1 Eumolpus, legendary ancestor of the Eumolpides of Eleusis, was credited with the founding of the Mysteries. The passage of Euripides quoted in Lyc. 1.100 is the earliest extant source for the tradition that he was a Thracian. According to Apollodorus, Eleusis, being at war with Athens, called in Eumolpus, whereupon the Athenian king Erechtheus consulted the god and learned that he must sacrifice one daughter in order to obtain a victory. He therefore offered up his youngest, the others committing suicide in sympathy, and so was enabled to kill Eumolpus in battle (Apollod. 3.15.4).
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.