Page:History of Greece Vol I.djvu/227

 ATHENE AND POSEIDON. 195 preference given to Athene, inundated the Thriasian plain with water. 1 During the reign of Kekrops, Attica was laid waste by Karian pirates on the coast, and by invasions of the Aonian inhabitants from Boeotia. Kekrops distributed the inhabitants of Attica into twelve local sections Kekropia, Tetrapolis, Epakria, Dekeleia, Eleusis, Aphidna, Thorikus, Brauron, Kytherus, Sphettus, Ke- phisius, Phalerus. Wishing to ascertain the number of inhabitants, he commanded each man to cast a single stone into a general heap : the number of stones was counted, and it was found that there were twenty thousand. 2 Kekrops married the daughter of Aktaeus, who (according to Pausanias's version) had been king of the country before him, and had called it by the name of Akttea. 3 By her he had three daughters, Aglaurus, Erse and Pandrosus, and a son, Erysichthon. Kekrops is called by Pausanias contemporary of the Arcadian Lykaon, and is favorably contrasted with that savage prince in re- spect of his piety and humanity. 4 Though he has been often desig- nated in modern histories as an immigrant from Egypt into Attica, 1 Apollod. iii. 14, 1 ; Herodot. viii. 55 ; Ovid. Metam. vi. 72. The story current among the Athenians represented Kekrops as the judge of this con- troversy (Xenoph. Memor. iii. 5, 10). The impressions of the trident of Poseidon were still shown upon the rock in the time of Pausanias (Pausan. i. 26, 4). For the sanctity of the ancient olive-tree, see the narrative of Herodotus (I. c.), relating what happened to it when Xerxes occupied the acropolis. As this tale seems to have attached it- self specially to the local peculiarities of the Erechtheiam, the part which Po- seidon plays in it is somewhat mean: that god appears to greater advantage in the neighborhood of the 'iTrTrorfc Kohuvof, as described in the beautiful Chorus of Sophokles (CEdip. Colon. 690-712). A curious rationalization of the monstrous form ascribed to Kekrops (Si^vTie) in Plutarch (Sera Num. Vindict. p. 551). 2 Philochor. ap. Strabo. ix. p. 397. 3 The Parian chronological marble designates Akteeus as an autochthonous person. Marmor Parium, Epoch. 3. Pausan. i. 2, 5. Philochorus treated Aktasus as a fictitious name (Fragm. 8, ut sup.). 4 Pausan. viii. 2. 2. The three daughters of Kekrops were not unnoticed in the mythes (Ovid, Metam. ii. 739) : the tale of Kephalus, son of Herse by Hermes, who was stolen away by the goddess Eos or Hemera in consequence of his surpassing beauty, was told in more than one of the Hesiodic poenn I Pausan. i. 3, 1; Hesiod. Theog. 986). See also Eurip. Ion. 269.