Page:History of Greece Vol I.djvu/89

 TOSEIDON. 57 Ceerops, or of Erechtheus, awarded to her the preference, much to the displeasure of Poseidon. Either on this account, or on account of the death of his son Eumolpus, slain in assisting the Eleusinians against Erechtheus, the Attic mythes ascribed to Poseidon great enmity against the Erechtheid family, which he is asserted to have ultimately overthrown : Theseus, whose glo- rious reign and deeds succeeded to that family, is said to have been really his son. 1 In several other places, in ^Egina, Argos and Naxos, Poseidon had disputed the privileges of patron- god with Zeus, Here and Dionysos : he was worsted in all, but bore his defeat patiently. 9 Poseidon endured a long slavery, in common with Apollo, gods as they were, 3 under Laomedon, king of Troy, at the command and condemnation of Zeus : the two gods rebuilt the walls of the city, which had been destroyed by Herakles. When their time was expired, the insolent Laome- don withheld from them the stipulated reward, and even accom- panied its refusal with appalling threats ; and the subsequent animosity of the god against Troy was greatly determined by the sentiment of this injustice. 4 Such periods of servitude, inflicted upon individual gods, are among the most remarkable of all the incidents in the divine legends. We find Apollo on another occa- sion condemned to serve Admetus, king of Pherae, as a punish- ment for having killed the Cyclopes, and Herakles also is sold as a slave to Omphale. Even the fierce Ares, overpowered and imprisoned for a long time by the two Aloids, 5 is ultimately lib- erated only by extraneous aid. Such narratives attest the discursive range of Grecian fancy in reference to the gods, as well as the perfect commingling of things and persons, divine and human, in their conceptions of the past. The god who serves is for the time degraded : but the supreme god who com- mands the servitude is in the like proportion exalted, whilst the idea of some sort of order and government among these superhuman beings was never lost sight of. Nevertheless the mythes respect- ing the servitude of the gods became obnoxious afterwards, along with many others, to severe criticism on the part of philosophers, 1 Apollodor. Hi. 14, 1 ; iii. 15, 3, 5. 2 Plutarch, Sympos. viii. 6, p. 741 3 Iliad, ii. 716, 766 ; Euripid. Alkcstis, 2. Sec Panyasis, Fragm. 12, p. 24 ed. Diintzer. 4 Iliad, vii. 452 xxi. 459. ! Iliad, v. 386.