Page:Philological Museum v2.djvu/369

359 On the Early Kings of Attica, 359 the real nature of Cecrops was forgotten ; but when the whole fable is viewed in the connexion in which we have exhibited it, the congruity of each part with the rest is evident. In the other interpretation, there is no such congruity ; for there is nothing in Cecrops to lead us to suppose that he was a deity of agriculture, or a divine person at all. A hero he would of course be considered. It is unnecessary to inquire into the historical existence of the second Cecrops, the son of Pandion, ApolL 3. 15. In endeavouring to reduce mytho- logical legends to historical probability and chronological order, an easy method of escaping from difficulties was to suppose more than one person to have borne the same name, or if necessary three. Thus we have a second Minos, and Freret maintains that there must have been three kings of the name of Sardanapalus. The second hangs upon the first and must fall with him. Cranaus comes next in the list of ApoUodorus ; he too is an autochthon, contemporary with the flood of Deucalion. Even the most confidino- reader will be startled when he is required to believe that Attica was called Kpavar} (rocky) from a king whose name is Kpavao^^ and who takes for his wife Yle^id^ (the plain country) ; yet a hundred histories of Greece have repeated the name of Cranaus as a king of Attica. Cranaus was expelled by Amphictyon^ whom some called the son of Deucalion and others an autochthon. He^ as we find from the Parian Marble, reigned originally at Thermopylae, and formed the people of that district into the assembly which bore his name. Now it should be remembered that the flood of Deucalion had happened just before, and had so destroyed the population of Northern Greece, that it was necessary they should be renewed by supernatural means. If then we receive Amphictyon as a real personage, of whom was the original Amphictyonic council composed? It must have been of the men who sprung from the stones which Deucalion and Pyrrha flung behind them. We have no right to demand from the author of a mythus, that he should conform to pohtical arithmetic, and not let his imagination outstrip the geometrical ratio of the increase of mankind ; if he drowns a country by a miracle, it only costs him another to repeople it, Vol. II. No. 5. Z z