Page:Greece from the Coming of the Hellenes to AD. 14.djvu/86

58 changes which affected other districts. Lying out of the direct route from Northern to Southern Greece, and being itself rugged and mountainous, it had not attracted invasion. The main stock of the people seems to have been Pelasgan, though there had been at some period so large an admixture of Ionian Hellenes that Athens came to be regarded as the mother city of the Ionians. The people prided themselves on their antiquity and purity of descent, boasting of being autochthones, or natives of the soil. As a symbol of this a favourite ornament of Athenian women was a cicada, or lizard, which was fabled to be born from the earth. So mythology represented the earliest Attic king as half snake, while Erechtheus, among the earliest heroes, was a babe born of Gaia, the earth goddess.

There were once, it was believed, twelve independent cities in Attica, each with a separate council chamber and magistrates. These were combined as one state by Theseus, who was therefore regarded as Oekist, or hero-founder of Athens. All kinds of heroic deeds and services were attributed to him. Among other things, he freed the state from the annual tribute of maidens and boys to the lord of Crete, killing the Minotaur to whom they were sacrificed. The tradition of this tribute contains a truth as to the naval supremacy of Crete in ancient times, and the emancipation of the Greek states from it. In the case of a mythological hero like Theseus—whose name may nevertheless represent a real person—we cannot pretend to give dates. But it seems certain that this Synoikismos, or combination of Attic towns under