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V. [1] Near to the
Council Chamber of the Five Hundred is what is
called Tholos (Round House); here the presidents
sacrifice, and there are a few small statues made
of silver. Farther up stand statues of heroes,
from whom afterwards the Athenian tribes received
their names. Who the man was who established
ten tribes instead of four, and changed their old
names to new ones--all this is told by Herodotus.
[2] The eponymoi
--this is the name given to them--are
Hippothoon son of Poseidon and Alope
daughter of Cercyon, Antiochus, one of the
children of Heracles borne to him by Meda daughter
of Phylas, thirdly, Ajax son of Telamon, and
to the Athenians belongs Leos, who is said
to have given up his daughters, at the command of
the oracle, for the safety of the commonwealth.
Among the eponymoi is Erechtheus, who
conquered the Eleusinians in battle, and killed
their general, Immaradus the son of Eumolpus. There
is Aegeus also and Oeneus the bastard
son of Pandion, and Acamas, one of the
children of Theseus.
[3] I saw also among
the eponymoi statues of Cecrops and
Pandion, but I do not know who of those
names are thus honored. For there was an earlier
ruler Cecrops who took to wife the daughter of
Actaeus, and a later--he it was who migrated to
Euboea--son of Erechtheus, son of Pandion, son of
Erichthonius. And there was a king Pandion who was
son of Erichthonius, and another who was son of
Cecrops the second. This man was deposed from his
kingdom by the Metionidae, and when he fled to
Megara--for he had to wife the daughter of Pylas
king of Megara--his children were banished with
him. And Pandion is said to have fallen ill there
and died, and on the coast of the Megarid is his
tomb, on the rock called the rock of Athena the
Gannet.
[4] But his children
expelled the Metionidae, and returned from
banishment at Megara, and Aegeus, as the eldest,
became king of the Athenians. But in rearing
daughters Pandion was unlucky, nor did they leave
any sons to avenge him. And yet it was for the sake
of power that he made the marriage alliance with
the king of Thrace. But there is no way for a
mortal to overstep what the deity thinks fit to
send. They say that Tereus, though wedded to
Procne, dishonored Philomela, thereby transgressing
Greek custom, and further, having mangled the body
of the damsel, constrained the women to avenge her.
There is another statue, well worth seeing, of
Pandion on the Acropolis.
X. [1] On the base below the wooden horse
[dedicated to Apollo at Delphi by the Argives
in 424 BCE] is an inscription which says that
the statues were dedicated from a tithe of the
spoils taken in the engagement at Marathon. They
represent Athena, Apollo, and Miltiades, one of the
generals. Of those called heroes there are
Erechtheus, Cecrops, Pandion,
Leos, Antiochus, son of Heracles by
Meda, daughter of Phylas, as well as Aegeus
and Acamas, one of the sons of Theseus.
These heroes gave names, in obedience to a Delphic
oracle, to tribes at Athens. Codrus however, the
son of Melanthus, Theseus, and Neleus, these are
not givers of names to tribes.
LXVI. [1] Athens, which had been great
before, now grew even greater when her tyrants had
been removed. The two principal holders of power
were Cleisthenes an Alcmaeonid, who was reputed to
have bribed the Pythian priestess, and Isagoras son
of Tisandrus, a man of a notable house but his
lineage I cannot say. His kinsfolk, at any rate,
sacrifice to Zeus of Caria.
[2] These men with
their factions fell to contending for power,
Cleisthenes was getting the worst of it in this
dispute and took the commons into his party.
Presently he divided the Athenians into ten
tribes instead of four as formerly. He called none
after the names of the sons of Ion--Geleon,
Aegicores, Argades, and Hoples--but invented for
them names taken from other heroes, all native to
the country except Aias. Him he added despite
the fact that he was a stranger because he was a
neighbor and an ally.
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