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362 362 On the Early Kings of Attica. this conception of Erechtheus prevailed ^^. But I prefer an- swering, that I admit that in Homer'^s time the original mean- ing of many things in mythology had been completely lost, in the popular and poetical notion of them. The worship of Minerva and Neptune at Athens must have ascended to the very foundation of the state, a time sufficiently remote from that of Homer to admit of the conversion of Erechtheus into an avroyddyv and a hero nourished by Minerva. As '^peyQ^v^ signifies "the shaker,^' so '^piyQovio^ "the earthshaker,"' still an epithet of Neptune. Such a compound as '^peyQiyQovio^i would have been intolerable to Hellenic ears. The ancients fluctuate in their statements respecting . Erechtheus and Erichthonius, some making them the same, others different ; and as authority cannot settle the point, we must appeal to probability and internal evidence, which is so strong in favour of their identity, that even Clavier (Hist, des Prem> T. de la Grece i. 122) regards them as the same. To Erichthonius is generally attributed the invention of yoking horses to the car ; the Arundel marble attributes this to Erechtheus ; both statements confirm their identity with Neptune, cui prima frementem Fudit equum tellus magno percussa tridenti. How the god of the waters came to be so closely connected with horsemanship and driving, is difficult to say ; whether because the level shores of inland lakes and of the sea were the earliest hippodromes ; or because his worship and the use of the quadriga came together from Libya (Her. 4, 189. Matthia. ad H. Hom. in Ap. 231 seq.), or from some more mystical connexion, Miiller Proleg. p. 264. The name of '^piyQovio^ appears in Homer and the legends of Troy, as the son and successor of Dardanus, II. J/, 219 seq. That he is really no other than Xo(jeilS)v ^8 In the Odyssey i/, 81, Minerva is said to go 'Epex6>7o§ 'kvkivov oo/jlov, as if this or 'E^ex^ftoi/ were then the name of the principal temple of the Acropolis and consequently Erechtheus, i, e. Neptune, the chief divinity. So Apoll. 3. 14. 3. tj/c6i/ nrpio^o^s Uoa-eLocov tirl tj/V 'Attlkiju. Neptune seems to have been properly the god of Attica, Minerva to have belonged more exclusively to the Acropolis ; Neptune was the god of the lonians, IMinerva of the Athenians ; and when Athens had ceased to be Ionian^ except in remembrance, Minerva was exalted above Neptune.