But, as population increased, the simple forms of government and jurisprudence established by Cecrops were no longer equal to their purpose. Civil wars arose; the country was invaded by sea: Erechtheus, called by later authors Erichthonius, and by the poets Son of the Earth, acquired the sovereignty, bringing, according to some not improbable reports, a second colony from Egypt.[9] Eumolpus, with a body of Thracians, about the same time established himself in Eleusis. When, a generation or two later, Ægeus, contemporary with Minos, succeeded his father Pandion in the throne, the country seems to have been well peopled, but the government ill constituted and weak. Concerning this prince, however, and his immediate successor, tradition is more ample; and though abundantly mixed with fable, yet in many instances apparently more authentic than concerning any other persons of their remote age. Plutarch has thought a history of Theseus, son of Ægeus, not unfit to hold a place among his parallel lives of the great men of Greece and Rome; and his account appears warranted in many points by strong corresponding testimony from other ancient authors of various ages. The period also is so important in the annals of Attica, and the reports remaining altogether go so far to illustrate the manners and circumstances of the times, that it may be proper to allow them some scope in narration. Ægeus, king of Athens, though an able and spirited prince, yet, in the divided and disorderly state of his country, with difficulty maintained his situation. When past the prime of life he had the misfortune to remain childless, though twice married; and a faction headed by his presumptive heirs, the numerous sons of Pallas his younger brother, gave him unceasing disturbance. Thus urged, he went to Delphi to implore information from the oracle how the blessing of children might be obtained. Receiving an answer which, like most of the oracular responses, was unintelligible, his next concern was to find some person capable of explaining to him the will of the deity thus mysteriously declared. Among the many establishments which Pelops had procured for his family throughout Peloponnesus was the small town and territory of Trœzen on the coast opposite to Athens, which he placed under the government of his son Pittheus. Ægeus applied to that prince; who was not only in his own age eminent for wisdom, but of reputation remaining even in the most flourishing period of Grecian philosophy; yet so little was he superior to the ridiculous, and often detestable superstition of his time that, in consequence of some fancied meaning in the oracle, which even the superstitious Plutarch confesses himself unable to comprehend, he introduced his own daughter Æthra to an illicit commerce with Ægeus. Perhaps it may be allowed to conjecture that the commerce was unknown to the Trœzenian prince till the consequence became evident, and that the