in the invention of war horses and chariots, and to have been buried in the temple which he had dedicated to her in Cecropia, and which, from the circumstance of his interment in it, was to the latest period called the Erechtheium. The superiority given by Erechtheus to the worship of Minerva was accompanied by a change in the name of his people, who in Pelasgic time had been Pelasgi, under Cecrops were Cecropidæ, and now became Athenians'. 3. Pandion the first. In his reign lived Triptolemus, who was supposed to have been instructed in the arts of agriculture by Ceres, and to have instituted the Eleusinian mysteries. 4. Erechtheus the second. He colonized a part of Euboea, and defeated Eumolpus, who, with a body of Thracians, had seized Eleusis, but was slain in the action 2. The daughters of Erechtheus were devoted to death, that their father might obtain success in the Eleusinian war. About the same time the daughters of Leos were sacrificed to avert a contagious sickness, in obedience to the Delphic oracle, which required human sacrifices upon this occasion. 5. Ion, son of Creusa, 'Herodot. 8, 44. Some of the ancients believed Erichthonius, the reputed son of Vulcan, to have been the same as Erechtheus, the father of Creusa and of Cecrops the second. Sir I. Newton, adopting this opinion, struck out from the list of Athenian kings the names of Pandion I. and Erechtheus II.; nevertheless, the far greater number of authorities incline to the opposite opinion, which is found more useful therefore in the explanation of topography and ancient monuments. 3 Euripid. Ion 281. See Meursius de Reg. Athen. 2, 9. Aristid. Panathen. p. 119 Jebb. 20. Suid. in Aɛwkópiov. Schol. Thucyd. 1, Ælian. Var. Hist. 12, 28. See daughter of Erechtheus, was distinguished as a teacher of religion rather than as a temporal monarch. He introduced the worship of Apollo Pythius, who, becoming one of the chief protectors of Athens, was surnamed Patrous: and hence Ion himself was fabled to have been the son of Apollo'. 6. Egeus, who, after the direct succession had been considerably disturbed by the collateral branches, recovered the throne, and enjoyed a long reign of thirty-nine years. 7. Theseus. In his way to Athens from Trozen, where he had been living in obscurity, Theseus cleared the country of the robbers who opposed him, and for these brilliant exploits was acknowledged by Ægeus and the Athenians as successor to the throne. He afterwards relieved Athens from a disgraceful tribute to the king of Crete, and, having succeeded to the royal authority, laid the foundation of the early pre-eminence of his country, by establishing a court of judicature and a festival common to all Attica. The city was enlarged by the occupation of Meursii Ceramicus Gem. 17. Pausan. Attic. 5, 2. It has been asserted, that neither oracles nor human sacrifices were known to the heroic ages; but these traditions of the Athenians seem to prove the contrary. The story of Iphigeneia and the sacrifice of twelve Trojans, by Achilles, to appease the manes of Patroclus, leave little or no doubt that this savage custom prevailed as late as the Trojan war. From Ion the Athenians, according to Herodotus (8, 44), once more derived a new name, and became Ionians. But this appellation was applied to all the Greeks who like the Athenians and Peloponnesian Achæans were distinguished by their worship of Neptune and their division into four tribes and twelve cities,—a division older than the time of Ion, and probably Pelasgic; the distinctive name of Athenians therefore was still necessary. some of the ground to the southward and eastward of the Cecropia or Acropolis, and the whole assumed the name of ̓Αθῆναι. The immediate consequence of this change, which occurred about the year 1300 B.C., was the decline of the other eleven Attic cities, a concentration of government in Athens, and a great increase of population in Attica, attracted by the security and justice resulting from the new laws of Theseus. Homer, the earliest of Greek historians, has left us a strong confirmation of the reality of those facts, which are not obviously fabulous, in the history of the two great heroes of ancient Attic story, Erechtheus and Theseus. He notices the temple of Erechtheus, and those periodical sacrifices of an ox and a sheep', which we know to have been performed to a very late period of Athenian superstition2; and, 1 Οἱ δ ̓ ἄρ ̓ Αθήνας εἶχον, ἐϋκτίμενον πτολίεθρον, II. B. 546. These lines have been supposed an interpolation of the time of Solon or Peisistratus, but they agree with those of the Odyssey, One reason given for suspecting them is, that Homer makes no allusion to temples; but this is not correct. There was a temple (vnòs) at Cilla before the Trojan war, Il. A. 39. Philochorus et Staphylus ap. Harpocrat. in 'Emíßowv. in confirmation of the political reforms of Theseus, instead of naming all the cities of Attica, as he has done in the other provinces of Greece, he speaks of Athens alone, and of the people of Erechtheus, that terrible Anuos, whose first specimen of tyranny and ingratitude was the banishment of their great benefactor himself, whom they left to die an exile in the island of Scyrus. Egeus introduced the worship of Venus Urania, and Theseus, that of Venus and Peitho', as well as that of Hercules, with whom, according to the Athenian antiquaries, he was contemporary, and to whom, in return for services received in Epirus, he dedicated all his own sacred property in Attica, with the exception of four Theseia, which always continued to bear his name,2the worship of Apollo Delphinius he appears to have found already established. During the six or seven centuries which elapsed between the Trojan war and the reign of Peisistratus, the Athenians seem to have been not more engaged in foreign wars or internal commotions than was sufficient to maintain their martial spirit and free government, both of which were essential to the progress made by them in civilization, commerce, and a successful cultivation of the arts. The change of chief magistrate from king to archon for life, then to decennial and to annual archon, indicates that gradual increase, first of aristocratical, and then of popular authority, which ended in a purely democratical government. Solon, apparently aware of the evils to which these changes tended, endeavoured to 1 Pausan. Attic. 14, 6. 22, 3. 2 Philochorus ap. Plutarch. Thes. 35. correct them by enacting that none but men of a certain landed property should be eligible to magistracies; but the restriction was insufficient, or at least came too late. The excess of democratic power led to its usual result; and Peisistratus not only usurped all the functions of government to himself, but made them hereditary in the persons of his two sons, which caused so strong a re-action in favour of democracy, that Cleisthenes, Cimon, and Pericles, could only direct affairs by conciliating the people and adding to their privileges. After the time of Aristeides, who offered some check to the advances of democracy, the poorest Athenian citizens might aspire to every office, except a few connected with finance; and they were even paid for attending those multitudinous assemblies of the Pnyx and Theatre, which embarrassed all rational business, and at length threw the fate and character of the country into the hands of those who might chance to possess the popular favour. But notwithstanding this progressive decline, caused by the abuses to which all human establishments are liable, the great objects of government were attained. Property was protected, and industry was encouraged: for, without these blessings, the Athenians could not possibly have made any advances to that perfection in the arts of civilized life at which they at length arrived, however adapted to it by the active and sagacious minds with which nature had endowed them, by their innate good taste, and by their keen perception of the beautiful. During the ages which elapsed between the reigns of Theseus and Peisistratus, we may suppose that the advance of art caused the altars of the several deities, |