Page:History of Greece Vol I.djvu/235

DAUGHTERS OF ERECHTHEUS. 203 Killed Eumolpus with his own hand. 1 Erechtheus was wor- shipped as a god, and his daughters as goddesses, at Athens.^ Their names and their exalted devotion were cited along with those of the warriors of Marathon, in the public assembly of Athens, by orators who sought to arouse the languid patriot, or to denounce the cowardly deserter; and the people listened both to one and the other with analogous feelings of grateful veneration, as well as with equally unsuspecting faith in the matter of fact. 3 1 Apollodor. iii. 15, 4. Some said that Immaradus, son of Eumolpus, had been killed by Erechtheus (Tausan. i. 5, 2) ; others, that both Eumolpus and his son had experienced this fate (Schol. ad Eurip. Phceniss. 854). But we learn from Pausanias himself what the story in the interior of the Erechtheion was, that Erechtheus killed Eumolpus (i. 27, 3). 2 Cicero, Nat.Deor. iii. 19 ; Philochor. ap. Schol. CEdip. Col. 100. Three daughters of Erechtheus perished, and three daughters were worshipped (Apollodor. iii. 15,4; Hesychius, Zevyoe rpnrap-&evov ; Eurip. Erechtheus. Fragm. 3, Dindorf) ; but both Euripides and Apollodorus said that Erech- theus was only required to sacrifice, and only did sacrifice, one, the other two slew themselves voluntarily, from affection for their sister. I cannot but think ("in spite of the opinion of Welcker to the contrary, Griechisch. Trago'd- ii. p. 722) that the genuine legend represented Erechtheus as having sacrificed all three, as appears in the Ion of Euripides (276) : losr. Harf/p ' Epex&Eitf auf e-dvoe avyybvovq ; CREUSA. "Er/l?? irpb yaiai atydyia Ttapdevovf KTOVCIV. low. 20 (T efe<TCJ$7?f TTUJ- Kaar/vr/ruv povi] ; CKEDSA. Bpe<pof veoyvov /J.J/TP^ fyv iv dyKuhaif. Compare with this passage, Demosthen. Aoyof 'ETrtra^. p. 1397, Reisk Just before, the death of the three daughters of Kekrops, for infringing the commands of Athene, had been mentioned. Euripides modified this in his Erechtheus, for he there introduced the mother Praxithea consenting to the immolation of one daughter, for the rescue of the country from a foreign in vader : to propose to a mother the immolation of three daughters at once, would have been too revolting. In most instances we find the strongly marked features, the distinct and glaring incidents as well as the dark con- trasts, belong to the Hesiodic or old Post-Homeric legend ; the changes made afterwards go to soften, dilute, and to complicate, in proportion as the feel- ings of the public become milder and more humane ; sometimes however the later poets add new horrors. 3 See the striking evidence contained in the oration of Lykurgus against Leocrates (p. 201-204. Reiske ; Demosthen. Aoy. ' ExiraQ. 1. c. ; and Xeno- phon, Memor. iii. 5, 9) : from the two latter passages we see that the Athe- nian story represented the invasion under Eumolpus as a combined assault from the western continent.