450 DR DONALDSON ON THE EXPIATORY AND SUBSTITUTIONARY 
a good poet, he preferred to make this story (udMov) the subject of his poetry, 
believing that the deeds of those persons would be a most beautiful example 
to the citizens, so that looking to them and contemplating them they might 
become accustomed in their souls to love their country.”* The story of the 
daughter of Erechtheus is the same as that of Macaria. An army invades 
Attica; Erechtheus sends to Delphi to inquire what he should do to gain 
the victory over the enemy. “Sacrifice your daughter,” is the reply; and the 
father and mother are proud to yield up their daughter for the common 
welfare. Lycurgus quotes from the play, which we know was called 
Erechtheus, the mother’s speech in regard to the sacrifice. She insists on 
the duty of the individual to sacrifice himself for the state. If she had 
had sons she would, without fear of death, have sent them into the battle 
array; now she is glad that her daughter also will gain renown by dying for 
the state. Athens, indeed, seems to have been famous in mythic narrative for 
these sacrifices. A plague and famine came on the city, and the Athenians, 
according to an ancient oracle, sacrificed the daughters of Hyacinthus (Apollod. 
iii. 15, 5); and the Leocorion in Athens was an enclosure sacred to the daughters 
of Leos, who were sacrificed to save the city (lian Hist. Var. 1. xii. c. 28). 
Other cities, no doubt, had similar legends to stimulate their patriotism. A 
considerable number of such stories are found in Antoninus Liberalis, Pau- 
sanias, and other late writers, who will claim notice in our third section, and 
who are mentioned here because it is likely that they derived several of these 
tales from Greek epics and tragedies now lost. 
In regard to all these mythic sacrifices, the remark has to be made that they 
belong to the mythology of the Greeks, and that the sacrifices are no more a 
real indication of what the Greeks thought and did than are the mutilation of 
Kronos, the marriage of Zeus with his sister, his innumerable amours with 
women and beasts, and other wild excesses, which admit of an easy solution. 
All the persons concerned in the sacrifices have a closer connection with 
the celestials than with mortals; and, in the case of most, it can be clearly 
proved that they were immortal,t and therefore could not easily be permanently 
sacrificed. 
5. Occasionally we find symbolical acts, similar to those I have noticed, in 
Homer. In the Ajax, Sophocles represents Teucros as making Eurysaces, the 
son of Ajax, stand near his father’s corpse, and then, in order that Eurysaces 
may protect the dead body, he puts into the boy’s hand Teucros’s own locks, 
the boy’s own locks, and his mother’s, and says— 
* C. 24. 
+. Writers on mythology all allow that Iphigenia was the goddess Artemis herself (see Preller, i. 
195); Macaria is Eastern, and connected with the Tyrian Heracles (Grruarp, Griech. Myth. sect. 646, 
2b); and Polyxena is a goddess of the dead (GrrHarD, sect. 884, 4). 

