Aethiopians

“ Huge Earth bare these to Epaphus—soothsaying people, knowing seercraft by the will of Zeus the lord of oracles, but deceivers, to the end that men whose thought passes their utterance 1733 might be subject to the gods and suffer harm—Aethiopians and Libyans and mare-milking Scythians. For verily Epaphus was the child of the almighty Son of Cronos, and from him sprang the dark Libyans, and high-souled Aethiopians, and the Underground-folk and feeble Pygmies. All these are the offspring of the lord, the Loud-thunderer. ”

“ Æthiŏpia, an extensive country of Africa, at the south of Egypt, divided into east and west by the ancients, the former division lying near Meroe, and the latter near the Mauri. The country, properly now called Abyssinia, as well as the inhabitants, were little known to the ancients, though Homer has styled them the justest of men and the favourites of the gods. Diodorus, bk. 4, says, that the Æthiopians were the first inhabitants of the earth. They were the first who worshipped the gods, for which, as some suppose, their country has never been invaded by a foreign enemy. ”

“ After passing some time with his bride, Aegeus prepared to take his departure for his own dominions; but before doing so he led Aethra to the sea-shore, where, after depositing his sword and sandals under a huge rock, he thus addressed her: "Should the gods bless our union with a son, do not reveal to him the name and rank of his father until he is old enough to possess the strength requisite for moving this stone. Then send him to my palace at Athens bearing these tokens of his identity." ”

“ Eteocles, here represented as the younger, drove out Polynices, and seized the throne; Polynices takes refuge at Argos, where he prepares war against the usurper: an oracle declares that success shall be with that party which Oedipus joins, and a mysterious blessing is pronounced on the land which contains his bones. Thus, the possession of this wild tool of fate—raised up in age to a dread and ghastly consequence—becomes the argument of the play, as his death must become the catastrophe. It is the deep and fierce revenge of Oedipus that makes the passion of the whole. ”

“ The guards of the baley, seeing the act of the Æthiopian, seized him and bore him before the King. They told the deed.
The prince said: "Æthiopian robber, why did you act thus in reference to this picture?"
The Æthiopian answered: "O my lord, king of the world, I ask you a thousand and a thousand pardons. Your servant will tell the truth. If they kill me I shall die; if they hang me I shall be lifted very high; if they sell me I shall be carried very far away. O king of the world, hear the words of your humble slave. ”

“ Every Athenian is born into accepting the fact that Athena Polias is the divine warder of the city, as much as he is born into accepting the fact that it is his duty to obey the strategi in battle. To repudiate the gods of Athens, e.g. in favor of those of Egypt, is as much iniquity as to join forces against the Athenians if they are at war with Egypt;—the thing is sheer treason, and almost unthinkable. For countless generations the Athenians have worshipped the “Ancestral Gods.” They are proud of them, familiar with them; the gods have participated in all the prosperity of the city. ”

“ So slight is thy regard for thine ally?
[Aias appears in the tent door, with a blood-stained
scourge in his hand.]
AIAS
Oh hail, Athena! Hail thou Zeus-born maid!
Nobly hast thou stood by me. Now will I crown thee
With trophies all of gold for this rich conquest.
ATHENA
Thy words are welcome. But now tell me this:
Hast thou dyed well thy sword in the Argive host?
AIAS
Such vaunt is mine. I disclaim not that glory.
ATHENA
Against the Atreidæ didst thou arm thy hand?
AIAS
So that Aias nevermore shall they insult.
ATHENA
The men are dead, if rightly I take thy meaning. ”

“ He sends Ismene to offer a sacrifice to the Eumenides; in her absence Theseus enters, offers him protection and asks why he has come. Oedipus replies that he has a secret to reveal which is of great importance to Athens; at present there is peace between her and Thebes:
"but in the gods alone is no age or death; all else Time confounds, mastering everything. Strength of the Earth and of the body wastes, trust dies, disloyalty grows, the same spirit never stands firm among friends or allies. To some men early, to others late, pleasures become bitter and then again sweet." ”

“ We know from Thucydides that when Amphipolis was taken by Brasidas, many of the Athenians who were there settled retired to Eion; where they probably remained until the close of the Peloponnesian war, and were then forced back to Athens. We should then have to construe οἱ ἐνοικοῦντες ἐπ’ Ἠϊόνα Ἀθηναῖοι—“the Athenians residing at Eion;” which, though not a usual sense of the preposition ἐπὶ with an accusative case, seems the only definite meaning which can be made out here. ”

“ Athena, it is evident, is the later intruder, but we have had no evidence of Poseidon. Poseidon’s position at Athens is a very peculiar one. Unlike Erechtheus, he has no temple called after him, he cannot give his name even to a salt sea-well, his trident-mark is probably to begin with a thunder-smitten rock; unlike Athena he never gets the people called after him, and yet, spite of all this, his worship is ancient and deep-rooted, and from him rather than from Zeus or Athena the old nobility of Athens claimed to be descended. ”

“ It is worth noting that though Poseidon claimed the well and the trident-mark he never gave his name to either, and though Athena boasted of the olive-tree and snake, neither was ever called after her.
The name of Erechtheus or Erechthonios marks a stage definitely later than that of Kekrops. In the reign of Kekrops we hear nothing of foreign policy. He is engaged in civilizing his people, in marrying them, in teaching them to offer bloodless sacrifice. But the reign of Erechtheus is marked by a great war. He fought with and conquered Eumolpos, king of the neighbouring burgh Eleusis. ”

“ There are twelve towns well peopled, the homes of an ancient race. What would you do, Theseus, if you were king of such a land?"
Theseus stood astonished, as he looked across the broad bright sea and saw the fair Attic shore. His heart grew great within him, and he said, "If I were king of such a land, I would rule it wisely and well, in wisdom and in might."
And Aithra smiled and said, "Take, then, the sword and the sandals and go to thy father Ægeus, King of Athens, and say to [pg 249] him, 'The stone is lifted!' Then show him the sword and the sandals, and take what the gods shall send." ”

“ No one has done so much to obscure the early history of Athenian religion as Athena herself, by her constant habit of taking over the attributes of other divinities [78] . The eponymous [45] hero of each victorious tribe, Kekrops and Erechtheus in turn, is a home-keeping, home-guarding snake (οἰκουρὸς ὄφις) . But by the time of Herodotus [79] the sacred snake supposed to live on and guard the Acropolis lives in the sanctuary of Athena, and is almost the embodiment of the goddess herself ”

“ The founding of the city of Athens, apart from the mythological lore which ascribes its name to Athené, the goddess, is credited by the Greeks to Sais, a native of Egypt. The real founder of Athens, the one who made it a city and kingdom, was Theseus; an unacknowledged illegitimate child. The usual myth surrounds his birth and upbringing. King Ægeus, of Attica, his father, had an intrigue with Æthra. Before leaving, Ægeus informed her that he had hidden his sword and sandals beneath a great stone, hollowed out to receive them. ”

“ Athena is as much a part of Attica as gray Hymettus or white-crowned Pentelicus; and the very fact that comedians, like Aristophanes, make good-natured fun of the divinities indicates that “they are members of the family.”
Thirdly, notice that this religion is one mainly of outward reverence and ceremony. There is no “Athenian church”; nobody has drawn up an “Attic creed”—“I believe in Athena, the City Warder, and in Demeter, the Earth Mother, and in Zeus, the King of Heaven, etc.” ”

“ And now AEgeus was more loth to return home than he had been before, and he went up on the mountain which overlooks Troezen, and prayed to Athena, the queen of the air, to give him wisdom and show him what to do. Even while he prayed there came a ship into the harbor, bringing a letter to AEgeus and alarming news from Athens.
"Come home without delay"-these were words of the letter which the elders had sent-"come home quickly, or Athens will be lost. A great king from beyond the sea, Minos of Crete, is on the way with ships and a host of fighting men ”

“ In seven out of the nine plays in which the deus ex machinâ appears, the speech of the deity has special reference to Athens and her future. [14] In the Ion, Athena proclaims the divine origin of the Ionian race, and foretells the greatness of her colonial empire. In the Suppliants, the foreign policy of Athens is vindicated, and Athena puts her for ever in the right as against Argos. In the Iphigeneia in Taurica, the Orestes, and the Electra, the origin of some of her religious institutions, particularly of the sacred court of the Areopagus, is stamped with divine sanction. ”

“ Throughout the Iliad, Athena is herself the will or Menis of Achilles. If he is to be calmed, it is she who calms him; if angered, it is she who inflames him. In the first quarrel with Atreides, when he stands at pause, with the great sword half drawn, "Athena came from heaven, and stood behind him and caught him by the yellow hair." Another god would have stayed his hand upon the hilt, but Athena only lifts his hair. ”

“ Athens would seem better worth living for and dying for, when men realized that they held her in joint-possession with Gods, when they recognised that, in guarding as a sacred trust her immemorial institutions, in celebrating her splendid festivals, they were sealing to themselves the blessings intertwined with these, when they grasped the thought that in planning, toiling, and fighting for her, they were fellow-workers with Athena, Apollo, and the Twin Brethren. ”

“ The child Erichthonios is born from the Earth in the presence of Kekrops. His real mother, Earth, gives him up to the tendance of Athena; such is the scene familiar on terra-cottas and vase-paintings. Athena places him in a chest or wicker-basket, and gives him to the three daughters of Kekrops, Pandrosos, Herse, Aglauros, with strict orders not to open the chest. The two sisters, Herse and Aglauros (or according to some versions all three) , overcome by curiosity open the chest, and see the child with a snake or snakes coiled about him. ”

“ V. Between Attica and Megaris we survey the Isle of Salamis—the right to which we shall find contested both by Athens and the Megarians.
VI. Turning our eyes now to the land, we may behold, bordering Attica—from which a mountainous tract divides it—the mythological Boeotia, the domain of the Phoenician Cadmus, and the birthplace of Polynices and Oedipus. Here rise the immemorial mountains of Helicon and Cithaeron—the haunt of the muses; here Pentheus fell beneath the raging bands of the Bacchanals, and Actaeon endured the wrath of the Goddess of the Woods ”

“ These alien Powers that thus are made
Athenian evermore. To you
Fair be their will henceforth, to do
⁠Whate'er may bless and aid!
Chorus.
Hail to you all! hail yet again,
All who love Athens, Gods and men,
⁠Adoring her as Pallas' home!
And while ye reverence what ye grant—
My sacred shrine and hidden haunt—
⁠Blameless and blissful be your doom!
Athena. ”

“ Αει δια λαμπροτάτου βαίνοντες αβρος αιθέρος—ever delicately moving through most translucent air—said Euripides of the Athenians: and truly the bright air of Attica was made to be breathed by men in whom the light of culture should begin to shine. Ιοστέφανος is an epithet 341 of Aristophanes for his city; and if not crowned with other violets, Athens wears for her garland the air-empurpled hills—Hymettus, Lycabettus, Pentelicus, and Parnes. ”

“ This old king of primeval Athens claimed his share of the piety due to the dead of92 (Note 92) every household, an emotion of so powerful a quality among the unsophisticated peoples that some have sought in it the roots of all religion. It is an emotion hard to describe and harder still to appreciate. Erechtheus was the Son of Earth, that is, really, of Attic Earth; and on the painted vases you see him, a little naked child, being received by Athena from the hands of Earth, a female form half hidden in the ground, who is raising him into the light of day. ”

“ The nurse of the Dorian race—the small province of Doris—borders the Locrian territory to the south of Mount Oeta; while to the west of Locris spreads the mountainous Aetolia, ranging northward from Pindus to the Ambracian Bay. Aetolia gave to the heroic age the names of Meleager and Diomed, but subsequently fell into complete obscurity. The inhabitants were rude and savage, divided into tribes, nor emerged into importance until the latest era of the Grecian history. The political constitution of Aetolia, in the time referred to, is unknown. ”

“ Incomplete though the remains of this settlement are, the certain fact of its existence, and its close analogy to the palaces of Tiryns and Mycenae are of priceless value. Ancient Athens is now no longer a thing by itself; it falls into line with all the other ancient ‘Mycenaean’ fortified hills, with Thoricus, Acharnae, Aphidna, Eleusis. The citadel of Kekrops is henceforth as the citadel of Agamemnon and as the citadel of Priam. The ‘strong house’ of Erechtheus is not a temple, but what the words plainly mean, the dwelling of a king. ”