Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/87

 ELEUSIS. 7] standing antipathies, and prohibitions of intermarriage, which might seem to indicate that these had once been separate little states. 1 Though in most cases we can infer little from the legends and raligious ceremonies which nearly every deme- had peculiar to itself, yet those of Eleusis are so remarkable, as to establish the probable autonomy of that township down to a comparatively late period. The Homeric Hymn to DemGter, recounting the visit of that goddess to Eleusis after the abduction of her daughter, and the first establishment of the Eleusinian ceremonies, specifies the eponymous prince Eleusis, and the various chiefs of the place, Keleos, Triptolemus, Dickies, and Eumolpus ; it also notices the Rharian plain in the neighborhood of Eleusis, but not the least allusion is made to Athens or to any concern of the Atheni- ans in the presence or worship of the goddess. There is reason to believe that at the time when this Hymn was composed, Eleusis was an independent town : what that time was we have no means of settling, though Yoss puts it as low as the 30th Olympiad. 3 And the proof hence derived is so much the more, valuable, be- cause the Hymn to Demeter presents a coloring strictly special and local ; moreover, the story told by Solon to Croesus, respect- ing Tellus the Athenian, who perished in battle against the neigh- boring townsmen of Eleusis, 4 assumes, in like manner, the independence of the latter in earlier times. Nor is it unimpor- tant to notice that, even so low as 300 B. c., the observant visitor Dikaearchus professes to detect a difference between the native 1 Such as that between the Pallenseans and Agnusians (Plutarch, Theseus, 12). Acharnnc was the largest and most populous deme in Attica (see Ross, Die Demen von Attika, p. 62: Thucyd. ii, 21) ; yet Philochoras docs not mention it as having ever constituted a substantive TroXtc. Several of the demes seem to have stood in repute for peculiar qualities, good or bad: see Aristophan. Acharn. 177, with Elmsley's note. expressly on the eponymous heroes of the Attic demes and tribes (Treller. Polemonis Fragm. p. 42) : the Atthidographers were all rich on the same subject: see the Fragments of the Atthis of Hellanikus (p 24, ed. Piellcr). also those of Istrus, Philochorus, etc. 3 J. H. Voss, Erlaiiterungen, p. 1 : sec the Hymn, 96-106, 151-475: com- pare Hermcsianax ap. Aihen. xiii, p. 597. 4 Hcrodot. i, 30.
 * Strabo, ix. p. 396; Plutarch, Theseus, 14. Polemo had written a book