Page:History of Greece Vol I.djvu/233

 LEGENDS AND GENEALOGIES OF ELEUSIS. 201 Athenians, with, the aid of a body of Thracian allies ; indeed it appears that the legends of Athens, originally foreign and un- friendly to those of Eleusis, represented him as having been him- self a Thracian born and an immigrant into Attica. 1 Respecting Eumolpus however and his parentage, the discrepancies much exceed even the measure of license usual in the legendary ge nealogies, and some critics, both ancient and modern, have sought to reconcile these contradictions by the usual stratagem of sup- posing two or three different persons of the same name. Even Pausanias, so familiar with this class of unsworn witnesses, com- plains of the want of native Eleusinian genealogists, 2 and of the extreme license of fiction in which other authors had indulged. In the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, the most ancient testimony before us, composed, to all appearance, earlier than the com- plete incorporation of Eleusis with Athens, Eumolpus appears (to repeat briefly what has been stated in a previous chapter) as one of the native chiefs or princes of Eleusis, along with Tripto- 1 Apollodor. iii. 15,3; Thucyd. ii. 15; Iskorates (Panegyr, t. i. p. 206; Panathenaic. t. ii. p. 560, Auger), Lykurgus, cont. Leocrat. p. 201, Rciske, Pausan. i. 38, 3 ; Euripid. Erechth. Fragm. The Schol. ad. Soph. (Ed. CoL 1048 gives valuable citations from Ister, Akestodorus and Androtion : we see that the inquirers of antiquity found it difficult to explain how the Eumol- pids could have acquired their ascendant privileges in the management of the Eleusinia. seeing that Eumolpus himself was a foreigner. ZTJTEITCIC, ri 6ijTroTe ol Ev/j.o^,7r'i6ai riJv re^eruv i^dpxovai, Zevoi ovrsf. Thucydide's does not call Enmolpus a Thracian : Strabo's language is very large and vague (vii. p. 321): Iskorates says that he assailed Athens in order to vindicate the rights of his father Poseidon to the sovereign patronage of the city. Hy- ginus copies this (fab. 46). yuv, aAAa re Tr%aaa(r&at Sedunaai KOL fiahiGTa EC T& "yevrj TUV r/puuv. Sea Heyne ad Apollodor. iii. 15, 4. " Eumolpi nomen modo communicatum pluribus, modo plurium hominum res et facta cnmnlata in nnnm. Is ad quern Hercules venisse dicitur, serior aetate fuit : antiquior est is de quo hoc loco agitur antecessisse tamen hunc debet alias, qni cum Triptolemo vixit," etc. See the learned and valuable comments of Lobeck in his Aglao- phamus, torn. i. p. 206-213: in regard to the discrepancies of this narrative ha observes, I think, with great justice (p. 211), " quo uno exemplo ex innu- mrabilibus delecto, arguitur eorum temeritas, qui ex variis discordibusque poetarum et mythographorum narratiunculis, antiquae famae formam et quasi lineamenta recognosci posse sperant." 9
 * Pausan. i. 38. 3. 'Ehcvaivioi re upxaloi, are ov Trpoaovruv aiai yevea-