Page:Philological Museum v2.djvu/378

368 368 On the Early Kings of Attica. It is the opinion of several able German writers, Miiller Dorier i. 237. Wachsmuth Hell. Alt. i. 230, that the lonians were a military caste, who reduced the agricultural Pelasgi to the condition of tributaries and made themselves a ruling aristocracy. No ancient writer however knows anything of such a distinction between the military class and the other three of whom the Athenian and other Ionic states were constituted ; the Ergadeis, Aigicoreis and Teleontes are made to derive their names from sons of Ion according to the legend in Herodotus 5. 66^ just as much as the military Hopletes. It is true that Herodotus represents Ion as arpa- Tdp')(Y}^^ and Strabo as 7ro€,aap'x^o^^ of the Athenians, and Miiller regards this as an indication of the military character of the whole Ionian people. But the case admitted of no other representation of him. It was in some way to be ac- counted for that the Athenian people should have borne the name of lonians and Attica of Ionia. They did not like the name of lonians (Her. i. 143) and were not likely therefore to make Ion one of their native kings, but they represented him as entrusted with the government (Strabo i. 556) or as being made commander of their forces. So Eumolpus is re- presented (Apoll. 3. 15) as the commander of the army of Eleusis, though the Eumolpidae instead of being a mihtary caste were the hereditary priesthood of the Eleusinian Ceres. The story indeed hung badly together, for it was very im- probable that the divisions of the people should be named from four sons of Ion, vmless Ion had been something more to Athens than its polemarchus ; but consistency is not to be looked for in such attempts. The lonians appear to have been as ignorant of their having been a predominant caste as the Athenians of their having been subject to such a supe- riority : Herodotus gives no hint of anything of the kind. The passages in Attic authors to which Miiller refers, as proving that the eupatrids at Athens were of pure Ionian blood, are far from establishing this point. In Demosth. c. Eubulid. 1315. to be taken to the temple of Apollo Tcarpioo is mentioned as a proof of Athenian blood and citizenship, not of Ionian and eupatrid extraction ; and if it be said, that anciently the citizenship was limited to Ionian blood and eupatrid extraction, we ask for the proof of this limitation.