Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 27, 2025
Except in times of danger the king at Athens was not consulted; in ordinary seasons they carried on their government and settled their affairs without his interference; sometimes even they waged war against him, as in the case of the Eleusinians with Eumolpus against Erechtheus.
When Lobeck desires to fix the date of this religious union at so recent an epoch as the time of Solon, in consequence of a solitary passage in Herodotus, in which Solon, conversing with Croesus, speaks of hostilities between the Athenians and Eleusinians, he seems to me to fail in sufficient ground for the assumption.
The burying-places of the most part are yet to be seen in the village called Eleutherae; those of the commanders, at Eleusis, where Theseus allotted them a place, to oblige Adrastus. The story of Euripides in his Suppliants is disproved by Aeschylus in his Eleusinians, where Theseus himself relates the facts as here told.
Euripides's play of the 'Suppliants' is contradicted by that of Aeschylus, the 'Eleusinians, in which Theseus is introduced giving orders for this to be done.
The principal event recorded in these early times, for which there seems some foundation, is a war between Erechtheus of Athens and the Eleusinians; the last assisted or headed by the Thracian Eumolpus. Erechtheus is said to have fallen a victim in this contest.
And we may here add, that secrecy once established, the rites might at a very early period obtain, and perhaps deserve, an enigmatic and mystic character. But when, after a signal defeat of the Eleusinians, the two states were incorporated, the union was confirmed by a joint participation in the ceremony to which a political cause would thus give a more formal and solemn dignity.
But a treaty afterward concluded with the Eleusinians confirmed the ascendency of Athens, and, possibly, by a religious ceremonial, laid the foundation of the Eleusinian mysteries. Upon the dim and confused traditions relative to Ion, the wildest and most luxuriant speculations have been grafted prolix to notice, unnecessary to contradict.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking