Viewed in this light, it becomes, as it were, the Athenian theory of the state in which they were wont to contemplate themselves as existing at that early period of their history: and thus the fabulous legends of his heroic acts assume a practical character. They become assertions of national power exerted for great and useful purposes in that age. His legislative enactments are expressions of their own civil policy at that time.

In these accounts, Theseus is called the founder of the Athenian form of popular government. To him the statesmen and orators of later days ascribed the origin of the political privileges enjoyed by those whom they addressed. He was said to have organized the federal body of which the communities of Attica were members. He united them in a civil society, of which the old Cecropian town was the head. He gave to that city, which thenceforth became the capital of Attica, the name of ATHENS. He instituted the PANATHENAIC festival, to commemorate this act of union.

All these works attributed to Theseus seem to have been so ascribed to him, as the personified representative of the State. And not merely his public acts may be identified, as it seems, with those of the national body, but even his private relations appear to have been so modified as to express the connection of the Athenian people with objects analogous to those which were contemplated by those relations. Thus the inviolable friendship which united Theseus and Pirithous seems to have represented the ancient national amity which subsisted between the two countries to which these two heroes belonged, namely, Athens and Thessaly. Again, in the rivalries of the Athenian king was shadowed out the history of popular jealousies. The object of his ambition is represented as a desire to emulate the deeds of his contemporary and relative, Hercules. If the latter destroyed the monsters which devastated the land of Greece, Theseus did the same. If Hercules sailed in the Argo, Theseus belonged to the same crew. If he joined the hunters of the Calydonian boar, Theseus was there also; if Hercules is clad in the skin of the lion of Nemea, Theseus wears the hide of the Marathonian bull; if Hercules bears a club, so does Theseus; if the Olympian Games are founded by him, Theseus institutes the Isthmian; if Hercules erects columns at Gades, Theseus does the same at the isthmus of Corinth.

In all these particulars, the real competitors, whose emulation is expressed by them, are not so much Hercules and Theseus, as the nations of which these two heroes are the representatives. They are either Thebes and