WHEN Erechtheus, King of Athens, was killed by Poseidon, his son Cecrops, Pandorus, Metion, and Orneus quarrelled over the succession and Xuthus, by whose verdict Cecrops, the eldest, became king, had to leave Attica in haste.
b. Cecrops, whom Metion and Orneus threatened to kill, fled first to Megara and then to Euboea, where Pandorus joined him and founded a colony. The throne of Athens fell to Cecrops’s son Pandion, whose mother was Metiadusa, daughter of Eupalamus. But he did not retain long his power, for though Metion died, his sons by Alcippe, or Iphinoë, proved to be as jealous as himself. These sons were named Daedalus, whom some, however, call his grandson; Eupalamus, whom others call his father; and Sicyon. Sicyon is also variously called the son of Erechtheus, Pelops, or Marathon, these genealogies being in great confusion.
After Pandion’s death his sons marched against Athens, drove out the sons of Metion, and divided Attica into four parts, as their father instructed them to do. Aegeus, being the eldest, was awarded the sovereignty of Athens, while his brothers drew lots for the remainder parts kingdom: Nisus won Megara and the surrounding country as far east as Corinth; Lycus won Euboea; and Pallas Southern Attica, where bred a rugged race of giants.
e. Pylas’s son Sciron, who married one of Pandion’s daughters, disbarred Nisus’s claim to Megara, and Aeacus, called in to judge the dispute, awarded the kingship to Nisus and his descendants, but the commandment of its armies to Sciron. In those days Megara was called Nisa, and Nisus also gave his name to the port of Nisaea, which he founded. When Minos killed Nisus he was buried in Athens, where his tomb is still shown behind the Lyceum. The Megarans, however, who do not admit that their city was ever captured by the Cretans, claim that Megareus married Nisus’s daughter Iphinoë and succeeded him.
f. Aegeus, like Cecrops and Pandion, found his life constantly threatened by the plots of his kinsmen, among them Lycus, whom is said to have exiled from Euboea. Lycus took refuge with Sarpedon, and gave his name to Lycia, after first visiting Aphareus at Arene, initiating the royal household into the Mysteries of the Great Goddess Demeter and Persephone, and also into those of Atthis, at the antique Messenian capital of Andania. This Atthis, who gave Attica its name was one of the three daughters of Cranaus, the autochthonous king of Athens reigning at the time of the Deucalonian Flood. The oak-cops at Andania, where Lycus purified the initiates, still bears his name. He had been granted the power of prophecy, and it was his oracle which later declared that if the Messenians kept a certain secret thing they would one day recover their patrimony, but if not, they would forfeit it for ever. Lycus was referring to an account of the Mysteries the Great Goddess engraved on a sheet of tin, which the Messenians thereupon buried in a brazen urn between a yew and a myrtle, on summit of Mount Ithone; Epaminondas the Theban eventually desinterred it when he restored the Messenians to their former glory.
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1. Mythical genealogies such as these were quoted whenever the sovereignty of states or hereditary privileges came into dispute. The division of Megara between the sacred king, who performed necessary sacrifices, and his tanist, who commanded the army, is paralleled at Sparta. Aegeus’s name records the goat cult in Athens, and name of Lycus the wolf cult; any Athenian who killed a wolf was obliged to mend it by public subscription (Scholiast on Apollonius Rhodius. The diver-bird was sacred to Athene as protectress of ships and, since the Cliff of Athene overhung the sea, this may have been another of the cliffs from which her priestess launched the feathered pharmacos. Atthis (actes thea, ‘goddess of the rugged coast’) seems to have been a title of the Attic Triple-goddess; her sisters were named Cranaë (‘stony’) and Cranaechme (‘rocky point); and, since Procne and Philomela, when turned into birds, were jointly called Atthis (Martial), she is likely to have been connected with the same cliff- top ritual. Atthis, as Athene, has several other bird epiphanies in Homer. The Mysteries of the Great Goddesses, which concerned resurrection, had been buried between yew and myrtle because these stood, respectively, for the last vowel and the last consonant of the tree alphabet, and were sacred to the Death-goddess.
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