During the reign of Kekrops, Attica was laid waste by Karian pirates
on the coast, and by invasions of the Aônian inhabitants from Bœôtia.
Kekrops distributed the inhabitants of Attica into twelve local
sections—Kekropia, Tetrapolis, Epakria, Dekeleia, Eleusis, Aphidna,
Thorikus, Braurôn, Kythêrus, Sphêttus, Kêphisius, Phalerus. Wishing to
ascertain the number of inhabitants, he commanded each man to cast a
single stone into a general heap: the number of stones was counted, and
it was found that there were twenty thousand.[460]
[460] Philochor. ap. Strabo. ix. p. 397.
Kekrops married the daughter of Aktæus, who (according to Pausanias’s
version) had been king of the country before him, and had called it by
the name of Aktæa.[461] By her he had three daughters, Aglaurus, Ersê
and Pandrosus, and a son, Erysichthôn. Kekrops is called by Pausanias
contemporary of the Arcadian Lykaôn, and is favorably contrasted with
that savage prince in respect of his piety and humanity.[462] Though
he has been often designated in modern histories as an immigrant from
Egypt into Attica, yet the far greater number of ancient authorities
represent him as indigenous or earth-born.[463]
[461] The Parian chronological marble designates Aktæus as an
autochthonous person. Marmor Parium, Epoch. 3. Pausan. i. 2, 5.
Philochorus treated Aktæus as a fictitious name (Fragm. 8, _ut
sup._).
[462] Pausan. viii. 2. 2. The three daughters of Kekrops were
not unnoticed in the mythes (Ovid, Metam. ii. 739): the tale of
Kephalus, son of Hersê by Hermês, who was stolen away by the
goddess Eôs or Hêmera in consequence of his surpassing beauty,
was told in more than one of the Hesiodic poems (Pausan. i. 3, 1;
Hesiod. Theog. 986). See also Eurip. Ion. 269.
[463] Jul. Africanus also (ap. Euseb. x. 9. p. 486-488) calls
Kekrops γηγενὴς and αὐτοχθών.
Erysichthôn died without issue, and Kranaus succeeded him,—another
autochthonous person and another eponymus,—for the name Kranai was
an old denomination of the inhabitants of Attica.[464] Kranaus was
dethroned by Amphiktyôn, by some called an autochthonous man; by
others, a son of Deukaliôn: Amphiktyôn in his turn was expelled
by Erichthonius, son of Hêphæstos and the Earth,—the same person
apparently as Erechtheus, but inserted by Apollodôrus at this point of
the series. Erichthonius, the pupil and favored companion of Athênê,
placed in the acropolis the original Palladium or wooden statue of
that goddess, said to have dropped from heaven: he was moreover the
first to celebrate the festival of the Panathenæa. He married the nymph
Pasithea, and had for his son and successor Pandiôn.[465] Erichthonius
was the first person who taught the art of breaking in horses to the
yoke, and who drove a chariot and four.[466]
[464] Herod. viii. 44. Κρανααὶ Ἀθῆναι, Pindar.
[465] Apollod. iii. 14. Pausan. i. 26, 7.
[466] Virgil, Georgic iii. 114.
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