EUMOLPUS (" sweet singer ")

This article appears in Volume V09, Page 890 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

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EUMOLPUS (" sweet singer ") , in

Greek

GREEK
GREEK, ETRUSCAN AND

mythology, son of Poseidon and Chione, the daughter of

Boreas

BOREAS

, legendary priest, poet and warrior. He finally settled in Thrace, where he became king. During a war between the Eleusinians and Athenians under Erechtheus, he went to the assistance of the former, who on a previous occasion had shown him hospitality, but was slain with his two sons, Phorbas and Immaradus. According to another tradition, Erechtheus and Immaradus lost their lives; the Eleusinians then submitted to Athens on

condition

CONDITION (Lat. condicio, from condicere, to agree upon, arrange; not connected with conditio, from condere, conditum, to put together)

that they alone should celebrate the mysteries, and that Eumolpus and the daughters of Celeus should perform the sacrifices. It is asserted by others that Eumolpus with a colony of Thracians laid claim to Attica as having belonged to his father Poseidon (Isocrates, Panath. 193). The Eleusinian mysteries were generally considered to have been founded by Eumolpus, the first priest of Demeter, but, according to some, by Eumolpus the son of

Musaeus

MUSAEUS

, Eumolpus the Thracian being the father of Keryx, the ancestor of the priestly family of the Kerykes. As priest, Eumolpus purifies Heracles from the murder of the Centaurs; as musician, he instructs him (as well as

Linus

LINUS

and

Orpheus

ORPHEUS

) in playing the lyre, and is the reputed inventor of vocal accompaniments to the

flute

FLUTE

. Suidas reckons him one of the early poets and a writer of hymns of

consecration

CONSECRATION (Lat. consecrallo, from con and sacrare, " to make sacred ")

, and Diodorus Siculus quotes a line from a Dionysiac hymn attrjbuted to Eumolpus. He is also said to have been the first priest of Dionysus, and to have introduced the cultivation of the vine and fruit trees (Pliny, Nat. Hist. vii. 199). His grave was shown at Athens and Eleusis. His descendants, called Eumolpidae, together with the Kerykes, were the hereditary guardians of the mysteries (q.v.).
See Apollodorus ii. 5, iii. 15; Pausanias i. 38. 2; Hyginus, Fab. 273; Homeric Hymn to Demeter, 476;

Strabo

STRABO (born c. 63 n.c.)

vii. p. 321; Diod. Slc. i. 11 ;

article

ARTICLE (from Lat. articulus, a joint)

" Eumolpidai," by J. A. Hild in Daremberg and Saglio's Dictionnaire des antiquites.

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