Primitive Athens as described by ThucydidesHarrison, Jane Ellen
History
Primitive Athens as described by Thucydides
Harrison, Jane Ellen
Athens (Greece) -- Antiquities; Athens (Greece) -- Description and travel
2. The introduction of the worship of Zeus.
3. The institution of marriage.
The discussion of the contest between Athena and Poseidon really belongs
to the Erechtheid period, and must stand over till then. The introduction
of the worship of Zeus and the institution of marriage are probably but
the religious and social forces of the same advance, and may be taken
together.
In front of the Erechtheion, Pausanias[114] tells us, was an altar
dedicated to Zeus Hypatos, on which no living thing was sacrificed, but
only cakes (πέλανοι). Pausanias does not here say that the altar was
dedicated by Kekrops, but, in his discussion of Arcadia[115] and the
human sacrifice of Lycaon, he says, ‘Kekrops was the first who gave to
Zeus the title of Supreme, and he would not sacrifice anything that had
life, but he burned on the altar the local cakes which the Athenians to
this day call _pelanoi_.’ What probably happened was just the reverse of
what Pausanias describes: there was an old altar to ‘the Supreme,’ the
_Hypatos_; at some time or other this was taken over by the immigrant
Zeus; the shift was attributed to Kekrops.
Zeus was essentially of the patriarchal order, _i.e._ of a condition of
things in which the father rather than the mother is the head of the
family, gives his name to the children, and holds the family property
and conducts the family worship. Nothing could be more patriarchal than
the constitution of the Homeric Olympus. Such a condition of things is
necessarily connected with some form of the social institution known
to us as marriage. Accordingly we learn from Athenaeus[116], quoting
from Clearchus the pupil of Aristotle, that ‘At Athens Kekrops was the
first to join one woman to one man: before connections had taken place
at random and marriages were in common—hence as some think Kekrops was
called “Twyformed” (διφυής) since before his day people did not know
who their fathers were on account of the number’ (of possible parents).
The story of the contest between Athene and Poseidon was later mixed up
with the same tradition of the shift from patriarchy to matriarchy. St
Augustine[117] says that the women voted for Athena, and their punishment
was to be, among other things, that ‘no one was hereafter to be called by
his mother’s name.’
* * * * *
We pass to the three tokens (σημεῖα), the first of which is
_a._ The sacred olive-tree.
The holy bloom of the olive, whose hoar leaf
High in the shadowy shrine of Pandrosos
Hath honour of us all.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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