[469] Thucyd. ii. 29. He makes express mention of the nightingale
in connection with the story, though not of the metamorphosis.
See below, chap. xvi. p. 544, note 2. So also does Pausanias
mention and reason upon it as a real incident: he founds upon it
several moral reflections (i. 5, 4; x. 4, 5): the author of the
Λόγος Ἐπιτάφιος, ascribed to Demosthenês, treats it in the same
manner, as a fact ennobling the tribe Pandionis, of which Pandiôn
was the eponymus. The same author, in touching upon Kekrops, the
eponymus of the Kekropis tribe, cannot believe literally the
story of his being half man and half serpent: he rationalizes it
by saying that Kekrops was so called because in wisdom he was
like a man, in strength like a serpent (Demosth. p. 1397, 1398,
Reiske). Hesiod glances at the fable (Opp. Di. 566), ὀρθογόη
Πανδιονὶς ὦρτο χελιδών; see also Ælian., V. H. xii. 20. The
subject was handled by Sophoklês in his lost Têreus.
After the death of Pandiôn, Erechtheus succeeded to the kingdom,
and his brother, Butês, became priest of Poseidôn Erichthonius, a
function which his descendants ever afterwards exercised, the Butadæ
or Eteobutadæ. Erechtheus seems to appear in three characters in the
fabulous history of Athens—as a god, Poseidôn Erechtheus[470]—as a
hero, Erechtheus, son of the Earth—and now, as a king, son of Pandiôn:
so much did the ideas of divine and human rule become confounded and
blended together in the imagination of the Greeks in reviewing their
early times.
[470] Poseidôn is sometimes spoken of under the name of
Erechtheus simply (Lycophrôn, 158). See Hesychius, v. Ἐρεχθεύς.
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