The three remaining daughters of Erechtheus—he had six in all[476]—were in Athenian legend yet more venerated than their sisters, on account of having voluntarily devoted themselves to death for the safety of their country. Eumolpus of Eleusis was the son of Poseidôn and the eponymous hero of the sacred gens called the Eumolpids, in whom the principal functions, appertaining to the mysterious rites of Dêmêtêr at Eleusis, were vested by hereditary privilege: he made war upon Erechtheus and the Athenians, with the aid of a body of Thracian allies; indeed it appears that the legends of Athens, originally foreign and unfriendly to those of Eleusis, represented him as having been himself a Thracian born and an immigrant into Attica.[477] Respecting Eumolpus however and his parentage, the discrepancies much exceed even the measure of license usual in the legendary genealogies, and some critics, both ancient and modern, have sought to reconcile these contradictions by the usual stratagem of supposing two or three different persons of the same name. Even Pausanias, so familiar with this class of unsworn witnesses, complains of the want of native Eleusinian genealogists,[478] and of the extreme license of fiction in which other authors had indulged. [476] Suidas and Photius, v. Πάρθενοι: Protogeneia and Pandôra are given as the names of two of them. The sacrifice of Pandôra, in the Iambi of Hippônax (Hippônact. Fragm. xxi. Welck. ap. Athen. ix. p. 370), seems to allude to this daughter of Erechtheus. [477] Apollodôr. iii. 15, 3; Thucyd. ii. 15; Isokratês (Panegyr. t. i. p. 206; Panathenaic. t. ii. p. 560, Auger), Lykurgus, cont. Leocrat. p. 201, Reiske, Pausan. i. 38, 3; Euripid. Erechth. Fragm. The Schol. ad. Soph. Œd. Col. 1048 gives valuable citations from Ister, Akestodôrus and Androtiôn: we see that the inquirers of antiquity found it difficult to explain how the Eumolpids could have acquired their ascendant privileges in the management of the Eleusinia, seeing that Eumolpus himself was a foreigner.—Ζητεῖται, τί δήποτε οἱ Εὐμολπίδαι τῶν τελετῶν ἐξάρχουσι, ξένοι ὄντες. Thucydidês does _not_ call Eumolpus a Thracian: Strabo’s language is very large and vague (vii. p. 321): Isokratês says that he assailed Athens in order to vindicate the rights of his father Poseidôn to the sovereign patronage of the city. Hyginus copies this (fab. 46).