Page:History of Greece Vol I.djvu/228

 196 HISTORY OF GREECE. yet the far greater number of ancient authorities represent him as indigenous or earth-born. 1 Erysichthon died without issue, and Kranaus succeeded him, another autochthonous person and another eponymus, for the name Kranai was an old denomination of the inhabitants of At- tica. 2 Kranaus was dethroned by Amphiktyon, by some called an autochthonous man ; by others, a son of Deukalion : Amphik- tyon in his turn was expelled by Erichthonius, son of Hephaestos and the Earth, the same person apparently as Erechtheus, but inserted by Apollodorus at this point of the series. Erichthonius, the pupil and favored companion of Athene, placed in the acropo- lis the original Palladium or wooden statue of that goddess, said to have dropped from heaven : he was moreover the first to cele- brate the festival of the Panathenasa. He married the nymph Pasithea, and had for his son and successor Pandion. 3 Erichtho- nius was the first person who taught the art of breaking in horses to the yoke, and who drove a chariot and four. 4 In the time of Pandion, who succeeded to Erichthonius, Dio- nysus and Demeter both came into Attica : the latter was received by Keleos at Eleusis. 5 Pandion married the nymph Zeuxippe, and had twin sons, Erechtheus and Butes, and two daughters, Prokne and Philomela. The two latter are the subjects of a memo- rable and well-known legend. Pandion having received aid in repelling the Thebans from Tereus, king of Thrace, gave him his daughter Prokne in marriage, by whom he had a son, Itys. The beautiful Philomela, going to visit her sister, inspired the barbarous Thracian with an irresistible passion : he violated her person, con- fined her in a distant pastoral hut, and pretended that she was dead, cutting out her tongue to prevent her from revealing the truth. Af- ter a long interval, Philomela found means to acquaint her sister of the cruel deed which had been perpetrated ; she wove into a gar- ment words describing her melancholy condition, and despatched it 1 Jul. Africanus also (ap. Euscb. x. 9. p. 486-488) calls Kekrops 777/61% and aiirox&uv. 3 Apollod. iii. 14. Pausan. i. 2G, 7. 4 Virgil, Gcorgic iii. 114. 5 The mythe of the visit of Deme'ter to Eleusis, on which occasion she Touchsafed to teach her holy rites to the leading Eleusinians, is more touched upon in a previous chapter (see ante, p. 50).
 * Herod, viii. 44. Kpavaal 'A.'&r/vat, Pindar.