customary in the representation of deities of high rank ; in her right hand a bossed phiale, in her left the tympanon or cymbals. A small, attributive lion rests in her lap. The relief has, in common with the statue of Pheidias, the seated position, the tympanon, and the lion ; but in the statue of Pheidias the lion was beneath the chair. The somewhat grotesque notion of the lion in the lap belongs to an earlier, more symbolic manner. On the pillar on the one side is a youth holding an oinochoe in the right hand and in the left an object shown in the plate as a caduceus but in the original uncertain. He is an attendant of the Mother's, to whom a name cannot as yet with certainty be given, but he is a constant feature in the votive reliefs. On the other pillar is a woman figure with torches. This relief is of special interest because of the inscriptions. On the left-hand pillar (i.e., to the left of the goddess) is written "Manes to the Mother" (MANHI MHTPI), to the right "and Mika to the mother of the gods"(KAI MIKA MHTPI OEHN), so that there is not a shadow of a doubt to whom the reliefs are dedicated. It should be noted that the title is simply Mother of the Gods ; there is no mention of Rhea or Cybele. The form of the letters points to the fourth or, at latest, third century B.C. ; but the formal type of the stiff-seated goddess, the attributive lion, and the rigid gestures tell of a type form conceived at least a couple of centuries earlier. The relief is coarsely executed, the work, no doubt, of a cheap relief-maker. It was dedicated probably by some poor couple of the lower classes. The second relief (fig. 10), from the Museum at Berlin (No. 691), found in the Peiraeus, has been chosen because the lion seated beneath the chair and the superior grace and beauty of the style bring it nearer to our conception of the work of Pheidias. It is, of course, post-Pheidian (fourth century). The old attributes of tympanon and phiale are retained but held with added grace, and the youth and maiden are brought into one group with the goddess. Comparing it with Attic grave reliefs, it may be placed about 400 B.C. A craftsman working at that date could scarcely have been uninfluenced by the temple statue of Pheidias. SEC. Ill OF ANCIENT A Til ENS 47 The third relief (fig. 1 1) is chosen advisedly for contrast. It is a terra-cotta from Asia Minor found not far from Mount Sipylos, a great centre of the worship of Cybele. It belonged to the Sabouroff FIG. 10. CYBELE RELIEF (iSERLIN). Collection, and is now in the Hermitage at St. Petersburg. The work is thoroughly Greek, but it shows the worship of the Great Mother tinged with more of Oriental license, and gives us her art-type conceived after the fashion of the third century B.C. in an 4 8 MYTHOLOGY AND MONUMENTS every-day realistic fashion. The goddess is still seated, but she has the air of a real live woman, not of a temple statue. She no FIG. II. CYUELE RELIEF (HERMITAGE, ST. 1'E TEKSBUUG). longer holds her attributes, tympanon and phiale, no longer wears her solemn modius. One indication of the growing realism of the SEC. in OF ANCIENT ATHENS 49 time is a tendency to disembarrass deities of the various cumber- some attributes with which the dogmatic art of early piety had laden them. It is like the putting away of class distinctions ; the gods came down from their pedestals and became as mere mortals. The lion is no longer the symbol of dominion, in the house of the goddess he has become a pet lap-dog. On the wall behind are hung two phiales, evidently votive to the goddess. An Attic inscription 79 of the second century states that certain Ephebi " sacrificed at the Galaxia (the feast of the Great Mother) to the mother of the gods, and dedicated a phiale costing a hundred drachmas." Beneath the chair of the goddess is seated the Phrygian piper, Marsyas, the Asiatic Pan. The worship of the woodland god was near akin in Greece to that of the earth mother. " O Pan, who hauntest Arcadia, guardian of the sacred shrines, follower of the Great Mother, dear delight of the holy Graces," says Pindar; 80 and again, in his ode to Theron, " I am minded to pray to the Mother, unto whom and unto Pan before my door nightly the maidens move in dance and song." Next to Pindar's house, the scholiast tells, was a sanctuary of the mother of the gods and of Pan, which Pindar himself had built. To the right is the figure of a temple-server (7rpoo-7roA.os). He stands on a pedestal in a thoroughly statuesque Praxitelean pose. It is quite possible that this youth, of whose sad service the Greeks knew nothing, is Attis, whose figure stood in the Asiatic temples of the goddess, and whom the Greeks seem sometimes to have confused with their own Hermes. Worked in low relief, to either side of the pillars supporting the shrine are figures of ecstatic women. The middle one to either side holds the tympanon, the others dance in exactly balanced attitudes. These are the revellers in honour of the goddess. Their hair (ftaK^frovcra ed(ipa) floats behind, their excited feet but just touch the ground. The chorus in the Bacchac 81 sing "O Blest, who glad at heart has known The deep things of the gods his own, And lifts up holy hands, And who with sacred cleansing rites Is one in soul upon the heights With Bacchus' sacred bands, And joins with them that celebrate The orgies of the Mother Great ; With shaken thyrsus armed, with ivy crowned, To Dionysos bound." E 50 MYTHOLOGY AND MONUMENTS r>iv. A Dionysos himself bids his women followers " Catch up the Phrygian cymbals, my device, Mine and the mother Rhea's." Plutarch 82 says, what is certainly true enough, that the rites of the Mother and of Pan have much in common with the Bacchic rites. It remains to notice the little frieze of animals which form, as it were, the predella to the composition. Lions and bulls are chosen advisedly. The lion was the bull-slayer. In the Philoc- tetes^ the chorus prays to the Mother " Oh thou, whose chair Bull-slaying lions share." The lion is indeed, as has been seen throughout, her constant companion, and was borrowed no doubt from the East by the Greeks as a fitting symbol of dominion for their own earth mother. Diodorus 84 describes a goddess at Babylon whom he calls Rhea, and who was represented with two lions standing on her knee. The earliest Asiatic type was probably that which represented her standing on a lion, to denote in straightforward fashion the sub- jection of the beasts of the field. This crude bit of art symbolism the Greeks rejected. The nearest approach to it is an isolated relief, in which the lion serves as footstool to the seated goddess. The tame lion on her lap, no doubt a pre-Pheidian type, expressed of course, and in perhaps scarcely less primitive though more gentle fashion, the same thought. It may have been the innovation of some great sculptor, Pheidias or Agorakritos, to place the lion as guardian beneath or beside the chair. Then comes a type in which the lion jumps up against the goddess in lap-dog fashion. Finally, in Hellenistic times, she is seated on her lion. Possibly this innovation began with Nikomachos, as Pliny says 85 he painted " the mother of the gods seated on a lion." Finally she is drawn by lions in her car. As such, in true Asiatic fashion, Catullus 80 and other Roman poets figure her ; on her head the turret crown of the mother of fortified cities " Ibi juncta juga resolvens Cybele leonibus. It is all-important that these later conceptions should be reserved for Rome and Roman temples. The goddess who dwelt, it may be, from very early days in the agora of Athens had indeed borrowed her guardian lion, and perhaps, like many another god and goddess, SEC. in OF ANCIENT ATHENS 51 something of her art-type generally, from the ingenious East, but she was a Greek born of Greeks. She was no savage ascetic Sl deity to drive a man from " fatherland, from friends and parents, from agora, palaestra, stadium, and gymnasia." She was the august yet friendly elder goddess of the earth, mother of Zeus and Hestia, parent of all live things and of the unfilled earth before the coming of Demeter. That her worship, like that of many another earth goddess, like that indeed of Demeter herself, was tinged with primitive barbarism, is likely enough ; that it involved a savage asceticism, impossible. The three votive reliefs to the mother of the gods show, perhaps better than any literary quotations, the mixed and shifting attitude of the Greek mind towards their own goddess. They borrowed her art-type from Cybele, and yet with a touch they transmute it. Of harsh symbols they make delicate decorative adjuncts desperate Attis for them is a figure like to their own serene Ion. Instead of the company, dismal and shameful, of her eunuchs, they surround the goddess with a chorus of happy Maenads. They think they worship Cybele, and all the while their heart is comforted by the faith of mother earth, " who feedest all men." However intimate the connection, however inextricable the confusion between the Great Mother and Rhea, even down to late days the memory remained that they were not in origin one and the same. Diodorus S8 has a notable passage respecting the two which clearly reflects this feeling. Of Ouranos and Titaia Ge are born the Titans ; " to them were also born daughters, of whom the two eldest were by far the most illustrious the one who was called Basileia ; and Rhea, to whom some gave the title Pandora. Now of these, Basileia, being the eldest and greatly distinguished above the others for her discretion and understanding, brought up all her brothers, showed them a mother's affection, and because of this she is saluted by the title, the Great Mother." After her father had been translated from among mortals to the gods, by agreement of the nation and of her brothers she inherited the kingdom (/2acriAeiav), being " still a virgin, and through excess of discretion not desiring to be married to any one." One of the titles, then, of the Great Mother, the goddess older than Rhea, was Basileia. The worship of Basileia is attested by an inscription in Thera, written over the door of a small shrine now consecrated to St. Nicholas 6ed[<.] Buo-iAeta[i] 'E7r[i'A]oy^os KUI [II]e[/j]i- [x] a /K" ra \apurTe lov (" To the goddess Basileia Epilonchos and 52 MYTHOLOGY AND MONUMENTS niv. A Pericharista as an offering"). There is happily evidence of Basileia nearer home. "And who is Basileia?" asks Peithetairos of Prometheus in the Birds, and Prometheus makes answer "A most lovely maid. She keeps the stores of Zeus, his thunderbolt, And all the lot good counsel and good law, Discretion and the dockyards, and abuse, Paymasters, perquisites, and dikasts' fees." No one will deny that Basileia is here an impersonation of the new bird kingdom, but the fun of the thing gains immensely if there is, as Dr. Loeschke 89 ingeniously supposes, a side-hit at the other Basileia, the queen-mother of the Metroon. She who was "discreet" from the beginning, has henceforth in her charge all the State functions of the Bouleuterion and the presidency of the Tholos, where at the public dinners the kolakretae had charge of the sacrifices (perquisites), and ultimately paid the dikasts. 00 Still more fast and furious would grow the fun if we suppose the whole marriage ceremony of Peithetairos and Basileia to be a burlesque of the solemn and mystic marriage of the wife (/^acrtAii'Vtt) of the king archon to Dionysos, which took place afresh every spring. Who should Basilinna represent but the ancient earth goddess Basileia ? It was, then, to their own goddess, mother and queen, in- digenous and of ancient lineage, not to any deity of foreign importa- tion, that the Athenians did honour in the agora, and to whose keeping they entrusted their most cherished documents of State. Till the time of Ephialtes and the general reform of Pericles, the laws of Solon, and probably all public archives, had been kept in the Acropolis. It was the sign of the new democratic order of things that they were brought down from the kingly fortress and exposed in the agora of the people,'-' 1 in the Metroon and Bouleu- terion the laws in the Bouleuterion, the other archives in the Metroon. This was in 460 B.C. It seems probable, though* it cannot be proved, that at this time, in order to give religious sanction and prestige to this popular measure, the Metroon was rebuilt, and the great statue of the goddess made and set up. The new officers, the guardians of the law (I'D/^o^vAa/ces), in whom were vested powers hitherto held by the Areopagus, became in a sense priests of the Great Mother ; as such they wore the white head -bands, the proper attributes of the priest. The Metroon had thus a double sanctity ; it was the shrine of a goddess SEC. in OF ANCIENT ATHENS 53 and the sanctuary of inviolable law. 92 The utmost precautions were taken to keep up the prestige of its sanctity. Even Cicero 93 says " The Athenians were more careful in the keeping of State archives than the Romans" ; and /Eschines 94 notes the admirable custody of the public documents. It was fenced about by all manner of ritual precautions. Garlic was supposed to be a specially exciting diet, so it was expressly forbidden that any one who had eaten garlic should enter the Metroon an enactment that might advisably be made in modern sanctuaries. It was death to tamper with a law once set up in the Metroon ; it was sacrilege to enter a false document. 95 In front of the temple was an altar. yschines, 9C as has been seen before, describes how a runaway public slave, Pittalakos, took refuge there. The Metroon itself had probably at least two divisions one in which the statue stood, and the votive reliefs, the golden cups, inscriptions, and the like ; the other in which the archives were stored. We are told that Diogenes 97 had his "tub" in the Metroon, meaning, of course, the precinct. Standing as this precinct did in the agora, and close to the road which led both to the Areopagus and the Acro- polis, his dwelling-place was admirably central for the observation of men and manners. Within the Bouleuterion Pausanias saw A xoanon of Zeus Boulaios. An Apollo by (re^vvy) Peisias. A Demos, the work of Lyson. He mentions also, but without absolutely stating that they were in the Bouleuterion A painting of the Thesmothetac by Protogenes. A painting of Kallippos by Olbiades. It has been ingeniously conjectured 98 that the picture of the Thesmothetae stood in the Thesmotheteion ; that of Kallippos, the successful general, in the Strategion. Kallippos fell in the same battle (279 15. c.) in which the young hero Cydias 99 first wore his shield. Of Olbiades nothing is known beyond this single mention. Of the picture of the Thesmothetae we can conjecture nothing. Protogenes, it is known by abundant testi- mony, was the master who pushed furthest the study of minute realism. He was self-taught, and struggled in early life against grinding poverty ; but he attained at last a technical perfection before which even his great contemporary Apelles stood amazed. 54 MYTHOLOGY OF ANCIENT ATHENS mv. A He painted some pictures for the Propylaea not mentioned by Pausanias. Going back to the Bouleuterion statues, nothing whatever can be made out about them. The statue of Demos was of course well in place, as also Apollo. To him, no doubt, as to Peitho, goddess of persuasion, in conjunction with the Great Mother, 100 they prayed who wished for grace to speak in the council-house. The Zeus Boulaios, being a xoanon, was no doubt an ancient foundation. Pausanias mentions no statue of Athene Boulaia, but very possibly one existed, as she was worshipped conjointly with Zeus. Antiphon 101 says "Within the Bouleuterion itself there is a shrine of Zeus Boulaios and Athene Boulaia, and the councillors when they enter pray to them." The priest of the two deities conjoined had an inscribed seat in the Dionysiac theatre. It may be also that with them Hestia, too, was worshipped, as it was customary to swear by Hestia Boulaia. Her altar also in the council-house was a place of refuge ; from it Theramenes, Xeno- phon 102 tells, was forcibly dragged. Very possibly the worship of Hestia Boulaia was due to the close association of Prytanes and Council. The name of the general Kallippos takes Pausanias off into a long digression on the Galati. From this he returns to make brief mention of the Tholos, 103 where the Prytanes, it appears, sacrificed and dined. Dinners of ceremony took place for the mosfe part in the more sacred and ancient Prytaneion, but the Tholos seems to have been a convenient adjunct to the Bouleuterion. Tholia is the name for a conical hat, but whether the hat took its name from the building or the building from the hat does not appear according to Harpocration, the latter. The circular shape of the Tholos is well known from the Tholos of Epidaurus, 104 the ground-plan of which is still clearly to be seen ; but its structure is probably much more intricate than that of the building at Athens. SECTION IV EPONYMI STATUES OF HARMODIOS AND ARISTOGEITON- TEXT, i. 5 ; 8, 2, 3, 4, 5. i. 5, i. AROVE the Bouleuterion are statues of the heroes from whom the Athenians later took the names of their tribes. Hero- dotus relates who it was who replaced the four tribes by ten, i. 5, 2. and altered their ancient names. Among the eponymous heroes, as the Athenians call them, are Hippothoon, son of Poseidon and of Alope the daughter of Kerkyon, and Antiochus, one of the sons of Herakles, born to Herakles by Meda the daughter of Phylas ; the third is Ajax, son of Telnmon ; and the fourth is an Athenian, Leos, who is said to have sacrificed his daughters for the common safety, in compliance with the oracle of the god. Another of the eponymous heroes is Krechtheus, who defeated the Eleusinians in battle and slew their leader Immarados, the son of Eumolpos. .Kgeus is another ; and Oeneus, the bastard son of I'anclion ; and Aca- i. 5, 3. mas, one of Theseus's sons. Cecrops and Pandion, too, I saw among the statues of the Eponymi, but which they are who are thus honoured I do not know. (The first Cecrops was the king who married the daughter of Actaeus ; tand later there was a Cecrops who migrated to Euboea, and was son of Erechtheus, grandson of Pandion, and great-grandson of Erichthonios. There were also two king Pandions one, son of Erichthonios ; and the other, son of the second Ce- crops. This last Pandion was driven out of his kingdom by the Metionidae, and his children accompanied him in his flight to Megara ; he had married the daughter of Pylas, king of Megara. It is said that Pandion himself fell ill there and died, and his tomb is in the Megarian territory near the sea, i. 5, 4- on a high rock called the Rock of Athene Aithuia. But his sons drove out the Metionidae and recovered their country, and the eldest of them, /Kgeus, ruled over the Athenians. 56 MYTHOLOGY AND MONUMENTS mv. A Now Pandion's daughters grew up to no happy fate, nor did they leave sons to avenge him. And yet, for the sake of ex- tending his power, he had allied himself in marriage with the king of Thrace. But there is no means whereby a man may avoid the fate appointed by God. The story is that Tereus, who had married Procne, outraged Philomela, a deed abhor- rent to the customs of the Greeks, and having also mutilated the maiden, drove the women to take justice upon him. There is another statue of Pandion, on the Acropolis, which is worth seeing.) i. 5, 5. These are the original Athenian eponymous heroes. In later times tribes were named after Attalos of Mysia and Ptolemy of Egypt, and in my own day, after the Emperor Hadrian, a man pre-eminently distinguished for his piety and for the great benefits which he conferred upon the various nations under his rule. He never engaged voluntarily in any war, but he subdued the Hebrews of the country beyond Syria when they rebelled against him. Of the sanctuaries of the gods that he built entirely, and of those that he adorned with offer- ings and sacred furniture, as well as of the gifts he bestowed upon the cities of Greece and such of the barbarian kings as required them, there is a complete list at Athens in the sanctuary dedicated to all the gods. Digression about Atlalos and Ptolemy. i. 8, 2. After the statues of eponymous heroes are images of gods, Amphiaraos, and Eirene carrying the child Ploutos. There are also bronze statues of Lycurgus, son of Lycophron ; and Callias, who, according to the version prevalent at Athens, negotiated the peace between the Greeks and Artaxerxes, son of Xerxes. There is also Demosthenes, whom the Athenians drove into exile at Calauria, the island lying off Troezene. He returned subsequently, but was again banished after the defeat i. 8, 3. at Lamia. When Demosthenes fled the second time, he again passed over to Calauria, and there took poison and died. He was the only Greek exile whom Archias did not recover and surrender to Antipater and the Macedonians. This Archins, who was a Thurian, was guilty of a most abominable deed. lie gave up to Antipater's vengeance all the Greeks who had fol- lowed an anti-Macedonian policy before the disaster of the Greeks in Thessaly. This, then, was the end of Demosthenes' extraordinary patriotism. The saying seems to me to be true, that no man who has given himself up to politics and trusted in the people ever comes to a fair end. i. 8, 4. Near the statue of Demosthenes is the sanctuary of Ares, where are two statues of Aphrodite, an Ares by Alcamenes, and an Athena by a Parian sculptor called Lokros. There SEC. iv OF ANCIENT ATHENS 57 is also a statue of Enyo, made by the sons of Praxiteles. Round the temple are Herakles, Theseus, and Apollo binding his hair with a fillet, as well as statues of tCalades, who is said to have made laws for the Athenians, and Pindar. Pindar received other gifts from the Athenians as well as this statue in return for his having praised them in one of his songs, i. 8, 5. Not far off are Harmodios and Aristogeiton, the slayers of Ilipparchos. The cause and manner of their deed have been related by others. These statues are by Kritios ; the older ones were made by An tenor. Xerxes carried them away as spoil among other things when he captured Athens after its abandonment by the Athenians, and subsequently Antiochus sent them back to Athens. COMMENTARY ON i. 5 ; 8, 2, 3, 4, 5. Leaving the .Metroon and its dependencies, Pausanias goes on somewhat higher (dfiore/Ko), and comes to a series of monuments, for the most part votive. These are s The statues of the Eponymi. Amphiaraos. Eirene with Ploutos. Lycurgus and Callias. Demosthenes. Temple of Ares, with statues in and round. Calades and Pindar. Harmodios and Aristogeiton. The first of these the Eponymi, or heroes who gave their names to Attic tribes stood in a conspicuous place, and they seem to have been used as a convenient point for setting up public notices to attract attention in the agora. According to an ordinance of Solon's, laws to be proposed before the assembly had to be posted up at the statues of the Eponymi. 105 There, too, were written the names of those drawn for military service. The conscripts seem to have had no more individual warning at least, if we may trust Aristophanes. 100 Of a victim of the war lie says "One poor wretch had brought no victuals, for he knew not he must go Till he on Pandion's statue spied the list and knew 'twas so." To have a statue set up near the Eponymi was an honour naturally reserved for the greatest public benefactors. lo7 Lucian 10S makes Solon say to the Scythian stranger that the man who can M YTHOL OGY AND MONUMENTS suggest any alteration in Athenian law for the better shall be written up as a benefactor, and have a bronze statue near the Eponymi or in the Acropolis near the Athene, places most sacred and honourable. The passage in Herodotus 109 Pausanias refers to is as follows : " Cleisthenes, finding himself the weaker, called to his aid the common people. Hereupon, instead of the four tribes among which the Athenians had been divided hitherto, Cleisthenes made ten tribes and parcelled out the Athenians among them. He likewise changed the names of the tribes ; for whereas they had till now been called after Geleon, ^Egicores, Argades, and Hoples, the four sons of Ion, Cleisthenes set these names aside and called his tribes after certain other heroes, all of whom were native except Ajax. Ajax was associated because, although a foreigner, he was neighbour and ally of Athens." The old four tribes then were called after Geleon. ,, ,, Hoples. ,, ,, ^igicores. Argades. Geleontes, Hopletes, yEgicoreis, Argadeis, The new called after Erechtheus. /Egeus. ,, ,, Pandion. Leos. ,, ,, Acamas. ,, ,, Oeneus. ,, Cecrops. ,, Hippothoon. Ajax. ,, ,, Antiochos. Later (305 B.C.^ were added Ptolemy (called at first Antigonias and De- metrias) : Attalos : and in the times of Pausanias himself Hadrian. Pausanias goes off, at this point, into a long digression on the history of Ptolemy and Attalos. Nothing, perhaps, shows with such melancholy distinctness the loss of national feeling among the Erechtheis, yEgeis, Pandionis, Leontis, Acamantis, Oeneis, Cecropis, Hippothoontis, /Eantis, Antiochis, These were the original ten. SEC. iv OF ANCIENT ATHENS 59 Athenians as the addition of these new tribes called after foreign potentates and placed side by side with the old indi- genous heroes. Whether there were actually statues set up of Ptolemy, Attalos, and Hadrian, Pausanias does not say, but it seems probable. The object and results of the reform of Cleisthenes cannot be fully discussed here. The account Herodotus gives is obviously from the aristocratic point of view. He saw in the creation of the ten tribes only a selfish pandering to the mob. It is enough to note here that the movement was essentially a popular one, aimed at the breaking down of obsolete but still obstructive class barriers, and that therefore the statues of the eponymous heroes stand with special appropriateness in the agora, the stronghold of the people. Many tesserae or tokens of the several tribes have been found. 110 The tessera of Hippothdon is stamped with a mare suckling a child. Usually the monograph of the tribe is in- scribed e.g., " Pand." for " Pandionis." The eponymous heroes are given above in their conventional order of precedence, which Pausanias does not observe. The names of Erechtheus, ygeus, Pandion, Acamas, Oeneus, Cecrops, Hippothoon, and Leos belong, as has been seen, to Attic legends, and they seem fitly in place, lending their names to their historical descendants. It remains to speak here only of the ^Eginetan hero Ajax. whose reputed genealogy is given below. Zeus = Aigina I Aiakos Thetis = Peleus Telamon Achilles Tekmessa = Aias (Ajax) Teukros Philaios Eurysakes Aja.r, Herodotus says, was included because, though a foreigner, he was an ally. In the story of the madness of Ajax, Athene is his 60 MYTHOLOGY AND MONUMENTS niv. A bitter foe ; she appears, however, not as a goddess of Athens, but as patron of the rival and enemy of Ajax, Odysseus. Ajax was the tute- lary hero of Salamis, but as early as the Catalogue of the Ships^ possibly interpolated by Solon, his warriors are represented as drawn up next to the heroes of Athens. Alcibiades dated the founda- tion of his family from Eurysakes, son of Ajax. Herodotus says of Miltiades " He belonged to a family which was wont to contend in the four-horse chariot races, and traced its descent from yEacus and ^Egina, but which from the time of Philaios, the son of Ajax, who was the first Athenian citizen of the house, had been naturalised at Athens." By the time of the Ajax of Sophocles the two States were as one. Tecmessa greets the Salaminian sailors as "mariners of Ajax, sons of the race that springs from the earth-born Erechtheidae ; " and when these same Salaminians chant their longing to be done with the weary war, the home they long for is the sacred city of Erechtheus " O to be wafted where the wooded sea -cape stands upon the laving sea ; O to pass beneath Sunium's level summit, that so we might greet sacred Athens." The story of Solon and Salamis is almost too well known to bear quotation ; Plutarch tells it in full. 113 Of Solon's elegy, Salamis, we have only eight lines left us. He braved death to recite this elegy, and stir the heart of Athens " to fight for ^Egina, the lovely island, and thrust away harsh shame." The most important part of the story, equally important whether it be fact or fable, is the account of the reasons given when the Spartan arbitration is appointed for handing over Salamis to Athens rather than to Megara. "Solon made it appear to the judges," Plutarch 114 says, " that Philaios and Eurysakes, sons of Ajax, being ad- mitted by the Athenians to the freedom of their city, gave up the island to them and removed, the one to Brauron, and the other to Melite in Attica ; likewise that the tribe of the Philaidai, of which Peisistratos was, had its name from that Philaios." Argu- ments were also used, it seems, on both sides, drawn from the Salaminian method of burying the dead. Pausanias confirms Plutarch ; u -> when he comes later to speak of the island of Salamis, he says (i. 35, 2) " Philaios, the son of Eurysakes, grandson of Ajax, became an Athenian and handed it over to Athens. . . . And divine honours are to this day paid by the Athenians to Ajax and Eurysakes : this last also has an altar at Athens." Solon came off victorious, and from that day on, Salamis was one State with Athens till (318 K.c.) it fell into the hands of the Macedonians. Through all the glorious period of Greek SEC. iv OF ANCIENT ATHENS 61 independence Athens and ^Egina fought side by side. At the great sea fight of Salamis the ^ginetans even outdid the Athenians in valour, and won the dpurrfia of the day. Again and again Pindar, 110 in celebrating the glory of some /Eginetan victor, goes back to the heroic splendours of the island. The Aiakidai are " warrior heroes sprung from Kronos and Zeus, and from the golden Nereids." " Wide avenues are there on every side for chroniclers to draw nigh to do honour unto this isle ; for supreme occasion have the children of Aiakos given them by the showing forth of mighty feats." " The city of the spear-clashing sons of Aiakos is exceeding fain to cherish a spirit apt for the strife of the games." "The chosen among the heroes that dwelt around Aiakos were fain of their own will to submit them unto his sovereignty both whoso in rocky islands were leaders of the host and at Sparta, the children of Pelops." "Not far from the Graces' ken falleth the lot of this righteous island-common- wealth that hath attained unto the glorious deeds of the sons of Aiakos. From the beginning is her fame perfect, for she is sung as the nurse of heroes foremost in many games and in violent fights, and in her mortal men also is she pre- eminent." Her glory was not less in commerce than in war. "Aigina, where Saviour Themis, who sitteth in judgment by Zeus the stranger's succour, is honoured more than any else- where among men. . . . Some ordinance of immortals hath given this sea-defended land to be to strangers out of every clime a pillar built of God." It will not be forgotten that Evagoras of Salamis, in Cyprus, whose statue stood before the porch of Zeus Eleutherios, was proud to claim descent from Aiakos. On the only coins before Roman days that we possess of Salamis (350-318 B.C.) her heroic glory is not forgotten. On the reverse is the shield of Eurysakes, 117 the broad-shield which the father gave to his son before he sought death by the seashore : " Take thou, my son, the broad-shield from which thou hast thy name, hold it and wield it by the well-wrought armlet, that sevenfold spear-proof targe." After the group of the eponymous heroes came five statues, as enumerated above. From the way in which Pausanias links them together, we may suppose they were all near each other, and none far from the Eponymi. First is Amphiaraos. He comes of the stock of the Aiolidai, and his whole legend belongs rather to Theban than Attic cycles. 62 MYTHOLOGY AND MONUMENTS Kretheus = Tyro Amythaon Bias = Pero Melampos Talaos | | Antiphatcs Mantias Adrastos Eriphyle Oikles Polykleides Kleito Amphiaraos Polyneikes Tydeus Theoklymenos I I Alkmaion Amphilochos It has, however, constantly to be remembered that though the Athenians were proud of their own autochthonic origin, they were essentially hospitable to the stranger god and hero. One of their favourite devices for incorporating a foreign hero was this. The hero falls out with his own people ; they refuse to entertain him during life, to bury him after death. He makes appeal to the large-hearted people of Theseus, and is received with all honour. The grave of CEdipus was at Colonos, and in the Athenian terri- tory of Oropos was a temple to Amphiaraos. The district of Oropos belonged originally, Pausanias says, to Boeotia, but the Athenians constantly fought for it, and it was at last handed over to them by Philip. Long before these days, however, Theban legends had found a home at Athens. The original Thebais is lost to us ; but Sophocles in the Oedipus trilogy, and ^schylus in the Seven against Thebes, had gone to Thebes for the story of their plot. It is to ^ischylus we have mainly to look for the picture of the prophet king. Mythology has no more tragic figure than Amphiaraos. He came of the mantic stock of Amythaon. "Apollo loved him with all manner of love." 118 He was kinsman to Melampos, the seer who heard the woodworms talking on the roof; kinsman, too, to Theoklymenos, who in the halls of Odysseus saw a sight hidden from other men's sight blood dripping from the walls and the " heads and the faces and the knees of the suitors shrouded in SEC. iv OF ANCIENT ATHENS 63 night." And this man, with the blood of soothsayers in his veins, dowered with the gift of second sight, was yet compelled to go with Adrastos, his kinsman, against Thebes, knowing that Fate was against him. Moreover, it is this man, sure and upright above the rest, who alone carries no blazon upon his shield, for his desire is to be, not to seem to be. 119 " So spake the prophet, bearing a shield of plain brass without a blazon upon it, to the careless ones around, for his desire is not to seem the bravest, but to be, and he reaps in thought the deep furrow whence grows the fruit of good counsel. 'Twere well to send him an adversary sure and brave, worthy fear is he who worships." And again, 110 " Sometimes in a city a righteous one, joined with others cruel to man and forgetful of god, being found contrary to nature in the same web, dies by the undistinguishing blow of the divine spear. So shall it be with the prophet, the son of Oikles, a true, righteous, brave, pious man, a mighty interpreter of heaven, confounded with wicked men whose lips defy their conscience. They are bound on that journey whence 'tis an overlong way back, and he, when Zeus takes them, shall also be dragged down." Amphiaraos knows he must die, but he believes that the gods whom he serves will save him from dishonour and give him the guerdon of an honour- able burial. " Howsoever," he says, " I at last shall fatten the soil of this land shall have burial as a prophet upon her borders, though her foe. Let us fight, and the rites of death I shall not lose. So spake the prophet, wisest of warriors, bravest of seers." And in truth the gods were jealous for their servant's honour. When (in the later version of the story) 1 - 1 Adrastos buries his dead com- rades, he needs to pronounce no eulogy over the body of Am- phiaraos, for the gods themselves have called him blessed, for " they caught him away and hid him in the deep recesses of the earth." Apollodorus 1 -- tells this form of the story in detail. Am- phiaraos was flying from the spear of Periklymenos, and that he might not be dishonoured by a wound in the back the earth opened and swallowed up him and his four-horse chariot and his charioteer Baton, and the gods made him immortal. The place was called Harma /.?., the chariot. 1 - 3 "On the road from Potniae to Thebes, on the right-hand side as you go, there is a small enclosure with pillars met, where it was fabled that the earth opened for Amphiaraos ; and men say to this day that neither do birds perch upon the pillars, nor do animals, whether they are tame or wild, feed there on the grass." To discuss in detail the cult of Amphiaraos would lead too 64 MYTHOLOGY AND MONUMENTS mv. A far. But his strange altar at Oropos cannot be passed by. " The Oropians," Pausanias says, " first made him a god, and since then all the Greeks have held him to be divine." At Oropos he had a temple and a statue of white stone, and an altar with five divisions one to Herakles, Zeus, and Paeonian Apollo ; another to heroes and the wives of heroes ; a third to Hestia and Hermes and Amphiaraos and the sons of Amphilochos, only excepting Alkmaion, because of the murder of Eriphyle ; a fourth to Aphro- dite and Panakeia and laso and Hygieia and Paeonian Athene ; and the fifth to the Nymphs and Pan and the rivers Acheloos and Cephisus. It is easy to see that the worship of Amphiaraos was akin to that of Asklepios ; Panakeia, laso, Hygieia, are his three daughters. In his precinct at Athens was an altar to an Aphrodite and the Nymphs. They are both god-heroes, primarily of oracular and after of healing power ; they send dreams and through dreams counsel for healing. There was a fountain at Oropos, but not for lustration or the washing of hands ; into it only men who were healed of diseases dropped the coins with which they paid the god from their infected hands. Oracular sayings by Amphiaraos were preserved in the days of Pausanias, and were of marvellous potency on the popular mind. Whoever consulted Amphiaraos must first purify himself by sacrifice, both to the god himself and all those to whom the altar was sacred. Then these things done, he slays a ram, wraps himself in its skin, and goes to sleep, awaiting divine guidance in a dream. We seem to be in the Asklepieion at Athens. The site of this Amphiareion has been in part excavated ; the sites of the Doric temple and the great theatre are known. Most important for mythology is a relief found at Oropos showing us the art-type of Amphiaraos. He is, as had been suspected, the double of Asklepios ; he rests upon a shaft round which is twined a serpent. Beside him Hygieia is seated on a rock. Other art monuments that represent Amphiaraos need only briefly be noted. A small series of vase-paintings of great interest depict his starting for Thebes and his parting from the treacherous Eriphyle ; Roman sarcophagi show him swallowed by the earth ; but neither of these classes would be in place here. Standing near the eponymous heroes, he comes before us, not as the dream oracle-god of the lower world, but rather as the hero -saint, the typically upright man. When the lines of yschylus m were recited in the theatre, all men turned to look at the just Aristides, for they saw in Amphiaraos the prototype of SEC. iv OF ANCIENT ATHENS 65 the steadfast citizen, the man whom popular praise might not flutter, nor blame disconcert. 125 Among the ghosts of so many vanished statues it is a relief to come at last to one of which we can reconstruct the semblance with tolerable certainty. This is the more fortunate, as the Eirene holding Ploutos seems to have been a work of art of some note in antiquity. In his account of Thebes Pausanias 126 again incidentally mentions it. He saw there a statue of Fortune (Tyche) carrying Wealth (Ploutos), and he remarks " It was a clever idea that these artists had, to put Wealth into the hands of Fortune, as though she were its nurse and mother ; and it was no less clever of Kephisodotos, when he made for the Athenians the statue of Eirene holding Ploutos." The name Kephisodotos carries us to the transition time between Pheidias and Praxiteles. It is interesting to know that this Kephisodotos, enamoured, it would seem, of the motive of nurse and child, also made a group of Hermes holding Dionysos 127 the prototype, no doubt, of the more famous " Hermes " of Olympia. Of his style tradition tells us nothing ; it may, perhaps, safely be concluded that he had a leaning towards abstract impersonations, for he is known to have made a statue of the city Megalopolis, part of a group of Zeus seated with an attendant city on either hand. It is probable that so late as 1672 the actual group seen by Pausanias was still in existence. An interesting letter, bearing the date October 8th of this year, from a Jesuit called Jacques Paul Babin to the Abbe" Pecoil at Lyon, contains, in the course of a general description of the antiquities of Athens, the following passage : " Les Francs n'ont a Athenes que la chapelle des pores Capucins comme auparavant ils n'avoient que celle des peres Jesuites, disent que des massons, ayant trouve sous terre parmi les ruines de cette ancienne eglise Grecque, une statue cle marbre qui representoit la sainte vierge tenant son fils entre les bras, L'ArcheVeque defunt, aussitot qu'il la vist, la mit en pieces de peur que les Latins n'eussent cet argument contre les Grecs et ne leur objectassent que St. Denys honoroit les images en bosse, puisqu'on en avoit trouve une dans les ruines de sa maison qui joint cette eglise." There seems a high degree of probability, though obviously no certain proof, that the image of the " Virgin and child " was in reality Eirene and Ploutos. The pious priest says, in the opening words of his letter, "j'espere que la lecture de F 66 MYTHOLOGY AND MONUMENTS FIG. 12. EIRENE AND PLOUTOS (GLYPTOTHEK, MUNICH). cette relation ne vous sera pas de'sagreable, et que votre et votre curiosite y trouveront quelque satisfaction." If the SEC. iv OF ANCIENT A THENS 67 identification be correct, the first half of the wish has certainly been fulfilled for us at the expense of the latter. But, for all the pious zeal of the bishop, the group in another form was fated to survive. In a statue now standing in the Glyptothek at Munich (Catalogue, 90), and once belonging to the Villa Albani, Prof. Brunn has recognised the same motive. It represents (fig. 12) a tall stately woman draped in long chiton with diplois. On her left arm she holds a child. The head of the child is antique, but does not belong to the body. Both arms of the woman figure are wrongly restored. As to the right restoration, happily, there is no doubt. Luckily for our knowledge of several Athenian statues, about the time of Hadrian the city of Athens was allowed to coin her own autonomous bronze money, and her die-sinkers had the happy idea of reproducing groups sculptured by famous artists. Among these coins is one representing a woman figure standing just in the pose of the Munich statue, and holding a child on her left arm (fig. 13). Her right arm rests on a long sceptre ; and the child, instead of the meaningless, restored vase, holds the symbol of Ploutos, the cornucopia. It can scarcely be doubted that the coin is a repro- duction of the group of Kephisodotos, and that the Munich statue may safely be restored from it. The Munich statue is of Attic marble, and 1 iU J J U 4.U U FIG. 13.- -COIN : so also was the group destroyed by the arcn- . v * . ' EIRENE AND PLOUTOS. bishop. Specialists, however, decide that the Munich group bears the stamp of marble work copied from bronze. This is most clearly seen in the lower part of the drapery, where there is a sharpness and hardness of definition contrary to marble technique. Very probably the original work of Kephisodotos was in bronze. It may have perished, and, as often happened, have been replaced by a marble copy. Of this copy several replicas were probably made. In addition to the destroyed group and that at Munich, another undoubtedly existed. A fragment of it, the child only with a bit of the cornucopia (fig. 14), was found in the harbour at the Peiraeus and is now in the Central Museum at Athens (Cat., No. 66). If further proof were needed, the style of the Munich statue answers admirably to what would, a priori, be expected of Kephisodotos. It stands midway, as the sculptor did, between Pheidias and Praxiteles. The austere, upright pose of the body, the simple folds of the drapery disposed on the scheme that may be repeatedly seen in the maidens of the Parthenon frieze, 68 MYTHOLOGY AND MONUMENTS nay more, to come to close detail, the selvage finish of the cloth, are of the date of Pheidias ; the bending head, softened expres- sion of the face, and the tender motive of the group point on towards Praxiteles. For the actual date of the statue we are left to conjecture. The lifetime of Kephisodotos falls in the early half of the fourth century. His sister was Phocion's first wife. He made, it will be remem- bered, a statue of Megalo- polis, probably soon after the founding of the city in 366 B.C. There is evidence that the cult of Eirene was regularly organised, or at least re- organised, about 375 B.C., after the battle of Leukas. Cornelius Nepos, 128 in his Life of Timotheos, says " So great was the joy felt by the Athenians at this victory, that they then first made public altars to Peace and ordained a feast for the goddess." But Plutarch, 129 in his Life of Czmon, says that an altar was set up to Peace by the Athenians on account of the treaty brought about by Callias. Whatever may have been the date of the altar, it seems prob- able that the group by Kephisodotos was set up about 375 B.C. The conception of Eirene was, of course, no new one. As early as Hesiod 13 she appears as one of the Hours, sister of Law and Justice (Eunomia and Dike), daughter of Zeus and Themis. Bacchylides, 131 because the grievous memory of the Persian War was still fresh, chanted a paean to the goddess : - FIG. 14. FRAGMENT OF CHILD : PLOUTOS (CENTRAL MUSEUM, ATHENS). " Also Peace has gifts for men, Wealth and song aflower again, SEC. iv OF ANCIENT ATHENS 69 fraedal altars and divine, Yellow-lit for service shine, Fat with fleecy sheep and kine. There are the young men at their play Till night then fluting, dancing, disarray. But in the iron-bound shield laid by, Their webs the dusky spiders ply ; Tame with rust are sword and spear, Quieted the trumpet's cheer, Eyelids closed and lulled heart deep In gentle, unforbidden sleep. Street by street the city brims With lovers' feasts, and burns with lovers' hymns." But it was not until a struggle more disastrous the fatal, inglorious Peloponnesian war had wasted the best energies of Athens that in deed and truth she longed for the goddess. It is in the Acharnians and the Peace of Aristophanes 132 that the utterance of this longing breaks out the longing for " Peace, most holy, august, serene, O heaven-born queen, Peace ivith Wealth in her arms." The Peace was first played in 423 B.C., and through all the fooling and burlesque of comedy there is a strain of serious reality. The citizen is wearying of his galling armour and short rations. He longs to see again his countiy home, his figs and olives, to be rid of the smell of rancid oil and stale cheese and onions : " For I can't enjoy a battle, But I love to pass my days With my wine and boon companion Round the merry, merry blaze, When the logs are dry and seasoned And the fire is burning bright, And I roast the peas and chestnut In the embers all alight." He longs, too, for a little leisure that thing so dear to the Athenian the leisure of the rare, rainy day : " O there's nothing half so sweet as when the seed is in the ground, God a gracious rain is sending, and a neighbour saunters round." He longs to be human again, away from the machinery of conscrip- tion, able to bless his god for the fruits of the earth in due season. 70 MYTHOLOGY AND MONUMENTS niv. A Next come the bronze statues of Lycurgus and Callias. Lycurgus 133 was the contemporary of Demosthenes, and, like him, through a long politica 1 career adopted a consistent anti-Mace- donian policy. He came of the ancient, sacerdotal family of the Eteobutadae, among whom the name Lycurgus was hereditary. Five of the family are known to have borne it. The eponymous hero was Butes ; but in some respects Butes is but the double of the other mythical hero Lycurgus, step-brother of Butes and enemy of Dionysos. The mythology of Butes has already been noted, and that of Lycurgus will be touched on when the theatre of Dionysos is reached. In early life Lycurgus was a pupil of Plato, but politics soon took the place of philosophy. He deserved well of his country, not only for his foreign policy and his administration of finance, but also a merit Athens was ever ready to recognise for the care he took in the adornment of the city. He made and planted the gymnasium of the Lykeion, built the palaestra, and completed the Dionysiac theatre ; he completed the half-finished docks and arsenals ; he levelled and walled in the Panathenaic stadium ; he also presented to the State a number of gold and silver sacrificial vessels. When he was about to die, he desired, as has been seen, to be carried into the Metroon, there to render up his account of the public moneys, and the one accuser who rose up against him he put to silence. His perfect probity and large beneficence seem to have met with full, if somewhat tardy, recognition. It was not till about seventeen years after his death (in the archonship of Anaxikrates, 307 B.C.) that a decree was moved by Stratokles commemorating his benefactions and ordain- ing that a statue of bronze should be set up to him in the Kera- meikos, and that his eldest surviving descendant should have public maintenance in the Prytaneion. All these particulars we draw from the Life of Lycurgus by the pseudo-Plutarch. He mentions the decree of Stratokles, and two fragments of an inscription have been found which form parts, there is no doubt, of the decree to which he refers, and which closely confirm his account. The inscriptions are given in fac- simile, and beneath them the proposed restoration. 134 Fragment I. was found at Athens in 1860, near the Church of the Panagia Pyrgrotissa, north-west of the Kerameikos ; the second, found in 1862, was, according to the purchaser, found to the south-east of the Dionysiac theatre. It is quite possible that there were several copies. The diphthongs ei and ov (first used in 403 B.C.) agree with the date of Anaxikrates. SEC. IV OF ANCIENT A THENS DECREE OF STRATOKLES O E&OlEN/T.A/A,HM-a | * T P A T I 5 I i E E E f < Y P r O A A N A P -0 Y r / \ \lPP ONEY NJ o 1 ) A / A N , \ A T / t N \ \ 1 \ N INSCRIPTION FRAGMENT RESTORATION iraXaiov TTJ\V 7r [7r]ap[a rwi'] e[ai']rou TOV 8i)[j.]ov ei*vo[t " In the archonship of Anaxikrates, it was resolved by the people, on the proposal of Stratokles, son of Euthydemos, of the deme of Diomeia, as follows : Inasmuch as Lycurgus, son of Lycophron, of the Butadae, having inherited from his ancestors a natural love for the people of Athens " . MYTHOLOGY AND MONUMENTS 1 M H /^A b r-j H N T H N p X Y C H Z A Y T E M H I E ISI r M N A E K N E 1 H P r A A r Y M IV A I i N T A i I & E P O A A A 1 I N K A I t e -A. N * / t T A N T J\ INJ A A E A N T H N A E 1 A N K P E * A M E N -a 1 l 1 A A 1 A t P r-l N A * k A 1 T H 1 T A I T o Y B 1 Y P A P E 1 N A i K A i A Y T I n E P E J A 1 T H N a M H I Y N X J\ P H / J\ A W E N T 1 t A O Y P r yx 1 T H N A P] t P o A A A K 1^. " ^ NSCR1PTION FRAGMENT II. RESTORATION eiTHrKevdcras KpetTTovaJxT/s VTrap^ovu-ifi aire- TrayyeAros TOVS veajfroiKOfs] fgMiKo86/j.r)(Tev rrjv 8e LT(av 'AAe C. iv OF ANCIENT ATHENS 73 dvBp(at QyjfBwv e7rtKpaT7ycra]nrt Kat Tracrav TTjV 'Acriav K at dAAa 8f r>Js OIKOV/XCV^S A 1 ]^ 7 / Ka.Ta0opov K at aVe^eAtyKTOV avrov VTre/aJrTys Trur/nSos /cat rrjs TO> v 'EAA?yi'tov aTrai/Taw cram/ptas] 8ta Travros TOV ^a>v /cat iirfp TOV rrjv vrdAiv ejAev^epav ?vai Kat avr- 6vofj.ov Trcunyi p.r}\avfji aywvt]^d/ivos' Sicnrep f^ainj- (ravros awov 'AAf^avSpou 6 6]ry^os aTreyvw /in) cri'i'XWp crat /AiySe Aoyov TTO if 10-60.1 TT)S] t^atT?/crws a /AV TOIS a AAois Tracriv (rweiSws wv /xerjeo-^ei' AvKOVpywt TI)V a?r oAoyiav StKaiav ovcrav Kat 8]ovs cv$w[a]s 7roAAaKt[s T wv TreTToAtTeiyxevwv re Kat TWV] 8twtK^/A [rwv ev l e/oat Kat 8^/iOKpaTov/xevr/t T?J] t TroAet "improved the existing adornments of the city and voluntarily finished the property-chamber and perfected the theatre of Dionysos, and finished the Panathenaic stadion and the gymnasium opposite the Lykeion, and added many other adornments to the whole city ; and, when the Hellenes were encompassed with great fears and dangers upon the conquest of Thebes by Alexander and his sub- jugation of all Asia and other parts of the world, continued to oppose him in the interests of the people, serving all his life long incorruptibly and without reproach the cause of his country and the welfare of the Hellenes in general, and striving his utmost to secure the freedom and independence of the city (for which reason, when Alexander demanded his person, the people resolved not to consent nor to entertain the demand, feeling that Lycurgus could make as proper a defence as the rest for actions in which all had taken part), and thus gave, under the free and popular constitution of the State, repeated opportunities of testing his policy and administration. . . ." The restoration is not of course certain in the details, and in the latter part particularly there is doubt as to the exact wording and relation of the clauses ; but the above will represent the general sense, as well as the singularly verbose and invertebrate style which is characteristic of Greek inscriptions later than the great age. The statue of Callias goes back to earlier days. He was the reputed author of the so-called Peace of Citnon, concluded 445 B.C. Demosthenes speaks of him as negotiating " the peace that was in every man's mouth." At the time of its arrangement it 74 MYTHOLOGY AND MONUMENTS DIV. A seems to have been regarded rather as a matter of necessity, and not in any way glorious. Callias, we know, narrowly escaped sentence of death, and was condemned to pay a fine. Thucy- dides passes it over in complete silence, and even Herodotus, whose business it was to narrate in detail matters connected with Persia, only mentions it incidentally. Some sixty years later, however, when Sparta had concluded her treaty, the Athenian orators seem to have persuaded themselves that by the treaty of Callias Athens had won for herself great prestige and imposed hard conditions on the great king. It would probably be about this time that the statue was set up, and it may be that with intent it was put near the image of the Peace goddess. Callias, as will be seen, dedicated a statue of Aphrodite on the Acropolis. The statue of Demosthenes, as it is mentioned separately, stood, in all probability, a little apart. To the melancholy reflections of Pausanias may be added the sad commentary of Plutarch's nar- rative. 130 The spirit of the great orator and politician was broken at the last. When from his voluntary exile in Troezene he looked towards Attica, "tears fell from his eyes." In the words he spoke there was nothing of that firm reason, nothing of the bold things he had done and said in public life. As he was leaving Athens it is said he upraised his hands to the Acropolis and cried, " Oh, mistress Athene, who dwellest in the citadel, why dost thou so delight in three such strange monsters, thy owl, thy dragon, and thy people ?" And when young men came to him for counsel, he bade them keep aloof from public affairs, saying, " If I had been shown two roads at the first, the one leading to the bema and the assembly, and the other to perdition, and I could have fore- seen the evils that beset politics the fears, and envyings, and slanders, and contentions I would have chosen the one that led me straight to death." He contrived after what fashion it was disputed to take poison, and so avoided falling into the hands of Archias, sent to take him prisoner again. He died within the sanctuary of Poseidon, where he had taken refuge, on the i6th day of Pyanepsion the most mournful day of the Thesmophoria, when the women keep their fast in the temple of the goddess. " Not long after," Plutarch adds (as a matter of fact it was forty years), " the people of Athens paid him due honour, and set up a bronze statue, and voted to the eldest of his descendants public maintenance in the Prytaneion." On the pedestal of the statue was inscribed the famous epigram SEC. iv OF ANCIENT ATHENS 75 " Had but thy power, Demosthenes, been equal to thy will, Vain had been Macedonian arms, and Greeks were freemen still." an inscription sad enough when it is remembered that, according to tradition, the orator himself wrote it the last thing before his death. Of the sanctuary of Poseidon in Calauria (Poros) the founda- tions still remain, at a distance of about three-quarters of an hour from the modern town of Poros. A terra-cotta relief now in the library of the Dublin University represents Demosthenes at Calauria. Upon the altar on which he sits is inscribed AT^/ZO- o-#ev?ys eVi^Sw/xtos " Demosthenes (as suppliant) on the altar." The terra-cotta is unfortunately now known to be a forgery. From the pseudo-Plutarch it is known that the statue set up in honour of the orator was by Polyeuctes, and, further, that it stood near the " perischoinisma " and the altar of the Twelve Gods. What the "perischoinisma" or "place surrounded by a rope" precisely was, is not known. It was customary on many occasions to surround sacred persons or places with a rope (7re/Hcrxou'teiv), but this must have been some permanent enclosure. The altar of the Twelve Gods presumably stood somewhere in front of the ancient city gate, as it served as a milestone, and from the city gate distances would naturally be calculated. From an anecdote recorded by Plutarch himself, it seems that Demosthenes was represented standing with his hands folded to- gether. A soldier hid what money he had in the hands of the statue, and the money got further hid by some leaves from a plane tree that stood near. Whether the leaves were put there by the soldier, or whether they dropped by chance from the tree, Plutarch does not know. As to the general art-type of Demosthenes there is no doubt. 1;1 Between the numerous busts and statues of him remaining there is a general analogy which presupposes some measure of por- traiture. The lined careworn brow, and the anxious compressed expression of the stammering mouth, are common to all Demos- thenes statues. From the statue of Demosthenes Pausanias passes straight on to the temple of Ares. There can be no reasonable doubt that the temple stood somewhere close to the western slope of the Areopagus : more it is impossible to say. The statues seen in or immediately near to the temple were Two images of Aphrodite. Ares, by Alcamenes. 76 MYTHOLOGY AND MONUMENTS niv. A Athene, by Lokros. Enyo, by the sons of Praxiteles. Athene, as goddess of war, needs no explanation by the side of Ares and his wife Aphrodite. Enyo is a somewhat less familiar figure. Her personality is misty and abstracted. She is by turns mother, sister, nurse, attribute, of Ares in fact, she is the personi- fication of war. When in the Iliad VA1 Ares leads on the hosts of the Trojans, with him is "dread Enyo, she bringing ruthless turmoil of war." She is like the impersonations that figure on the aegis of Athene, " panic and strife and horrible onslaught." She and Athene are, Pausanias 13S says elsewhere, referring to this passage of Homer, " supreme in war." With the sensational writers of later times, Philostratos and Quintus Smyrnaeus, 1:!9 her figure grows in horror. She revels in the blood-soaked ground of the battle- field " Reeking with blood and sweat, she rages among the com- batants." That she had a regular cult in Athens is known from an inscription in which a certain archon is described as " priest of Ares Enyalios and Enyo and Zeus Geleon." H0 The titles Enyalios and Enyos show clearly that Enyo is the personification of an attribute, not at first a distinct personality. It is by Ares Enyos and Terror that the seven warriors take their oath when they set out against Thebes. This personification of attributes was one of the most fertile sources of mythological increase. The city of Comana in Pontus was famous for its worship of Enyo. On coins of the regal period U1 her bust appears surrounded by rays, and the high priest of her temple ranked next to the King of Pontus. Of the statues in front of the temple we know absolutely nothing. The works of Alcamenes abounded at Athens. What is known of his style will be best noted in connection with the famous Aphrodite in the Gardens. Lokros is wholly unknown but for this notice. The two sons of Praxiteles were called Kephiso- dotos and Timarchos. Other works by them are attested by inscriptions. It may be conjectured that they carried on the traditions of their great father. One of them (Kephisodotos) was, it is known, famous for his sensational realism. 142 In the statue of Enyo he would have a subject to his taste. Pausanias leaves his main description of the Areopagus till after his visit to the Acropolis, and till then must be reserved all general considerations as to the worship of Ares. " Round the temple," Pausanias says, there were two groups of statues a god and two heroes, and also the statues of two mortals SEC. iv OI< ANCIENT ATHENS 77 Herakles. Calades. Theseus. Pindar. Apollo. There seems no special connection between these statues and the temple of Ares. The main fact to be noted is that they stood within the agora i.e., in a place deemed specially honour- able. Apollo binding his brow with the fillet may have stood somewhat in the pose of the famous Diadoumenos, but we have no clue to the statue's date. As Pausanias leaves us entirely in ignorance of the attitude and style of the statues of Herakles and Theseus, we cannot identify them with any of the types of these heroes that appear on Athenian coins. (For the question of Calades, see Appendix.) Respecting the statue of Pindar, a passage in the pseudo-/Eschines 143 says that it was of bronze, and repre- sented the poet draped, and in a sitting posture with a lyre in his hands, and on his knee an open book. " Not far " from the temple of Ares, Pausanias says, are the statues of the great tyrannicides, Harmodios and Aristogeiton. To this vague information we may add two other passages. First as it will be remembered, the statues stood " about opposite " the Metrdon, and, as Arrian 144 goes on to say, " not far from the altar of the Eudanemoi." He explains that whoever has been initiated to the two goddesses in Eleusis knows the altar of the Eudanemoi. From this it may, as has been noted, be safely concluded that the altar in question was not far from the Eleusinion, but as we are not sure where the Eleusinion was, this does not advance us much. Secondly, a lexicographer 145 gives an almost equally tanta- lising notice. Explaining the word "orchestra" he says " It is a conspicuous place intended for public festivals, where the statues of Harmodios and Aristogeiton are." Of the position of this orchestra we know nothing. It was no doubt a circular dancing place in use possibly long before the orchestra of the Dionysiac theatre was made. There was room, it seems, near it for a wooden scaffolding of seats for spectators, and we hear of a poplar tree from which the dancers in the orchestra 146 could be seen over the heads of the regular spectators. A "view from the poplar" was equivalent to a cheap seat. The people who got these cheap seats seem to have hung up little votive tablets I4 ~ on the poplar tree. Pausanias does not mention the orchestra. Possibly, as Dr. Ddrpfeld suggests, its site may have been MYTHOLOGY AND MONUMENTS occupied by the theatre of Agrippa (p. 91), just as the old orchestra (p. 285) to the south of the Acropolis was supplanted by the Dionysiac theatre. The market-place orchestra is in itself of great interest, but topographically all we can get out of the passage for our purpose is that the statues also stood in or near a conspicuous place, which indeed anyhow would be expected. We shall probably not be far wrong in supposing that Pausanias is now passing along between the Hill of the Nymphs and the Areopagus, where the modern road, as shown in fig. 1 5, still FIG. 15. ROAD BETWEEN AREOPAGUS AND HILL OF THE NYMPHS. runs. To his right will be the orchestra and statues of the tyrant- slayers, to the left the Metroon, Eponymi, and sanctuary of Ares. The one point to be kept clearly in mind is that wherever we place the Metroon, about opposite to it must be the statues. The sanctity of the position occupied by them is attested on all hands. From an inscription still existing it appears that it was illegal to place any other statue by the side of them, 148 and this enactment is more than once referred to in decrees by which an honorary statue is accorded to some benefactor of the State. In the decree just mentioned relating to Lycurgus, 149 the words occur, "a bronze statue to be set up to him, anywhere except where SEC. IV OF ANCIENT A THENS 79 the law forbids." Only in her latter days, then, 150 could Athens bear to place the gilded statues of Antigonus and Demetrius " near to " those of the tyrant-slayers, and again bronze ones of Brutus and Cassius actually by their very side. As Pausanias says nothing about these later sacrilegious additions, it is probable they had been removed by some Roman governor or emperor, to whom their presence may have been politically offensive. The fact that the decree was so long observed is certainly a very remarkable testimony to the intensely democratic sentiment of the Athenians. Harmodios and Aristogeiton are to them heroes utterly apart, even greater than the Eponymi, more sacred than such heroes as Amphiaraos. The " cause and manner " of their deed have, Pausanias says, " been related by others," notably by Thucydides, 151 who has left us a lively picture of the scene in the outer Kerameikos, where Hippias was marshalling the Panathenaic procession, while Hipparchos remained within near to the Leokorion. Hipparchos alone fell, and Hippias survived only to oppress the people at large with a still heavier tyranny. Thucydides, in his chilling way, takes care to explain that the popular estimate of the benefit conferred by the tyrant-slayers was a mistake, and that the whole traditional story was inaccurate, but none the less the heroes kept their firm hold on the popular mind, the famous skolion 15 - still "lived dispersedly in many hands." The four verses that have come down to us give such vivid utterance to public senti- ment that they may be quoted in full : " In a myrtle bough shall my sword be hid. So Harmodios and Aristogeiton did, The day that they struck the tyrant down, And made this Athens a freeman's town. Dearest Harmodios, never dead, But in Islands of Blessed Men now, 'tis said, Where is Achilles, the great of speed, And Tydeus' son, goodly Diomede. In a myrtle bough shall my sword be hid. So Harmodios and Aristogeiton did, When on the Day of the Offering They slew Hipparchos, the tyrant king. Ever their fame shall be and shall brighten, Dearest Harmodios and Aristogeiton ! Because it was they put the tyrant down, And made this Athens a freeman's town." 8o MYTHOLOGY AND MONUMENTS niv. A No doubt the verses went on ad infinitum. The skolion was so popular that it would probably have fallen sometimes to the lot of most Athenian diners -out to tune a verse in honour of the tyrant-slayers. In the Wasps when Bdelykleon invites Philokleon to cap verses after dinner, they begin as a matter of course with the " Harmodios," and sing the first line of a verse not elsewhere preserved. The allusions in Aristophanes a sure test of popularity are constant. " I won't have War," says the chorus in the Acharnians, "at my dinner table. I won't have him singing the 'Harmodios'"; as if the two were about equivalent. " Those women," says the chorus of men in the Ecclesiazoitsae, "are getting the upper hand, but they shan't tyrannise over me." " In a myrtle bough shall my sword be hid," " I'll lounge about in the market-place near the statue of Aristogeiton." Turning to the monuments themselves, we have abundant material for a rough reconstruction of the group ; but whether of the earlier or later pair, both of which probably stood side by side in the days of Pausanias, cannot be decided. Probably Kritios and Nesiotes, working after 480 B.C., did their utmost to reproduce the style of Antenor. Antenor's group would be set up soon after the expulsion of Hippias, 510 B.C. We must be content to take the various copies that follow as rough reproductions of the composition, pose, and gesture of the group. 154 These copies are as follows : 1. A marble group in the museum at Naples. 2. Possibly two statues in the Boboli Gardens at Florence. 3. A relief on a marble throne at Broom Hall (Fife). 4. The reverse of an Attic tetradrachm. 5. Obverse of a coin of Cyzicus. 6. A piombo or lead token. 7. Design on a Panathenaic amphora in the British Museum. 8. Design on a stamnos in the museum at Wurzburg. To begin with copies in the round, the Boboli statues may be dismissed. They have been so largely restored that, though they must be enumerated in any list of possible reproductions, it is impossible to say whether originally they really represented the group or not. The well-known Naples statues (fig. 16), though also much restored, offer a more trustworthy basis for reconstruction. They SEC. iv OF ANCIENT ATHENS 8t originally belonged to the Farnese collection ; where they were found is not known, but they passed in 1790 to Naples. The two figures FIG. 16. HAKMOUIOS AND AKISTOGE1TON (NAPLES MUSEUM). were originally not grouped together. Taking the figure to the left first, the head is an obvious restoration ; it is something of the G 82 MYTHOLOGY AND MONUMENTS niv. A Meleager type, centuries later than the genuine archaic head of the figure to the right. The two arms of the left-hand figure are both restored, but in the main rightly ; the left hand should hold a bronze sheath, the right the drawn sword. The arms of the right- hand figure are also modern, but probably in the main correct, only the sword-hilt in the right hand must be taken away and a drawn sword substituted. From the minor copies that follow it is possible to give names to the two statues the figure advancing to the front is the younger of the two, Harmodios ; the one who holds the cloak is the elder, Aristogeiton. Where an authentic head is pre- served, it is bearded. This is clearly seen on the relief at Broom Hall. This relief is worked on one side of a marble throne ; on the other is the figure of a man slaying a prostrate woman, probably Theseus and an Amazon. The throne was found by Stackelberg about 1810 at Athens, "on the site of the ancient Prytaneion " ; it passed into Lord Elgin's possession, and Dr. Michaelis saw and described it in its present state in Broom Hall. On the broken upper edge of the chair is an inscription which may probably be restored " Boellios, son of Diodoros." Rough and indistinct though the working of the relief is, the pointed beard of the hindermost figure is clearly seen, and marks him as Aristogeiton. On Athenian coins of the second century B.C. (fig. 1 7) the type of the tyrant-slayers appears again, in conjunction with the owl stand- ing on the amphora. The fact that the group was of sufficient importance to be stamped on the city's coinage is interesting, but the reproduction is of course too small _ to advance our knowledge of the style of \$-W*&M^ group - On a coin of Cyzicus also, dating about 431-371 B.C., a similar type occu- pies the whole field of the coin. The FIG. 17,-coiN: HARMODIOS tyrant - slayers are represented standing AND ARISTOGEITON. on a tunny fish, symbol of the sea-coast city of Cyzicus. The piombo or lead token is in the numismatic collection at Athens. It is interesting only as confirming what is already known. The Panathenaic amphora (fig. 18) shows the tyrant-slayers as a blazon on the shield of Athene. The figure of Harmodios is thrown OF ANCIENT A THENS back for the thrust with more violence than in any other of the copies. It would not be safe to conclude that the group was in any way the regular blazon for the shield of Athene. She appears with all manner of devices. The amphora is in the British Museum ; it is one of the large class of prize amphoras given to the victor in the Panathenaic games. It bears the usual inscription, written "pillar fashion" (/cioi'7/ow'), "the prize of the games at Athens." So far the monuments noted have reproduced the memorial group in the Agora. One design remains of special interest (fig. 19); it is from the obverse of a red-figured stamnos at Wurzburg, and is executed in the finest severe red- figured style i.e., about 480-450 B.C. In the centre is Hipparchos ; the bearded Aristogeiton is plunging his sword into the tyrant's right side. The young Har- modios comes up to the right, prepared to deal the second blow. The figure of Aristogeiton being thus separated, the composition is obviously original, and yet it is by no means uninfluenced FIG. by the marble group, as a glance at the figure of Harmodios shows. Apart, however, from the great beauty of the drawing, and the interest due to the presence of Hipparchos, this design, occurring as it does on a vase-painting, has another special value : it brings before us far more vividly than any of the other monuments the attitude of the Athenian mind towards the tyrant -slayers. It is well known that vase -painters, while they delight in scenes from mythology and daily life, in no accredited instance depict an historical event as such ; only such rare events or personages as were invested with a halo of mythological glory appear on vases. Such is Croesus, such is the Persian war, such are Harmodios and Aristogeiton. They have left the real to enter the field of the ideal ; they are not dead, as the skolion says, they dwell with Achilles and Diomede, with demi-gods and heroes, in the islands of the blest. I'ANATIIKNAIC AM- PHORA: HARMODIOS AM) ARISTOGEITON. MYTHOLOGY OF ANCIENT ATHENS From the copies considered it is not safe to draw deductions as to the manner and precise style of either Antenor or Kritios and Nesiotes. We are justified in recognising the broad characteristics of their age the formal archaic hair, the long pointed chin, the schematic rigid grouping ; further it would not be safe to go. FIG. 19. VASE: HARMODIOS AND ARISTOGEITON (WURZBURG). SECTION V ODEION TEMPLE OF ARTEMIS EUKLEIA TEXT, i. 8, 6 ; 9, 3, 4 ; 1 1, i ; M, i, 2, 3, 4, 5- i. 8, 6. IN front of the entrance to the theatre called the Ocleion are statues of the kings of Egypt. They are all named Ptolemy, with a special addition to each. One is called Philometor, another Philadelphos, while the son of Ptolemy Lagos is called Soter (Saviour), a name given him by the Rhodians. Of these kings Philadelphos is the one I have already mentioned in the list of eponymous heroes. Near him is a statue of his sister Arsinoe. Digression on Ptolemy Philometor. i. 9, 3. The Athenians, having received from Ptolemy Philometor many benefits, not worth enumerating, set up a bronze statue of him and of Berenice, who was his only legitimate child. i. 9, 4. Next after the statues of the Egyptians are statues of Philip and his son Alexander ; their achievements are too great to be the subject of a digression in a work on another topic. Upon the Egyptians these honours were bestowed as a sincere compliment for benefits received ; but in the case of Philip and Alexander it was owing rather to the servility of the people, just as it was from no friendly feeling towards Lysimachus that they set up his statue, but from considera- tions of expediency. Digression on Lysimachus. i. ii, i. The Athenians have also a statue of Pyrrhus. Digression on Pyrrhus. 86 MYTHOLOGY AND MONUMENTS mv. A i. 14, i. In the entrance of the Odeion at Athens, among other things, is a Dionysos worth seeing. Near to it is a spring which they call Enneakrounos (nine conduits). Peisistratos gave it this convenient arrangement, because, although there are wells through all the city, this is the only spring. Beyond the fountain are temples one built for Demeter and Kore, the other containing an image of Triptolemos. I will recount the stories about Triptolemos, with the exception i. 14, 2. of the part that relates to Deiope. Among the Greeks, those who most nearly rival the Athenians in their claims to ancient descent and the possession of gifts bestowed by the gods are the Argives, just as among the barbarians the Egyptians stand nearest to the Phrygians. Accordingly tradition says that when Demeter came to Argos, Pelasgos received her into his house, and Chrysanthis, being acquainted with the rape of Kore, told the story to Demeter. Later Trochilos the priest, banished from Argos owing to the enmity of Agenor, came, they say, into Attica and married a wife from Eleusis, and had two sons, Euboules and Triptolemos. This is the Argive version. But the Athenians and those on their side are sure of this, that Triptolemos, son of Keleos, was the first to sow culti- . 14, 3. vated grain. A poem of Musaeus if indeed it is to be attributed to Musaeus says that Triptolemos was the son of Okeanos and Ge ; while a poem attributed to Orpheus but also not genuine, as it seems to me says that Dysaules was the father of Euboules and Triptolemos, and that because they gave Demeter news of her daughter, they were per- mitted by Demeter to sow this corn. In a play of Choerilus the Athenian called Alope, it is said that Kerkyon and Triptolemos were brothers, sons of a daughter of Am- phictyon, but that Raros was the father of Triptolemos, while Kerkyon's father was Poseidon. I intended to carry this story further, and also to give such account as is possible of the sanctuary at Athens called the Eleusinion, but was prevented by a vision in a dream. I will turn to what may lawfully be told to every one. i. 14, 4. In front of this temple, where is the image of Triptolemos, is a bronze bull, apparently being led to sacrifice, and a seated figure of Epimenides of Gnossos. Epimenides is said to have gone into a field and fallen asleep there in a cave, and the sleep did not depart from him till he had lain slumber- ing for forty years ; and after his awakening he wrote poems and purified various cities, among them Athens. Thales, who stayed the plague for the Lacedaemonians, was nowise connected with Epimenides, nor did he come from the same city. Epimenides was of Gnossos ; but Thales, according to Polymnastos of Kolophon, in the poem that he wrote for the Lacedaemonians about him, was of Gortyn. SEC. v OF ANCIENT A THENS 87 i. 14, 5. A little farther on is a temple of Eukleia, which is another of the offerings from the spoils of the Medes who occupied the region of Marathon. This is the victory of which the Athenians are, as I think, most proud. Indeed yEschylus, when the end of his days was come, remembered none other of his deeds, though he had won great fame both by his poetry and because he had fought at sea off Artemisium and at Salamis ; but he caused to be graven on his tomb his own name, and his father's name, and his city, and that for witnesses of his bravery he had the precinct at Marathon and the Medes who there landed. COMMENTARY ON i. 8, 6 ; 9, 3, 4 ; 1 1, i ; 14, i, 2, 3, 4, 5. From the statues of Harmodios and Aristogeiton Pausanias passes straight on to a small group of temples, monuments, etc., which he links together more or less closely. These are The Odeion. " Near to it " The Enneakrounos. " Beyond this " The temples of Demeter and Kore. " A little farther on " The temple of Artemis Eukleia. About no portion of the narrative of Pausanias has there been so much, or, as it seems to me, such needless discussion. The whole passage is known as the " Enneakrounos episode." The uninstructed reader would naturally think that as Pausanias goes straight on from the statues of Harmodios and Aristogeiton to the Odeion, the two lay somewhere not far apart. He learns with sur- prise that here, and nowhere else, Pausanias breaks off his narrative, and, with no apparent reason and no hint in the text, wanders away for nearly half a mile and plants his reader down on the bank of the Ilissus ; that further, again without hint or warning, he comes back to resume his account of the Kerameikos (i. 1 4, 6). A theory so startling had need be well defended. Among its supporters are indeed names of no less weight than Leake, Bursian, Curtius, Hirschfeld, and Wachsmuth. 155 Among these, only Wachsmuth offers a hypothesis in any way adequate to explain so extra- ordinary a digression. He thinks that the leaves of the MS. of Pausanias have got out of place. But this confusion of the MS. remains a pure hypothesis. Dyer steadily maintained that the narrative of Pausanias was unbroken, and this view has been recently revived by Dr. Loeschke with his accustomed brilliancy. 88 MYTHOLOGY AND MONUMENTS DIV. A The burden of proof lies certainly with those who assert the digression. But in the case of a theory so widespread and in- fluential it is perhaps due to the reader to point out how what we believe to be a total misconception arose the more so as the passage which caused the misconception is in itself one very instructive for the ancient topography of Athens. Thucydides says 156 "Before his (i.e., Theseus) time, what is now the Acropolis and the ground lying under it to the south was the city. Many reasons may be urged in proof of this state- ment : The temples of Athene and of other divinities are situ- ated on the Acropolis itself, and those which are not lie chiefly thereabouts the temples of Olympian Zeus, for example, and of the Pythian Apollo, and the temple of Earth and of Dionysos in the Marshes, in honour of whom the more ancient Dionysia are celebrated on the I2th day of the month Anthesterion, a festival which also continues to be observed by the Ionian descendants of the Athenians. In the same quarter are other ancient temples, and not far off is the fountain now called Enneakrounos or the Nine Conduits, from the form given it by the tyrants, but originally, before the streams were covered in, Kallirrhoe or the Fair Stream. The water of this fountain was used by the ancient Athenians on great occasions, and at marriage rites and other ceremonies the custom is still retained. To this day the Acropolis or Citadel is called by the Athenians Polis or City, because that neighbourhood was first inhabited." Here Thucydides says the Enneakrounos used to be called Kallirrhoe. That there is a fountain called Kallirrhoe in the Ilissus no one denies, and hence the archaeo- logists above named have proceeded to assert that the fountain seen by Pausanias was the Kallirrhoe of the Ilissus. I do not pretend here to give even a summary of the arguments by which they support this hypothesis. As I do not accept the hypothesis, the task would be, from my point of view, fruitless. Those who are interested in the matter, and to whom the hypothesis commends itself, must consult the works cited in the notes. Out of defer- ence, however, to names so great, I enumerate the chief grounds which cause me to feel that their hypothesis is not only incorrect but impossible. All that learning and ingenuity can do in the way of formal controversy against this hypothesis has been done by Dr. Loeschke. I prefer, therefore, not to resume his argu- ments, which are best appreciated in his own writings, but to summarise the impressions which, after long weighing of the arguments on both sides, have slowly grown together into what is SEC. v OF ANCIENT ATHENS 89 for me personally, not a demonstration, but that surer thing, a conviction. 157 1. First and foremost, only definite proof can justify us in assuming either (a) the unexplained breach of continuity else- where unexampled in the narrative of Pausanias, or (b) a disloca- tion s^> serious of the MS. 2. Kallirrhoe was a name of perfectly general application. Any spring might be the "fair spring," just as any spring in the Greece of to-day is apt to be Maoromati (Black-eye). It seems likely that the spring on the Areopagus was called Kallirrhoe, and when it lost that name and got the more artificial title of the Nine Conduits, the spring of the Ilissus became the Kallirrhoe par excellence. 3. As there are to this day remains of a watercourse of the time of Peisistratos, leading to the south-west corner of the Areopagus, where the Enneakrounos is marked in the map, and ending there, just at the spot where the Enneakrounos naturally comes in the narrative of Pausanias, it is idle to look for it elsewhere. 4. The activity of the tyrants extended mainly to the sphere of the agora. The spring which they would enlarge and decorate would be naturally that which supplied the market-place. 5. The other buildings mentioned in connection with the Enneakrounos are most naturally near, in, and about the agora. It would be unreasonable to suppose that Artemis Eukleia, a goddess specially of the market-place, whose temple was built in honour of the Persian victor, should have her temple on a site beyond the Ilissus. The same applies to the temples of Demeter and Triptolemos. The force of these arguments will be better felt at the con- clusion of the Enneakrounos section, though they are stated here together for convenience. The exact position of the several monu- ments connected with the Enneakrounos must as yet be matter of conjecture. The spring which supplied the fountain of Enneakrounos is no longer above ground ; its position, however, is exactly known, as there are substantial remains of the conduit made for it by Peisistratos.* Probably the small open spring Kallirrhoe, which * For the particulars respecting this conduit and the consequent position of the Enneakrounos at the south-western corner of the Areopagus, I am entirely indebted to the kindness of Dr. Dorpfeld, and by his permission publish the result of his investigations. I had long before independently arrived at the conclusion that the "Enneakrounos episode" did not exist. 90 MYTHOLOGY AND MONUMENTS niv. A had long before been used by the city, was by his time inadequate to its needs, and he had to resort to artificial means to reinforce it. He seems to have brought water by a conduit, which can be traced along the southern side of the Acropolis as far as the south-western corner of the Areopagus. Beyond this it cannot be made out. It is therefore reasonable to conclude that it stopped at the Enneakrounos. The traces of the conduit can best be seen in the rock below the Pnyx hill, 158 immediately opposite the Areopagus, where the rock comes close to the modern high road on the right hand as you go up from the Nymphs' hill to the Acropolis. Here the borings through the rock are distinctly visible. The site of this spring, just outside the ancient city gate, was the scene of many an old story. A king's daughter, Oreithyia, ventured out from the fortress to fetch water, and the north- wind Boreas swept her away. Many a rash maiden was no doubt carried off in like fashion. When the rude Pelasgians scoured the country from their stronghold on Hymettus, it was to the Enneakrounos that they came for rapine, the spring where the daughters of the land were wont to loiter. 159 Later legend, indeed, made Oreithyia gather flowers by the Ilissus, but the older story was never forgotten, it was kept up as an alternative version, and when the Enneakrounos on the Areo- pagus was forgotten, 160 it was a puzzle to mythologists why the hill of the stern war-god a hill too stony and arid to be a flower garden should have been chosen for the maiden's flower- gathering ; but keep Enneakrounos and the old Kallirrhoe in its right place before the city gates, and all is clear. Peisistratos could do no more popular thing than to enlarge and beautify the ancient agora spring. When the Enneakrounos fell into disuse is not known. When Athens had been a small rock city, even the early Kallirrhoe would suffice for the drinking-water of the Athenians. Later, when the houses spread in the Ilissus direction, even if the supply of the Enneakrounos sufficed, the distance was too great. Water would be fetched thence by those far off only for certain rites ; but the dwellers round about the market-place would continue to use the spring for their daily needs. Something of its ancient appearance may be gathered from a black-figured hydria 1C1 in the British Museum (fig. 20), on which is represented a scene taking place at a fountain. To the left, within a Doric portico, water gushes out from a lion's head into the OF ANCIENT ATHENS 01 hyclria below. Near it is written KAAIPEKPENE i.e., "Kal- lirrhoe, the fountain." A group of six women are coming and going from the spring, their names written beside them. Above their heads is inscribed HI POKPATE! KAAOZ (" Hippocrates is beautiful"). It is quite possible that the actual Enneakrounos may be here represented under its early name a name which probably survived alongside of the new one and it would be a pleasant subject for the potter, as being the spring that supplied his own quarter ; but the term " Kallirrhoe," I repeat, seems to me so general that I do not feel certain of the identification. It seems very probable that, as Dr. Studniczka suggests, the FIG. 2O. HYDRIA : KAI.LIRRHOE (BRITISH MUSEUM). Hippocrates named is the brother of Cleisthenes ; the style of the vase admits of the possibility. With respect to the Odeion, it should be distinctly borne in mind that the Athens of classical days had one Odeion only i.e., that built by Pericles, and seen by Pausanias near the Dionysiac theatre. In later days there were added to these two buildings which went by the name Odeion (i) the great Odeion of Herodes Atticus, built after the visit of Pausanias, and still existing ; (2) the building seen by Pausanias in the market- place. It is conjectured by Dr. Dorpfeld that this Odeion of the market-place is identical with the Agrippeion mentioned by 92 MYTHOLOGY AND MONUMENTS niv. A Philostratos as " the theatre in the Kerameikos which goes by the name of the Agrippeion." Pausanias, it will be observed, speaks of the building in just the same way, " a theatre which they call the Odeion." If the Agrippeion was built on the site of the ancient orchestra (p. 77), it accounts for Pausanias not mentioning the orchestra. Pausanias leaves it uncertain how many of the Ptolemies had statues in front of the Odeion. He names only three, but it is quite possible that others were represented. We may take for certain following the order of Pausanias, which is not chrono- logical | Philometor and Berenice (181-143 I 5 -C.), Ptolemy \ Philadelphos and Arsinoe (285-247 B.C.), ( Soter (323-284 B.C.), and near to these , ... Philip, Alexander, Lysimachus, and probably Pyrrhus. Chapters ix.-xiii. are taken up with a long digression on Ptolemy Philometor, Lysimachus, and Pyrrhus. The best com- mentary on these statues, of which no copies remain, is the coinage of Egypt, on which the portrait- heads of many of the Ptolemies and their famous wives appear. When Ptolemy Soter ceased to be regent and became finally king (305 B.C.) he struck tetra- drachms with his own head for obverse type, to replace the head of Alexander, and on the reverse the eagle of Zeus on the thunderbolt, with the inscription IlroAe/iatW /^acrtAews (" Ptolemy the king"). He was succeeded by Philadelphos (285 B.C.), and at first his type was maintained. But about 261 B.C. his worship as a god was instituted under one of the titles of Zeus i.e., the Saviour. Both he and his queen, Berenice, were canonised, and their heads appear on coins with the inscription Oewv (" of the gods "). Philadelphos, however, was not content with the type of his deified father ; he issued coins with his own head and that of his wife (also his sister), Arsinoe II. Coins with the head of Arsinoe alone also appear. 102 There is in the Central Museum at Athens a colossal granite head, which the hieroglyphic inscription shows to be a portrait of Ptolemy Philometor ; the hair and headgear are of Egyptian fashion ; the SEC. v OF ANCIENT ATHENS 93 features are pleasing and gentle, and agree well with what Poly- bius says of Philometor's character, that he was " gentle and good " (TT^UOS KCU xp?//i< . . . Sep) (" sanctuary of the Nymphs ") is all that can now be made out. The inscription is not easy to find ; it is inside the garden of the observatory on the top of the hill, to the right-hand side of the path as one enters. The hill was not, however, wholly devoted to the worship of the Nymphs. On the lower platform, about thirty paces lower than the chapel of Hagia Maria and six paces from the south extremity of the hill, will be found another inscription, 204 carved on the flat face of the rock in letters of the sixth century opos Aios ("precinct of Zeus "). The writing is from right to left. The letters are cut very deep, and are about three inches long. It remains briefly to notice the midmost hill of the three the Pnyx 205 in its narrower sense as the place of assembly for the people. With its political import we have here nothing to do, but as the scene of the Thesmophoria, and as bearing certain close analogies to the Dionysiac theatre, the place has its interest even from the mythological as well as topographical point of view. And, first, it is of the utmost importance to note that an ancient place of assembly and an ancient theatre had much in common, and were in structure practically the same in construction. Each SEC. v OF ANCIENT ATHENS 109 required (i) an altar, (2) a theatron, or place for spectators. The broad steps or basis of the altar was the place from which the orator spoke, on which he, like the protagonist of Dionysos, acted his part. The assembly, like the theatre proper, was consecrated to the gods. These structural necessities are exactly fulfilled by the ancient remains currently known as the Pnyx, but recently maintained by Dr. Curtius to be only an altar-place to Zeus Hypsistos. His view is mainly based on certain late dedications and inscriptions, and cannot here be discussed in detail. The true view I believe to be that the altar-place which still remains is in fact the ancient Bema. Immediately behind it are three rows of seats cut in the rock ; these serve to confirm this view, as it is known that the Prytanes had seats facing the people. A woman in the Ecclesia- sousae says to Praxagora " By Zeus ! you ought to go and seize the places Beneath the stone, facing the Prytanes " i.e., get a good seat just under the orator. In front of the orator as he looked towards the agora and Areopagus was the semicircular amphitheatre for the assembly generally. It is the partial destruction of this that has caused all the difficulty in the identification of the Pnyx. At present, if the orator were to stand on the Bema, he would look down ; the ground slopes away distinctly from his feet. As the voice rises, this would never do. This downward slope is, however, wholly due to modern devastation ; originally the ground sloped upwards, as can still be seen by its lie both to the right and left of the Bema. The support-wall of the amphitheatre was partly natural, partly artificial ; it can be seen best from below, on the carriage-road leading round the west of the Areopagus to the Acropolis. The masonry, though polygonal, is not Cyclopean, but of good Hellenic period ; it must be conceived of as extending to a much greater height than it does at present. Great quantities of the stones of this wall were rolled down by the Turks and used as building material. To the people in the agora below, the assembly would indeed seem to be seated upon the rocks (eVt TGUS irfrpats). The Pnyx, then, was like a theatre, but like one of the old simple fashion. Pollux -" distinctly says " the Pnyx was a place near the Acropolis, arranged according to antique simplicity, not with the complexity of a theatre," by which he doubtless means, not MYTHOLOGY AND MONUMENTS that it was not like a theatre, but that it was like the old form, the altar and the space for spectators, not like the new theatres, with stage and stone seats and porticoes. It was used as a place of assembly from the time of Cleisthenes to the time of Lycurgus ; occasionally even in the days of Thucydides 20S the assembly met in the Dionysiac theatre and felt no incongruity. After the year 332-331 B.C. the Dionysiac theatre was in regular use. No doubt the stone seats and other forms of "complexity" were found con- venient for an assembly grown luxurious ; also by this time a great portion of the population had shifted to the better-watered neigh- bourhood of the Ilissus. "A little farther" Pausanias comes to the temple of Eukleia, a votive offering in honour of Marathon. Those who place the temple, with the whole " Enneakrounos episode," on the banks of the Ilissus deny the identification of the Athenian Eukleia with Artemis ; Artemis is especially an agora goddess ; and as they have taken the temple out of the agora and planted it on the outskirts of the city, the identification is awkward. A passage from Plutarch 209 leaves little doubt. Euchides the Plataean, who had run with all possible speed to fetch the pine fire from Delphi to light the altar of Zeus Eleutherios, when he had greeted the citizens of Plataea and delivered the fire fell down dead on the spot ; and they carried him to the temple of Artemis called Eukleia, and buried him there. Plutarch goes on to say " As for Eukleia, most believe her to be Artemis and call her by that name, but some say she was the daughter of Herakles and Myrto, daughter of Menaikeus and sister of Patroklos, and that as she died a maiden she had divine honours paid to her both by the Boeotians and Locrians. For in all their cities, in the market-place, she has a statue and an altar, where both young men and maidens offer sacrifice before marriage." At Thebes Pausanias 210 saw a temple of Artemis Eukleia, and a statue of the goddess by Scopas. Near to the temple were the statues of Apollo Boedromios and Hermes Agoraios, so it seems likely that this was the site of the old agora, which was deserted in the time of Pausanias. The chorus of Thebans in the CEdipus AY.v 211 pray to Artemis Eukleia, who sits on her circled throne in the agora, to heal them from the plague. In the altis at Olympia were the altars of Zeus Agoraios and Artemis Agoraia. There can be no doubt that Eukleia's fair fame was at first an attribute of Artemis, and that subsequently, as so often happened, the attribute got separated off into an individuality, and Eukleia was worshipped with a cult of her own. Inscriptions show this. Several exist commemorating a priest "of Eukleia and Eunomia," 21 - and Xeno- phon- 1:{ speaks of a feast called the Eukleia kept by the Argives, the Athenians, Boeotians, and Corinthians. At this festival, he says, there was wont to be an unusual concourse in the agora. Dr. Dorpfeld identifies this temple of Artemis Eukleia with the sanctuary of Artemis Aristoboule (good counsel) dedicated by Themistocles. Plutarch- 14 says in his Life " He gave further offence to the people by setting up a sanctuary of Artemis, to whom he gave the title of Aristoboule, on the grounds that he had given the best counsel to the city and to the Greeks in general, and he built the sanctuary in Melite near to his own house, where the public executioners now cast out the bodies of those who have been put to death, and where they throw the clothes and the halters of those who have been condemned to death and strangled. Even in our own days there remains a statue of Themistocles in the temple of Aristoboule, and he seems to have been a hero, not only in temper, but in outward appearance." It certainly seems unlikely that two temples to Artemis should have been separately dedicated in memory of the Persian war. It must have been the title, not the foundation, that offended the people, hence it is very likely they changed the name from Aristo- boule to Eukleia. The temple of Aristoboule would be well in place near the Pnyx, and the site usually identified with the Barathron is not far away. The Barathron would of course be out- side the walls, the temple probably within. Themistocles would not be likely to build either his own house or a temple to Artemis quite near a spot with such revolting associations. I cannot refrain from the conjecture that Artemis Eukleia is the goddess addressed as Kalligeneia (goddess of fair birth) in the prayer with which the Thesmophoria - 15 was opened "Invoke the Thesmophorae (/.<'., Demeter, Kore), and Plouton, and Kalli- geneia, and Kourotrophos (/.<.'., Ge, the Great Mother), and Hermes, and the Charites." Her temple, if it stood anywhere near the Pnyx, would be well in sight. SECTION VI TEMPLE' OF HEPHAISTOS SANCTUARY OF APHRODITE TEXT, i. 14, 6, 7. i. 14, 6. BEYOND the Kerameikos and the Stoa called Basileios is a temple of Hephaistos. That an image of Athena stands beside the god himself was no matter of surprise to me, since I knew the legend about Erichthonios ; but when I saw that the image of Athena had gray eyes, I recognised the Libyan ver- sion of the myth. For the Libyans say that the goddess is the daughter of Poseidon and the lake Tritonis, and therefore her eyes are gray for the same reason that Poseidon's eyes are gray. i. 14, 7. Close by is a sanctuary of Aphrodite Ourania. The first men to worship Aphrodite Ourania were the Assyrians, and next after them the people of Paphos in Cyprus, and the Phoeni- cians who dwell at Askalon in Palestine. The people of Cythera learnt the ritual from the Phoenicians. ^Egeus in- troduced the worship into Athens, because he thought that his own childlessness for at that period he had no children and the misfortune of his sisters were due to the wrath of Aphrodite Ourania. The image still existing in my time is of Parian marble, and the work of Pheidias. In the Athenian cleme called Athmoneus the story is current that it was Porphyrion, who reigned before Actaeus, who founded the sanctuary of Aphrodite Ourania in the deme Athmoneus. This is one of several instances where legends in the denies are quite different from the versions current at Athens. COMMENTARY ON i. 14, 6, 7. Pausanias, having finished his account of the temple of Eukleia, goes no farther south. He intends to take the south side of the SEC. VI MYTHOLOGY OF ANCIENT ATHENS Acropolis in a later walk (p. 239). The monuments on the east side of the Areopagus he also reserves for the time when he conies down from the Acropolis. He now turns directly back, and gives us a clue to his movements by distinctly stating that the two monuments he next visits are beyond (vrre/>) the Kerameikos and the Stoa Basileios. Beyond the Kerameikos generally, and more specifically beyond the Stoa Basileios z>., from the point where he stands the whole complex of monuments he has just described stand between him and the coming temple. KIU. 25. T1IESEIO.N, KKOM THE NtJKTH-EAS'l'. He turns then straight back, and \ve may suppose him walking with his back to the Pnyx along the modern road between the Pnyx and Areopagus. We expect to find the next monu- ments facing him. Here, just where it is wanted to make sure our conjecture is right, comes a fixed point. The temple of Hephaistos is the Doric temple usually known as the Theseion (fig. 25). It is fortunate that a certain name can at last be given to the best-preserved temple of the ancient world. No temple has been the subject of more controversy. Up to the year 1838 I U4 MYTHOLOGY AND MONUMENTS DIV. A it went usually among travellers by the name of the Theseion, a title so time-honoured that it will be necessary to set forth in some detail the reasons for its rejection. One traveller only up to that date Cyriac of Ancona called it the temple of Ares. This name was revived in 1838 by Ross. Curtius inclined to the view that it was the temple of Herakles in Melite. Dyer calls it the Amazonium ; Lange, the temple of Aphrodite. To Pervanoglu is due the credit of first giving the temple its right name, the temple of Hephaistos.; and Dr. Dorpfeld supports this view by arguments which can scarcely be contravened. 21 * 5 The data for forming an opinion are these : i. Considerations of topography, combined with the narrative of Pausanias under two heads (a) his description of the Theseion, (ti} his present account of the temples standing on the site of the so-called Theseion. 2. Considerations as to the architectural character of the temple itself, and the subject of its decorative sculptures. It is necessary to observe first that though the earliest name given to the temple i.e., by the Paris Anonymous at the end of the fifteenth century is the Theseion, this is no evidence whatever of ancient tradition, it is only a chance identification by an almost wholly incompetent traveller. Topography is all against the popular attribution. When Pausanias describes the Theseion, as has already been seen, he has completely left the west side of the market-place and is "near the gymnasium." The next temple he mentions after the Theseion is the temple of the Dioscuri, about the site of which within very narrow limits there is no doubt. Then, turning to the second topographical point i.e., the description of the actual site of the so-called Theseion it has been shown that in all probability it was towards this hill that Pausanias was looking when he describes the region " beyond the Kerameikos and the Stoa called Basileios." On this hill he mentions only two temples, those of Hephaistos and Aphrodite. Had the present temple been a third, it could scarcely have escaped notice. Topography, therefore, and the narrative of Pausanias distinctly go against the Theseion attri- bution. Arguments based on the second set of data will be better appreciated after an examination of the temple itself 217 and the sculptures remaining. The temple is a Doric peripteral hexastyle with thirteen side columns (counting the angle columns twice) ; its length is 1 04 SEC. vi OF ANCIENT ATHENS 115 feet, breadth 44. It is built on a basis of Peiraeus limestone, the temple itself being of Pentelic marble. At a little distance it still looks almost intact, but on a closer examination it may be seen that much damage has been done both by earthquakes and spoliation. In 1660 the Turks began to pull the building down in order to build a mosque ; they were stopped, but not before they had hacked away part of the south-west corner both of the peristyle and cella. The whole of the east end of the cella was pulled down to make way for an apse when the temple was turned into a Christian church. At the same time a large door was made in the west end, but was walled in, as the Turks had the habit of riding in on horseback when the door was left open. When the large door was walled up, two small doors were opened through the south and north walls. The Christians also covered in the cella with a semicircular vault. Though the wall of the pronaos was removed to make the church more roomy, the marks on the side walls show clearly where it stood. On the inside walls of the temple may also clearly be seen the marks of preparation for plastering. Those who hold the " Theseion " theory attach much importance to these marks, as being signs of the former existence of mural painting, such as Pausanias describes in his account of the actual Theseion. As a matter of fact, even had the paintings existed of which there is no evidence this proves nothing, for mural decoration was quite a usual thing. Another point in the existing temple has been turned to false account. It is stated by Stuart, and frequently repeated (e.g., by Murray's Guide, p. 259), that the foundation of the temple has only two steps. Stuart goes on to explain that this was the custom with a temple that was only a heroon, not a temple of the gods. As a matter of fact, the temple in question is built on three steps, though the lowest one is of poros stone, the two upper of Pentelic marble. Probably the lowest one, the foundation of some older structure, has been utilised. Fortunately to such negative arguments one that is positive can be added, which, by fixing the date of the temple, puts an end for ever to the name " Theseion." The date and name of the temple have been discussed far too much on aesthetic grounds connected with the style and attribution of the decorative sculptures. How precarious these grounds are will be shown later. Dr. Dorpfeld dates the temple mainly by a consideration of more tangible evidence i.e., the architectural character of the Ionic frieze of the cella, and a comparison of it with the similar friezes of the n6 MYTHOLOGY AND MONUMENTS mv. A Parthenon and Sunium temple. The order of date of the three he holds to be as follows : 1 . Parthenon, 2. Theseion, 3. Sunium, for the following reasons. The Parthenon frieze is Ionic, but with reminiscences of Doric. The guttae, senseless except in con- nection with the Doric triglyphs, are still placed below the simple continuous Ionic frieze. The architect of the " Theseion " has gone a step further ; he feels the superfluity of the guttae and he omits them, but he is still so far haunted by a reminiscence of Doric feeling that, in Doric fashion, he places the corner columns nearer together than those intervening, a course necessary in order to get the columns square under the triglyphs. In the Sunium temple this last remnant of Doric influence has died out ; triglyph conditions are of no account. Not only are the guttae absent, but the columns are all equally spaced. This architectural detail is all-important, because it fixes the "Theseion" as later than the Parthenon not much, but a little later ; and this date is mythologically important, because, as it is known that the real Theseion was built in Cimon's time, the present temple can be no Theseion at all. Before passing to the sculptures the main source of error it is necessary to lay one more architectural ghost. It is often urged that on some of the calymnae (cassettes) of the roof, masons' marks have been found consisting of archaic letters ?-g;\ and that therefore the temple must be of pre- Periclean date. This would be cogent enough but that there are other masons' marks on the same cassettes, and these are of post- Eukleidic form e.g., in the case of lambda, A. The true ex- planation is probably that, as in the case of the foundation, older material, possibly of a temple never finished, was used up and the stones remained. A further argument for the existence of an older temple is the difference of style and material between the metopes and the frieze. The metopes are of Parian marble ; the frieze is of the material which came later into fashion, and of which most of the temple is built, Pentelic marble. It is time to turn to the question of the sculptural decorations. Mr. Penrose has shown that not only the east but the west pediment was filled with sculptured groups ; not a fragment of these remains. They would probably have furnished the keynote to the intention. What remains of the sculptures is as follows : SEC. vi OF ANCIENT ATHENS 117 1. Eighteen metopes. 2. Two friezes, each 38 ft. long. The metopes are arranged as follows : Ten along the east front, four on the north and south sides respectively, at the ends nearest the east front. The two friezes are disposed at either end of the cella. The subjects of the metopes of the east front are 1. Herakles and the Nemean lion. 2. ,, Hydra. 3. stag of Cerynea. 4. ,, ,, Erymanthian boar. 5. ,, mare of Diomede. 6. ,, ,, Cerberus. 7. ,, ,, (probably) the Amazon Hippolyte. 8. ( _ 9 ' >, Geryon. 10. ,, Hesperides. The metopes of the north side are 1. Theseus contending with Periphetes. 2. ,, ,, Kerkyon. 3- M Skiron. 4. ,, ,, sow of Krommyon. The metopes of the south side are 1. Theseus contending with Minotaur. 2. ,, ,, bull of Marathon. 3- Sinis. 4. ,, ,, Prokrustes. The remaining fifty metopes have no sculptures, but it is quite possible they were painted. For a temple to have all its metopes sculptured, like the Parthenon, was quite exceptional. Because these metopes relate to the heroes Herakles and Theseus it has been supposed that the temple was dedicated to these heroes, one or both. Suppose the pediment sculptures of the Parthenon had been lost, we might had we argued from the best preserved of the metopes have concluded that the temple was a Theseion, as the subject of these metopes is the Thesean contest between Lapiths and Centaurs ; or, arguing from the east end metopes, we should have with difficulty selected a principal god Ii8 MYTHOLOGY AND MONUMENTS niv. A from the Gigantomachia. On turning to the Zeus temple at Olympia we find the twelve front and back metopes decorated with the twelve labours of Herakles, but we do not conclude that the temple is a Herakleion. Equally precarious is it, to my mind, to argue from the subject- matter of the friezes. Of these the subject of the western frieze is certain. It repre- sents a fight between Lapiths and Centaurs, and contains several typical motives repeated on other works of art e.g., the frieze of Phigaleia and the Gjolbaschi Heroon. Of the eastern frieze all that can be certainly said is that it represents a battle in the presence of six seated gods. These seated groups remind the most casual observer of the seated gods in the Parthenon frieze. To my mind, no argument based on the subject-matter of the sculptures is of the smallest value. There is scarcely any god or goddess on whose temple in Athens sculptures representing Centaurs, Lapiths, or labours of Herakles would come amiss, and doubtless at the time the labours of Theseus and those of his prototype, Herakles, were exceedingly fashionable. The Theseion theory has been discussed in detail, because the theory had a time-honoured claim to respect. It will not be necessary to examine in detail the other theories which attribute the temple to Ares, Apollo, Herakles, Aphrodite, the Amazons. It will be sufficient to show the grounds on which the Hephaistos attribution is based. Of the situation of the temple of Hephaistos we know, in addi- tion to what Pausanias says, two things (i) that it stood on high ground ; (2) that it, together with another sanctuary, the Eury- sakeion, which Pausanias does not here mention, stood on the hill Kolonos Agoraios. Andokides, 218 in his speech on the mysteries, says that Diokleides, " seeing Euphemus sitting in the Chalkeion, led him up (avayaywv) to the Hephaisteion " before he began to tell him his story. Harpocration, 219 explaining the term " Kolonetas," says " They call them Kolonetai because they stand near the hill Kolonos, which is near the agora, where are the Hephaisteion and Eurysakeion, and this Kolonos goes by the name of Kolonos Agoraios " (i.e., of the market-place). The lexicographer, anxious to avoid the confusion of this Kolonos with the more famous Kolonos of CEdipus, gives incidentally a very valuable bit of topographical information. What other hill can the Kolonos Agoraios be but the one on which the so-called Theseion stands ? Curtius has indeed tried to place it on the east of the agora ; there SEC. vi OF ANCIENT ATHENS 119 is only one difficulty, and that is, that on this east side there is no hill. The Hephaisteion, then, stood on the hill Kolonos Agoraios. On it also stands the so-called Theseion. To the Hephaisteion Pausanias has now come. On or near the hill in question he describes only one other monument, the Aphroditeion, and de- scribes it as a sanctuary (tepov), not as a temple (vaos). Could he have missed out a temple of the proportions of the temple still standing ? We can scarcely avoid the conclusion that the temple he saw and described as the temple of Hephaistos is the so-called Theseion. This view is confirmed by some subordinate evidence : 1. The site is eminently fitted for a temple of Hephaistos ; it overlooks the Kerameikos, the potters' quarter. 2. An inscription dating 440-416 B.C. records the revival or institution of the worship of Athene and Hephaistos and the setting up of an altar and an image to Hephaistos. This would agree with the date of the so-called Theseion, and it seems probable that the image mentioned is the very image that is known from other sources to have been the work of Alcamenes. All that Pausanias notices about the temple of Hephaistos is that beside the god stood a statue of the goddess Athene. This he explains to himself by reference to the story of the birth of Erich- thonios, already discussed. The relations between Hephaistos and Athene are very diverse and shifting ; he is sometimes the god who cleaves the head of Zeus at the birth of Athene, sometimes the father of her son Erichthonios, sometimes her brother, sometimes her fellow -craftsman at the birth of Pandora. Plato, who, when he can, rejects the grosser forms of mytho- logical tradition, speaks in the Kritias of them as brother and sister, joint guardians of the earliest settlers in the Acropolis " Hephaistos and Athene, who were brother and sister, and sprang from the same father, having a common nature and being united also in the love of philosophy and art, both obtained as their allotted region this land, which was naturally adapted for wisdom and virtue, and there they implanted brave children of the soil and put into their minds the order of government.'' Plato is, of course, here only rationalising in a noble and philosophic manner the myth of Hephaistos and Athene current in his days, but in the expression " having a common nature " he strikes the true note of the explanation for many a mythological relationship. Athene and Hephaistos were both craftsmen, patrons of potters MYTHOLOGY AND MONUMENTS and all artists. Hephaistos forged weapons, Athene wore them. Both were patrons of the plough, both excelled in all manner of skill and cunning, so from remote days legend linked them by marriage or kinship. Plato says of their early worship " Outside the Acropolis and on the sides of the hills there dwelt artisans and such of the husbandmen as were tilling the ground near ; at the summit the warrior class dwelt by themselves round the temples of Athene and Hephaistos, in one enclosure, which was like the garden of a single house." No doubt this is a reminis- cence of ancient fact, that before the joint temple to Hephaistos and Athene was built overlooking the agora, the two had a com- mon shrine in the Acropolis. But by and by Athene, in the splendour of her moral strength and the glory of her aspect as Nike, eclipsed her fellow-craftsman, and his memory faded more or less from the cults of the Acropolis ; but a temple was built for him in the potters' quarter, among his own people, where, though the goddess was his paredros, he himself was supreme. There they had a common festival, the Chalkeia, 221 a festival of craftsmen. During its solemnisation the weaving of the peplos of Athene was begun, the peplos afterwards to be offered to the goddess in her ancient Acropolis temple. Had we only not lost the Chalkeia of Menander we should no doubt have possessed many a curious and valuable detail of the ceremonies. The statue of Athene which stood within the temple would naturally be subordinate to the temple statue of the god himself. A famous statue of Hephaistos by Alcamenes 222 is known which was noted for the ingenuity with which the artist expressed the lameness of the god, rather as an attribute than a deformity. Of course this is mere conjecture, but it seems highly probable that the statue, as it is known to have been made for the Athenians, stood in the Hephaisteion. Hephaistos appears on vase-paintings sometimes as the ordinary Athenian citizen, or, again, as the workman with the conical cap and tongs or mallet ; as such, he often wears the short tunic of the slave. On coins also his head appears with the conical cap.~ 2:! The legend of his connection with the return of Dionysos to Olympus, one of the most popular tales about him, will be told later. At Athens, where volcanic irruptions are unknown, his cult was in the main distinctly sub- servient to Athene. The Hephaisteion seems to have served as a place for the examination and even torture of suspected persons possibly the implements of the fire-god were ready to hand. OF ANCIENT ATHENS On looking at the statue of Athene, Pausanias was chiefly struck by her gray eyes, a proof, if one were needed, that the statues of the ancients were painted. It scarcely seems necessary to apologise for the gray eyes of Athene Glaukopis ; but Pausanias, after the explanatory fashion of his times, accounts for the colour by the association of the goddess with the lake Tritonis. The epithet "Tritogeneia" (Triton-born) is as old as the Iliad? 1 * The Achaeans are urged on to the battle before Troy by " Zeus' daughter, the Triton-born " ; and again, in the Odyssey, Nestor says to Tele- machus, "Truly there is none other of those who keep the mansions of Olympus save only the daughter of Zeus, the driver of spoil, the maiden Trito-born." What "Tritogeneia" originally meant is probably now past finding out. Ancient commentators suggested that "Trito" was Cretan for "head," and that "Tritogeneia" 1225 meant " head-born." Certainly in the Iliad and Odyssey passages the fact that she is par excellence daughter of Zeus is emphasised. Another explanation, however, found more general favour, probably because it allowed the association of the birth of the great goddess Athene with many local streams, lakes, and fountains. This explana- tion was that " Tritogeneia " meant " born of the Trito-water "- the same root that appears in Triton the water -god. On the strength of this etymology it was easy to localise the birth of the goddess near the lake Tritonis in Libya, or the marsh Tritonis in Boeotia, and so on ad infinitum. The fashion of attributing an Egyptian origin to deities and their names made the Libyan legend on the whole obtain. Herodotus 2 - 6 says, in speaking of the lake Tritonis " The Auseans declare that Athene is the daughter of Poseidon and the lake Tritonis. They say that she quarrelled with her father and applied to Zeus, who consented to let her be his child, and so she became his adopted daughter." The Ausean maidens, he further tells us, celebrated curious ceremonies in honour of their native goddess, who Herodotus in his way says was identical with Athene. They fought in two bodies with stones and clubs ; no true maiden could die of the wounds received in this combat. Before the fight, the loveliest of all the maidens was clothed in a complete suit of Greek armour and a Corinthian helmet, and led in procession round the lake. The whole account is interesting as showing the Greek tendency, whenever they found a deity with attributes similar to one of their own, to identify their origin and worship. At Alalcomenae, in Boeotia, Pausanias 2 -'' found a local Athene Tritogeneia. "The river that runs here is a small stream ; they call it Triton because MYTHOLOGY AND MONUMENTS they say Athene was brought up near the river Triton, as if it were this Triton and not the Libyan Triton, which runs out from the lake Tritonis into the Libyan Sea." Alalcomenae, with its river Triton, has as good a right to its local Tritogeneia as Libya, but Pausanias prefers the more widespread and fashionable tradition. Again at Alipheria, in Arcadia, a similar process had been gone through. Pausanias says "The latter (i.e., Athene) they worship most, and say that she was born and reared .among them. They have also erected an altar here to Zeus Lecheates, so called because here he gave birth to Athene. And they give the name of Tritonis to their spring, for they adopt as their own the legend about the river Triton." The title "Tritogeneia" was not at all confined to obscure priestly or local tradition. Athene was, as has been seen, Tritogeneia in the Iliad and Odyssey; she is saluted as such by the writer of the Homeric hymn, 228 by Hesiod, by Aris- tophanes and Euripides in fact, it was an early hieratic epithet whose original meaning is now probably lost, but whose sub- sequent etymology was turned to account, both for local purposes and also to fit Athene with a sort of cosmic parentage, to make her the child of the water element, the origin of all things. It is one thing to explain the actual rise of an epithet ; it is quite another to state how even the Greeks themselves subsequently accounted for it. Near to the temple of Hephaistos was a sanctuary of the heavenly Aphrodite. Nothing is known of it but that it con- tained a statue by Pheidias. Later, when he comes to the district of the Ilissus, Pausanias describes another sanctuary of Aphrodite with an old four-square image. It may safely be inferred that this Aphrodite "of the Gardens" represents the more ancient cult. I cannot refrain from the conjecture that the sanctuary of Aphrodite on the Kolonos hill may simply have been a late foundation, out of compliment to Hephaistos, and instituted by the Athenians when they learnt the tradition, not indigenous to Athens, that Aphrodite was wife to Hephaistos. Be that as it may, it is, I think, clear that, as Wachsmuth has pointed out, Pausanias transplanted the ^Egeus traditions from " the Gardens " to the Kolonos hill. He here exhausts the learning that would have been more in place when discussing the original cult. The source of his information about the Oriental origin of Aphrodite is, of course, Herodotus, 229 on whom, however, he is proud to improve somewhat by setting the Assyrians before the Phoenicians ; he might, while he was about it, have gone further, and set the Babylonians before the Assyrians. SEC. vi OF ANCIENT ATHENS 123 Herodotus tells how, when the Scythians were returning from Egypt, some of them lagged behind to pillage the temple of celestial Aphrodite in the ancient city of Ascalon, and adds " I have inquired, and find that the temple at Ascalon is the most ancient of all the temples to this goddess ; for the one in Cyprus, as the Cyprians themselves admit, was built in imitation of it, and that in Cythera was erected by the Phoenicians, who belonged to this part of Syria." And as regards Cythera, Pausanias 230 says, when he is visiting Laconia "The temple of the heavenly Aphrodite is the most sacred and most ancient of all the shrines of Aphrodite among the Greeks, and the statue is an ancient one of wood, and the goddess is a xoanon with arms." SECTION VII STOA POIKILE VARIOUS ALTARS TEXT, i. 15, g i, 2, 3, 45 16, ig i, 3 ; 17, i. i. 15, i. ON the way to the Stoa Poikile or Painted Colonnade, so called from the pictures it contains, there is a bronze Hermes called Agoraios, and near it a gate. On this gate is a trophy in honour of the victory of the Athenian cavalry over Pleist- archus, who was in command of the horse and mercenary troops of his brother Cassander. The first picture in the Colonnade shows the Athenians drawn up against the Lacedae- monians at CEnoe in Argolis. The scene represents neither the battle at its hottest, nor even such a stage of the engagement as would afford opportunities for portraying particular deeds of valour, but the moment at which the action begins before the i. 15, 2. combatants have actually met. On the middle wall is the fight between the Athenians under Theseus and the Amazons. It would seem that women are peculiar, in that disasters do not check their recklessness in enterprise, if it is true that after the capture of Themiskyra by Herakles, and the subsequent destruction of the army sent against Athens, they yet came to Troy, where they fought, not only with the Athenians, but also with the rest of the Greeks. Next after the picture of the battle with the Amazons is a representation of the Greeks after the capture of Troy, when the kings have gathered together on account of the outrage on Cassandra by Ajax. Ajax himself is shown in the picture, and Cassandra among i. 15, 3. other captive women. The last subject is the combatants at Marathon, the Boeotians of Plataea and the whole Athenian force contending with the barbarians. In this part of the picture neither side has the advantage ; but in the centre the barbarians are in flight, and pushing one another into the marsh. At the end of the picture are the Phoenician ships, and the barbarians slain by the Athenians as they try to SKC. vii MYTHOLOGY OF ANCIENT ATHENS 125 embark. In the painting are also represented the hero Marathon, from whom the plain derives its name ; Theseus, seeming to rise from out of the earth ; Athena, and Herakles the people of Marathon having been, according to their own story, the first to hold Herakles for a god. The most con- spicuous among the warriors are Kallimachos, who had been chosen polemarch of the Athenian army ; Miltiades, one of the generals ; and also a hero called Echetlos, whom I shall have occasion to mention again. i. 15, 4. In the Colonnade are some bronze shields. Some of these are inscriljed as having been taken from the inhabitants of Skione and their auxiliaries ; but those smeared with resin, to escape injury from rust in the course of time, are said to be the shields of the Lacedaemonians taken in the island of Sphakteria. i. 16, i. There are some bronze statues before the. Colonnade, among them being one of Solon, the Athenian lawgiver, and another, a little farther on, of Seleucus. Digression about Seleucus ending as folloi.(.