Pandion ( or ;

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic pe ...

: Πανδίων) was the eponymous hero of the Attic tribe Pandionis, which was created as part of the tribal reforms of

Cleisthenes Cleisthenes ( ; grc-gre, Κλεισθένης), or Clisthenes (c. 570c. 508 BC), was an ancient Athenian lawgiver credited with reforming the constitution of ancient Athens and setting it on a democratic footing in 508 BC. For these accomplishm ...

at the end of the sixth century BC. He is usually assumed to be one of the two legendary kings of Athens, Pandion I or

Pandion II In Greek mythology, Pandion II ( or ; Ancient Greek: Πανδίων) was a legendary King of Athens, the son and heir of King Cecrops II and his wife Metiadusa, daughter of Eupalamus. Family Pandion was the father of Aegeus, Pallas, Nisos, Ly ...

Pandion I and II

The relationship between Pandion, the eponymous hero, and the two legendary Athenian kings Pandion I and

is unclear, but most sources assume that the hero was one or the other of these two kings. The situation is further complicated by the fact that either Pandion I or Pandion II may have been invented to fill a gap in the mythical history of Athens, and that originally there may have been only one Pandion.

Demosthenes' Funeral Oration Demosthenes's "Funeral Oration" (Greek: ) was delivered between August and September of 338 BC, just after the Battle of Chaeronea. It and the Erotic Essay are the only two surviving epideictic orations of Demosthenes. Historical background In 3 ...

(338 BC) makes the father of the famous sisters Procne and Philomela—usually considered to be Pandion I—the eponymous hero of the Pandionidae. However, the 2nd century AD geographer Pausanias does not know which king Pandion was honored as the eponymous hero, and Pausanias makes Pandion II the father of Procne and Philomela.

Cult

Pandion had a heroön (hero shrine) on the

Acropolis of Athens The Acropolis of Athens is an ancient citadel located on a rocky outcrop above the city of Athens and contains the remains of several ancient buildings of great architectural and historical significance, the most famous being the Parthenon. Th ...

, where Pausanias reports seeing a statue of Pandion. Pandion was also honored with a statue (along with the other tribal heroes) at the

Monument of the Eponymous Heroes The Monument of the Eponymous Heroes, located in the Ancient Agora of Athens, Greece and adjacently situated near the Metroon (old Bouleuterion), was a marble podium that bore the bronze statues of the ten heroes representing the tribes of Athe ...

in the Ancient Agora. Pandion was probably associated in some way with the ancient Athenian festival

Pandia In Greek mythology, the goddess Pandia or Pandeia ( grc-gre, Πανδία, Πανδεία, meaning "all brightness") was a daughter of Zeus and the goddess Selene, the Greek personification of the moon. From the '' Homeric Hymn to Selene'', we h ...

, and it is possible that the festival derived its name from Pandion. However, the festival was probably held in honor of

Zeus Zeus or , , ; grc, Δῐός, ''Diós'', label= genitive Boeotian Aeolic and Laconian grc-dor, Δεύς, Deús ; grc, Δέος, ''Déos'', label= genitive el, Δίας, ''Días'' () is the sky and thunder god in ancient Greek relig ...

, and some scholars think it is more likely that the hero derived his name from the festival as its legendary founder. This would be consistent with what Kearns describes as "a wide spread cultic-mythic phenomenon in which a hero or heroine is worshipped in conjunction with a god, while an aetiological myth explains that he or she was the first to perform the rite." An inscription dating from c. 386 BC, which refers to a decree of the tribe Pandionis, commending a "priest of Pandion" for services performed at the Pandia, supports the notion of a link between Pandion and the festival. Pandion may also have been associated with a festival attested for the

deme In Ancient Greece, a deme or ( grc, δῆμος, plural: demoi, δημοι) was a suburb or a subdivision of Athens and other city-states. Demes as simple subdivisions of land in the countryside seem to have existed in the 6th century BC and ear ...

Plotheia also called the Pandia; what relationship if any this festival may have had with the Pandia of Athens is unknown. According to Pausanias the hero Pandion was also honored in

Megara Megara (; el, Μέγαρα, ) is a historic town and a municipality in West Attica, Greece. It lies in the northern section of the Isthmus of Corinth opposite the island of Salamis, which belonged to Megara in archaic times, before being take ...

where he had a monument in the city and a tomb in the cave of Athena Aithyia.Kearns, p.191; Pausanias
1.41.6

Notes

References

* Anderson, Greg, ''The Athenian Experiment: Building an Imagined Political Community in Ancient Attica, 508-490 B.C.'', University of Michigan Press, 2003. . * Canevaro, Mirko, ''The Documents in the Attic Orators: Laws and Decrees in the Public Speeches of the Demosthenic Corpus'', Oxford University Press, 2013. . * Dillon, Matthew, Lynda Garland, ''Ancient Greece: Social and Historical Documents from Archaic Times to the Death of Alexander'', Routledge, 2010. . * Frazer, James George, ''Pausanias's Description of Greece'' (1898), Vol II, Commentary on Book I, Macmillan, 1898. * Harding, Phillip, ''The Story of Athens: The Fragments of the Local Chronicles of Attika'', Routledge, 2007. . * Jones, Nicholas F., ''The Associations of Classical Athens : The Response to Democracy: The Response to Democracy'', Oxford University Press, 1999. . * Kearns, Emily, ''The Heroes of Attica (Bulletin Supplement 57)'', University of London Institute of Classical Studies 1989. . * Mikalson, Jon D. (1977), "Religion in the Attic Demes". The American Journal of Philology (The Johns Hopkins University Press) 98 (4): 424–435. * Parke, Herbert William, ''Festivals of the Athenians'', Cornell University Press, 1977. * Parker, Robert (2005), ''Polytheism and Society at Athens'', Oxford University Press. . * Pausanias, ''Pausanias Description of Greece with an English Translation by W.H.S. Jones, Litt.D., and H.A. Ormerod, M.A., in 4 Volumes.'' Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1918
Online version at the Perseus Digital Library
* Robertson, Noel (1993), ''Festivals and Legends: The Formation of Greek Cities in the Light of Public Ritual'', The University of Toronto Press. * Robertson, Noel (1996), "Athena's Shrines and Festivals" in ''Worshipping Athena: Panathenaia and Parthenon'', The University of Wisconsin Press. * Sourvinou-Inwood, Christiane, ''Tragedy and Athenian Religion'', Lexington Books, 2003. {{ISBN, 9780739104002. * Verrall, Margaret de Gaudrion, ''Mythology and Monuments of Ancient Athens: Being a Translation of a Portion of the 'Attica' of Pausanias'', Macmillan, 1894. Greek mythological heroes Kings of Athens Kings in Greek mythology Attican characters in Greek mythology