Page:Philological Museum v2.djvu/371

On the Early Kings of Attica. 361 and Erechtheus. The Erechtheum of the Acropolis was conti- guous to the temple of Minerva Polias, and its principal altar was dedicated to Neptune, " on which,*" Pausanias says, (i. 26) "they also saci'ificed to Erechtheus;" a very natural variation of the story w^hen it was forgotten that Neptune and Erechtheus were the same. 'Rpe^dev<$ means ^"^ the shaker;"' epe-vOoimevr]. aaXevojuepr] Hes. i. e. shaken by the motion of the waves, and this (II. -v//'. 317) or the figurative sense of agitating with violent sorrow, (Od. e, S3. 157.) is the only Homeric use of the word. It is therefore equivalent to evoGi-^^Ooov or evvoai- 7ato9, the most frequent epithets of the god of the sea. It is surely then much more probable, that the hero and king Erechtheus was simply Neptune, than that Neptune, and a king whose name happens to be exactly descriptive of Nep- tune, having some how or other been united in worship at the same altar, Neptune thus came to be called 'EoeyOeiysj which is the explanation of Heyne ad Apoll. 3, 15. That Erechtheus was really Neptune, is further evident from the circumstance that the well of salt water in the Acro- polis, which was said to be the memorial of the contest of Neptune with Minerva for the honour of being the tutelary deity of Athens, was called OdXaaaa *Epe)(0}p<^. If Erech- theus had been, as Creuzer (Symbolik i. 401) supposes, an agricultural god, this connexion of his name with a well com- municating with the sea (Apoll. 3. 14. Pans. 1, 26. 8, 10) would be very incongruous, whereas nothing was more natural than to call it from the name of Neptune. It may seem a formidable objection to this explanation, that in the Homeric Catalogue, II. j3 546. seq. Erechtheus appears in a very different character : Oi o ap 'AQfjva^ elyov^ evKTL^evov TTToXieOpov Arjjuov Ep€')^6rjo9. jmeyaXrjTopo^, ov ttot AOrjuf] Qpeyjye, Aio9 Ovydrrjp^ re^e ce ^eicwpo^ apovpa^ Kaoo €V 'AOrjvrja elaeu eco ei^i ttlovl vrjco, FjvOace /uv TavpoicTi kol apveioi^ XaovTai }iovpoL AOrjvaioou, TrepiTeXXofxei/cov eviavTwv. 1 might reply to this, that as the Catalogue is generally admitted by critics to be a patchwork of very different ages, this passage is no proof that in the supposed age of Homer