Page:Philological Museum v2.djvu/358

348 348 On the Early Kings of Attica, explain ancient customs and religious rites and to exalt the antiquity of a nation or a family by giving it a founder in a remote age. There is nothing absolutely new in such a judgement of the heroic history of Athens, but though doubts have been expressed and explanations suggested respecting particular parts of it, I am not aware that they have been extended to the whole or exhibited in a regular form. Such a connected view however is particularly necessary, in an inquiry where much is conjectural, because repeated coinci- dences may give a high probability even to conjectures. When the die repeatedly shews the same face, we begin to think that something more steady than accident guides its fall. At the head of the list of Attic kings is commonly placed Ogyges or Ogygus. The evidence of his historical existence is so slight that we should be justified in passing over his name without further remark. '^ We have no assurance,^^ says Mr Mitford, " that even the name of Ogyges was known to the older Grecian authors. He is not mentioned by Hesiod, Homer, Herodotus, Thucydides, Plato, Aristotle, or even Strabo, to all of whom apparently he must have occurred as an object of mention, had his story been at all known in their times, or at least had it had any credit."*' Hist, of Greece, ch. i. sect. 3. Fully agreeing with Mr Mitford in his conclusion, I nevertheless think it desirable to inquire into the circumstances which led to Ogyges' being placed at the head of the Attic kings. There is little arbitrary fiction in mythology, and though Ogyges, in the character of a king, be a recent addition to Athenian history, the name Ogygian is found in the oldest remains of the Greek language. 'QyvyLo^ is commonly explained as meaning apyalo^^ and if this corresponded with any known root in Greek, or if all the other uses could be resolved into this, we should have concluded that the name Ogyges only alluded to the antiquity ascribed to this sovereign, the earliest ruler of Attica. But what propriety would there then be in the name 'Qyvyiri applied to the island in which Calypso detained Ulysses and which is not represented as distinguished by antiquity above other islands.? The real root is probably yvyr) signifying night or darkness rvyaaj vv^^j, i] Gicoreivri' Hesychius. That the w in the longer form is merely prothetic and no' part of