DOI chapter:
The mythology of Athenian local cults
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61302#0119
OF ANCIENT A THENS
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bear. What creature suckled the child depends on the peculiar
bent of the myth-makers. Thessaly first, and Athens later, were
devoted to horse-rearing; they worshipped Poseidon of the
Horses (Poseidon Hippios). “For heaven’s sake,” says the
father of the horse-racing Pheidippides, “no swearing by
Poseidon Hippios, he is the source of all my undoing” (Ar.,
Av. 83). Hence in Thessaly and Athens such stories bring
in the mare as foster-mother. In pastoral Crete it is a goat
who rears the foundling; in desolate Arcadia, a bear. Then
later, the story common to many lands is linked on to Attic
legend by the marriage of Theseus and Alope. Whoever
would be connected with Athenian legend must find some
kinship with the great Attic hero.
The story of Alope was dramatised by three poets—Kar-
kinos, Choerilus, and Euripides. Of the play of Euripides
we have a few fragments, enough just dimly to track the
plot. A few lines are left, in which, it seems, Kerkyon chides
his undutiful daughter; her crime to him is that by her
descent she has failed to reverence her parents, that first and
greatest thing. “The better women are reared, the lower
they fall,” says the indignant father. Kerkyon can scarcely
have appeared in the play as the lawless robber of the Theseus
legend, or he would not have taken this high tone about home
influence; indeed, we learn from Aristotle (Nic. Eth. 7-8) that
in the play of Karkinos, Kerkyon appears as broken down by
grief at his daughter’s sin. It is pardonable, and one cannot
be surprised if a man be overcome by excessive pleasure or
pain, if he has to bear the blows of calamity—“like Philoktetes,
stung by the serpent in the play of Theodektes, or Kerkyon
in the play Alope by Karkinos.” Alope pleads that it is a god
who loved her—a god who, she pathetically adds, has left
her, and no more gladdens her eyes “ even in a dream,” and
she calls her nurse to witness ; but it is all in vain—■“ a woman
ever takes a woman’s side,” says the hard old king.
Monumental art has left us only one certain record of this
story of Alope * and Hippothdon. This is in itself evidence
* For the story of Alope, see Weicker, Gr. Trag. 711 ; Weicker, A. D.
p. 203 ; and Stephani, Cornpte Rendu (1864), p. 152.
cvii
bear. What creature suckled the child depends on the peculiar
bent of the myth-makers. Thessaly first, and Athens later, were
devoted to horse-rearing; they worshipped Poseidon of the
Horses (Poseidon Hippios). “For heaven’s sake,” says the
father of the horse-racing Pheidippides, “no swearing by
Poseidon Hippios, he is the source of all my undoing” (Ar.,
Av. 83). Hence in Thessaly and Athens such stories bring
in the mare as foster-mother. In pastoral Crete it is a goat
who rears the foundling; in desolate Arcadia, a bear. Then
later, the story common to many lands is linked on to Attic
legend by the marriage of Theseus and Alope. Whoever
would be connected with Athenian legend must find some
kinship with the great Attic hero.
The story of Alope was dramatised by three poets—Kar-
kinos, Choerilus, and Euripides. Of the play of Euripides
we have a few fragments, enough just dimly to track the
plot. A few lines are left, in which, it seems, Kerkyon chides
his undutiful daughter; her crime to him is that by her
descent she has failed to reverence her parents, that first and
greatest thing. “The better women are reared, the lower
they fall,” says the indignant father. Kerkyon can scarcely
have appeared in the play as the lawless robber of the Theseus
legend, or he would not have taken this high tone about home
influence; indeed, we learn from Aristotle (Nic. Eth. 7-8) that
in the play of Karkinos, Kerkyon appears as broken down by
grief at his daughter’s sin. It is pardonable, and one cannot
be surprised if a man be overcome by excessive pleasure or
pain, if he has to bear the blows of calamity—“like Philoktetes,
stung by the serpent in the play of Theodektes, or Kerkyon
in the play Alope by Karkinos.” Alope pleads that it is a god
who loved her—a god who, she pathetically adds, has left
her, and no more gladdens her eyes “ even in a dream,” and
she calls her nurse to witness ; but it is all in vain—■“ a woman
ever takes a woman’s side,” says the hard old king.
Monumental art has left us only one certain record of this
story of Alope * and Hippothdon. This is in itself evidence
* For the story of Alope, see Weicker, Gr. Trag. 711 ; Weicker, A. D.
p. 203 ; and Stephani, Cornpte Rendu (1864), p. 152.