The Historians' History of the World 03 [Greece to the Peloponnesian War]

This account of the rise of Athens, and of the origin of its government, though possibly a village and even a fortress may have existed there before Cecrops, is supported by a more general concurrence of traditional testimony, and more complete consonancy to the rest of history, than is often found for that remote age. The subsequent Attic annals are far less satisfactory. Strabo declines the endeavour to reconcile their inconsistencies; and Plutarch gives a strong picture of the uncertainties and voids which occurred to him in attempting to form a history from them. “As geographers,” he says, “in the outer parts of their maps distinguish those countries which lie beyond their knowledge with such remarks as these, All here is dry and desert sand, or marsh darkened with perpetual fog, or Scythian cold, or frozen sea; so of the earliest history we may say, All here is monstrous and tragical land, occupied only by poets and fabulists.” If such apology was reckoned necessary by Plutarch for such an account as could in his time be collected of the life of Theseus, none can now be wanting for omitting all disquisition concerning the four or seven kings, for even their number is not ascertained, who are said to have governed Attica from Cecrops to Ægeus, father of that hero. The name of Amphictyon, indeed, whose name is in the list, excites a reasonable curiosity: but as it is not in his government of Athens that he is particularly an object of history, farther mention of him may best be reserved for future opportunity.

Various, uncertain, and imperfect, then, as the accounts were which passed to posterity concerning the early Attic princes, yet the assurance of Thucydides may deserve respect, that Attica was the province of Greece in which population first became settled, and where the earliest progress was made toward civilisation. Being nearly peninsular, it lay out of the road of emigrants and wandering freebooters by land; and its rocky soil, supporting few cattle, afforded small temptation to either. The produce of tillage was of less easy removal; and the gains of commerce were secured within fortifications. Attica therefore grew populous, not only through the safety which the natives thus enjoyed, but by a confluence of strangers from other parts of Greece; for when either foreign invasion or intestine broil occasioned anywhere the necessity of emigration, Athens was the resort in highest estimation not only as a place of the most permanent security, but also as strangers of character, able by their wealth or their ingenuity to support themselves and benefit the community, were easily admitted to the privilege of citizens.

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.