Pandion I was the fifth
king of Athens in the traditional line of succession as given by the third century BC
Parian Chronicle, the chronographer
Castor of Rhodes (probably from the late third-century
Eratosthenes) and the Bibliotheca.[5] He was preceded by
Cecrops I,
Cranaus,
Amphictyon, and
Erichthonius, and succeeded by
Erechtheus,
Cecrops II, and
Pandion II. Castor makes Pandion I the son of Erichthonius (the earliest source for this)[6] and says he ruled for 40 years (1437/6–1397/6 BC).[7] It may be that either Pandion I or Pandion II was invented to fill a gap in the mythical history of Athens.[8]
According to the Bibliotheca, Pandion fought a war with
Labdacus, the king of
Thebes, over boundaries, and married his daughter Procne to
Tereus in exchange for help in the fighting,[9] and it was during his reign that the gods
Demeter and
Dionysus came to Attica.[10] After his death, the kingdom of Athens went to his son Erechtheus, while Butes received the priesthoods of
Athena and "
Poseidon Erechtheus" (in Athens, Erechtheus was a cult-title of Poseidon).[11] He is said to have died of grief when he discovered that his daughters, Procne and Philomela, had died.[12]
Either Pandion I or Pandion II was usually identified with
Pandion, the eponymous hero of the
Attic tribePandionis.
Gantz, Timothy, Early Greek Myth: A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996, Two volumes:
ISBN978-0-8018-5360-9 (Vol. 1),
ISBN978-0-8018-5362-3 (Vol. 2).
Grimal, Pierre, The Dictionary of Classical Mythology, Wiley-Blackwell, 1996,
ISBN9780631201021.
Harding, Phillip, The Story of Athens: The Fragments of the Local Chronicles of Attika, Routledge, 2007.
ISBN9781134304479.
Thucydides, Thucydides translated into English; with introduction, marginal analysis, notes, and indices. Volume 1., Benjamin Jowett. translator. Oxford. Clarendon Press. 1881.
Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.