Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/178

 172 THE CITY. BOOK IIT, compHshed until the time at which they place this per- sonage — that is to say, towards the sixteenth century before our era. We see, moreover, that this Cecrops reigned over only one of these twelve associations, that Avhich afterwards became Athens; the other eleven were completely independent; each had its tutelary deity, its altar, its sacred fire, and its chief.' Several centuries passed, during which the Cecrop- idiB insensibly acquired greater importance. Of this period there remains the tradition of a bloody struggle sustained by them against the Eumolpidae of Eleusis, the result of which was, that the latter submitted, with the single reservation that they should preserve the hereditary priesthood of their divinity.'"* There were doubtless other struggles and other conquests, of which no memorial has been preserved. The rock of the CecropidaB, on which was developed, by degrees, the worship of Athene, and which finally adopted the name of their principal divinity, acquired the supremacy over the other eleven states. Then appeared Theseus, the heir of the Cecropidie. All the traditions agree in declaring that he united the twelve groups into one city. He succeeded, indeed, in bringing all Attica to adopt the worship of Athene Polias, so that thenceforth the whole country celebrated the sacrifice of the Pa- nathenaja in common. Before him, every burgh had its sacred fire and its prytany. He wished to make the prytany of Athens the religious centre of all Attica.' From that time Athenian unity was established. In ' Pliilochorus, quoted by Strabo, IX. Thucydides, II. 16. Pollux, VIII. 111. ' 'J'hucydides, II. 15. Plutarch, Theseus, 24. Pausanias, I» 26-, A HI. 2.
 * Pausanias, I. 38.