Erechtheus And Eumolpus

KING Pandion died prematurely of grief when he learned what befallen Procne, Philomela, and Itys. His twin sons shared the in inheritance: Erechtheus becoming King of Athens, while Butes served as priest both to Athene and Poseidon.

b. By his wife Praxithea, Erechtheus had four sons, among the successor, Cecrops; also seven daughters: namely Protogonia, Pandora, Procnis, wife of Cephalus, Creusa, Oreithyia, Chthonia, who married her uncle Butes, and Otionia, the youngest.

c. Now, Poseidon secretly loved Chione, Oreithyia’s daughter to Boreas. She bore him a son, Eumolpus, but threw him into the sea, afraid that Boreas should be angry. Poseidon watched over Eumolpus, and left him up on the shores of Ethiopia, where he was reared in the home of Benthesicyme, his half-sister by the Sea-goddess Amphitrite. When Eumolpus came of age, Benthesicyme married him to one of her daughters; but he fell in love with another of them, and she therefore banished him to Thrace, where he plotted against his protector, Tegyrius, and was forced to seek refuge at Eleusis. Here he mend ways, and became priest of the Mysteries of Demeter and Persephone, into which he subsequently initiated Heracles, at the same time teaching him to sing and play the lyre. With the lyre, Eumolpus had great skill and was also victorious in the flute contest at Pelias’s funeral. His Eleusinian co-priestesses were the daughters of Celeus; and his well-known piety at last earned him the dying forgiveness of Tegyrius, who bequeathed him the throne of Thrace.

d. When war broke out between Athens and Eleusis, Eumolpus brought a large force of Thracians to the Eleusinians’ assistance, claiming the throne of Attica himself in the name of his father Poseidon\. The Athenians were greatly alarmed, and when Erechtheus consulted an oracle he was told to sacrifice his youngest daughter Otionia to Athene, if he hoped for victory. Otionia was willingly led to the altar, whereupon her two eldest sisters, Protogonia and Pandora, also killed themselves, having once vowed that if one of them should die because of violence, they would die too.

f. By the terms of a peace then concluded, the Eleusinians became subject to the Athenians in everything, except the control of their Mysteries. Eumolpus was succeeded as priest by his younger son Ceryx, whose descendants still enjoy great hereditary privileges at Eleusis.

g. Ion reigned after Erechtheus; and, because of his three daughters’ self-sacrifice, wineless libations are still poured to them today.

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1. The myth of Erechtheus and Eumolpus concerns the subjugation of Eleusis by Athens, and the Thraco-Libyan origin of the Eleusinian Mysteries. An Athenian cult of the orgiastic Bee-nymph of Midsummer also enters into the story, since Butes is associated in Greek myth with a bee cult on Mount Eryx; and his twin brother Erechtheus (‘he who hastens over the heather’, rather than ‘shatterer’) is the husband of the ‘Active Goddess ‘, the Queen-bee. The name of King Tegyrius of Thrace, whose kingdom Erechtheus’s grandson inherited, makes a further association with bees: it means ‘beehive coveter’. Athens was famous for its honey.

2. Erechtheus’s three noble daughters, like the three daughters of his ancestor Cecrops, are the Pelasgian Triple-goddess, to whom libations were poured on solemn occasions: Otionia (‘with the ear-flaps’), who is said to have been chosen as a sacrifice to Athene, being evidently Owl-goddess Athene herself; Protogonia, the Creatrix Eurynome; and Pandora, the Earth-goddess Rhea. At the transition from matriarchy to patriarchy some of Athene’s priestesses may have been sacrificed to Poseidon.

3. Poseidon’s trident and Zeus’s thunderbolt were originally the same weapon, the sacred labrys, or double-axe, but distinguished from other when Poseidon became god of the sea,  and Zeus claimed the right to the thunderbolt.