the safe tenure of all property depends. The same inference is supplied by the mythological narration, that when, during the reign of Cecrops, another Deity, Mars, was accused of homicide, the court, before which he was brought to be tried upon that charge, was the Athenian tribunal of the AREOPAGUS,

We do not here mean to assert that the legends to which we are alluding are the productions of the periods, or contemporary with the persons, to which they particularly refer; far from it: but granting, as we readily do, that they first made their appearance in a later age, still if we trace them in the chronological order in which they are presented to our notice by Athenians themselves, we may fairly regard them as the expressions of the popular belief, entertained by those who had the best opportunities of forming an opinion upon the subject, concerning the different stages of their own history.

Proceeding further in our Mythical inquiries, we seem to recognise the

ANCIENT TRADITIONS.

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trace of an attempt to unite the inhabitants of the Hills with those of the Plains of Attica, who before this period had probably been at variance with each other, in the tradition which records that CRANAUS, the successor of Cecrops, married PEDIAS, and that the issue of their wedlock was ATTHIS:-in other words, that Attica was then formed by the union of the two districts which are aptly signified by the particular names, the one signifying rugged, the other, belonging to the plain,-—which are there assigned to Cranaus and his wife.

This state of prosperity does not appear to have been of long duration; for Atthis is said to have died in early youth; and the flood of Deucalion— whether a physical or political revolution, who shall venture to determine ?— is related to have inundated the country during the reign of Cranaus, who was himself driven from the throne by the king next in succession, whose name, Amphictyon,—a collector of neighbouring people in one community,— appears to indicate an attempt made in this, the next age, to organize afresh the social elements which had been disturbed by the convulsions of the previous generation, and to combine them together in one federal body.

This design seems to have been attended with success, and to have produced results favourable to the cultivation of the arts of civilised life. For the immediate successor of Amphictyon, and the representative of the state of the Athenian nation, as it existed in that period, was Ericthonius. It seems reasonable to consider these Attic kings, not as individuals, but rather as personifications, if we may so call them, of the Athenian people, in the different eras of their early history. Ericthonius was, in the language of mythology, the son of Vulcan and Minerva; or, as that tradition may be interpreted, it was in this age and under its auspices that the manual labours which enjoyed the especial patronage of those two Deities, began to attract the attention, and to assume the importance, which afterwards rendered them the source of affluence and of glory to the possessors of the Athenian soil.

Not inconsistent with this account is the other tradition, which ascribes to Ericthonius the honour of being the first to yoke four horses to a car; a remarkable circumstance in the barren land of Attica, where the horse was reared with difficulty, and maintained at considerable expense, and which was therefore the most expressive indication that could have been adopted, of the greater diffusion of wealth consequent on the successful cultivation of those arts and manufactures which began to flourish at this period.

The tranquillity which then prevailed, expressed, we believe, by the assertion that Ericthonius was succeeded by his son, and neither expelled from his throne, as his predecessors Cranaus and Amphictyon had been by the persons who immediately succeeded them, nor followed, as Cecrops, by another indigenous Monarch, not only conduced to the progress and successful development of the Arts, but also led, as might have been anticipated, to the adoption of new modes of tillage, which enriched the Athenian husbandman with a greater variety and abundance of agricultural produce derived from his own soil.

Therefore it is that the visits of CERES and of BACCHUS, the givers of Corn and Wine, are said to have been paid to Attica at this time. Perhaps, too, we may be allowed to assume, as another result from the peaceful character of this period, that greater attention was then given to the appearances of Nature, to the vicissitudes of the elements, and to the forms and character of the other objects of Creation, than had hitherto been the case; and that the legends in which the Monarch of that time, Eriethonius, is raised after his death to a place among the celestial constellations, as the HENIOCHUS, Or Charioteer, and in which his contemporary ICARUS, the entertainer of Bacchus on the occasion of his visit to Attica, and his daughter ERIGONE, are admitted to participate in the same honour, are proofs of the observation with which the phænomena of the heavens were supposed then to have been regarded; while the story of Tereus and Procne and her sister Philomela, which belongs to the same period, suggests the belief that the more humble objects of the lower world were not treated with neglect.

A new and important era of Athenian history commences with the reign of THESEUS, whose name gave rise to the above remarks, and to whom we will now direct our thoughts.

THESEUS AND ATHENS.

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PISISTRATUS, tyrant of Athens, in his revision of the Homeric Poems, is said to have interpolated a verse which characterized THESEUS and his friend Pirithous as sons of the immortal Gods; and he is alleged by the same historian who makes this assertion to have expunged a line from the works of Hesiod, which mentioned a fact not very creditable to the memory of the Athenian hero, namely, the reason by which he was induced, in his return from Crete to Athens, to abandon Ariadne on the desert island of NAXOS.

That the Athenians themselves felt a personal interest in all that concerned the history and character of Theseus, is clear from these circumstances, as well as from other evidence. The incidents of his story which reflected honour upon him were subjects of national pride to them: they strove with him, as it were, in his struggles, fought by his side in his battles, and triumphed in his conquests. He was, in a word, the ancient People of Athens personified by itself.

This being the case, the narrative of his adventures and exploits becomes an object of peculiar interest, not so much as presenting facts of historical value in themselves, for they rest upon evidence of too partial a kind to allow them to claim this character, but as exhibiting to our eyes a picture of the ancient population of Attica, as drawn originally by their own hands, and retouched and embellished by those of their posterity.

It is not hereby intimated that all belief in the incidents of the biography of Theseus, as detailed in the popular records of Athenian tradition, is vain and groundless it is, on the contrary, more rational to suppose, that a

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ATHENS REPRESENTED

people eminently distinguished for its critical perception of propriety in all the imitative arts, would not have failed, in this national portrait, to adopt a real model, and to sketch from it an outline not inconsistent with the truth; and that subsequently it would have studiously endeavoured to fill up the lineaments thus correctly drawn with lights and shadows harmoniously adapted to them, and have been careful to introduce nothing that was not in due keeping with the tone and character of the age to which the subject of the design belonged.

As a proof of this assertion, we may refer to those particular circumstances in the life of Theseus, which exhibit him and his countrymen in an unfavourable light. His biography is not a mere panegyric. It records both his ingratitude to Ariadne, and the ingratitude of his country to him. In it, the Athenian hero leaves his benefactress on a desolate shore; and he himself is driven by the Athenians from his kingdom into exile on the barren rock of SCYROS. The heroine, indeed, is soon rescued from her distress by the appearance of Bacchus, the deity of Naxos; but Theseus is left to die in his banishment; and it was not until many centuries had elapsed, that his bones were dug up and brought with triumphal honours to his own city, and deposited there in that magnificent building which still survives in its pristine beauty to this day, and thus unites the age of Theseus with our own, and was both his Temple and his Tomb.

We are, therefore, inclined to believe that the character of Theseus, as exhibited to us in the surviving remains of Athenian tradition, may be justly considered as a representation partly historical and partly ideal of the condition of the Athenian people, when the age of Mythology was drawing to a close, and is founded upon a real basis of the life and exploits of an individual.