[12] Mr. Murray, however, writes: "We know that the great mass of the saga-poetry began to be left on one side and neglected from the eighth century on; and we find, to judge from our fragments" (of the Cyclic poems), "that it remained in its semi-savage state" (_Anthropology in Greek Epic_, 1908, p. 68). This knowledge is far from common. The Cyclic poems are in the highly developed Homeric hexameter; they are not, I venture to say, "semi-savage"; and, where they differ in beliefs, rites, and customs from Homer, they represent the usages of historic Hellas. They are generally believed to have been composed at the date when Mr. Murray says that they "began to be neglected." Far from being neglected, they certainly afforded much of the materials of the Athenian tragedians, and of the vase painters who choose many more subjects from the Cyclics than from our Homer. [13] _R. G. E._ p. 134. CHAPTER XV ATTIC _versus_ ACHAEAN TRADITIONS The mixed multitude of Ionian settlers in Asia must have had mixed traditions, not the legends of Athens alone, but those of the towns of the Calaurian amphictyony, and of many other regions, Cretan, Boeotian, Euboean, and so on. The dominant legends, however, in poetry, as known to us, were those of Athens, which are comparatively jejune, being often constructed, perhaps out of the competing variants of the Attic demes, to prove the legitimacy of one or another dynastic claim to the kingship of Athens. We are so familiar with the traditions as manipulated by the great tragedians, that we scarcely notice how absolutely Athens lies outside of the heroic myths of the rest of Greece. Grote has justly observed that "neither the archaeology" (ancient traditions) "of Attica, nor that of its component fractions, was much dwelt upon by the ancient epic poets of Greece." He might have stated the case much more strongly, for he says, "Theseus is noticed both in the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ as having carried off from Crete, Ariadne, the daughter of Minos ... and the sons of Theseus take part in the Trojan war." But Demophon and Acamas, as sons of Theseus, appear, _not in the Iliad_, but only _in the Ionian Cyclic poems_; and if Theseus carries off Ariadne in the _Odyssey_,[1] not in the _Iliad_, the passage is of the most dubious, and the myth is obscure. "Homer is," says Mr. Leaf, "of course, ignorant of the Theseus myth in all its branches."[2] "There is no trace," says Mr. Monro, "in Homer of acquaintance with the group of legends to which the story of Aethra" (mother of Theseus) "belongs."[3] No acknowledged fact can more perfectly demonstrate the difference between Attic and Homeric or Achaean tradition than the circumstance that Homer, while he ignores Theseus, takes a view of Minos and of the Cretan empire directly opposed to Attic legend. This was perfectly plain to educated Athenians of Plato's age.