Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/195

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CHAP. V. WORSHIP OF THE FOUNDER. 189 rifices to its founder, Timesius, Tliera to Theras, Tene- <3os to Tenes, Delos to Anius, Cyrene to Battus, Miletus to Naleus, Araphi polls to Hagnon. In the time of Pisistratus, one Miltiades went to found a colony in the Thracian Chersonesus ; this colony instituted a worship tor him after his death, "according to the ordinary usage." Hiero of Syracuse, having founded the town of ^tna, enjoyed there, in the course of time, "the worship due to founders of cities." ' A city had nothing more at heart than the memory of its foundation. When Pausanias visited Greece, in the second century of our era, every city could tell him the name of its founder, with his genealogy and the principal facts of his life. This name and these facts could not escape the memory, for they were a part of the religion, and were recalled every year in the sacred ceremonies. The memory of a great number of Greek poems has been preserved, whose subject was the foundation of a city. Philochorus sang that of Salamis, Ion that of ■Chios, Crito that of Syracuse, Zopyrus that of Miletus; and Apollonius, Hermogenes, Hellanicus, and Diodes ■composed poems or histories on the same subject. There was not, perhaps, a single city that had not its poem, or at least its hymn, on the sacred act that had given it birth. Among all these ancient poems which had the sacred foundation of a city for their theme, there is one that has not been allowed to perish, because its subject ren- dered it dear to a city, and its beauties have rendered

  • Herodotus, I. 1G8; VI. 38. Pindar, Pt/^/i., IV. Thucyd-

ides, V. II. Strabo, XIV. 1. Plutarch, Gr. Quest., 20. Pau- sanias, I. 34; III. 1. Diodorus, XI. 78.