Pandion II was the eighth 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.[4] He was preceded by
Cecrops I,
Cranaus,
Amphictyon,
Erichthonius,
Pandion I,
Erechtheus, and
Cecrops II, and succeeded by
Aegeus and
Theseus. Castor gives his reign as 25 years (1307/6–1282/1).[5] Originally there may have been a single Pandion, and either Pandion I or Pandion II may have been a later invention in order to fill a gap in the mythical history of Athens.[6]Pausanias calls this Pandion the father of
Procne and
Philomela, usually considered to be the daughters of
Pandion I.[7]
Pandion was exiled from
Athens by the sons of his uncle
Metion who sought to put Metion on the throne. Pandion fled to
Megara where he married Pylia, daughter of King Pylas. Later, Pylas went into voluntary exile to
Messenia, because he had killed his uncle,
Bias. Pylas then arranged for his son-in-law to be king of Megara. Pylia bore Pandion his four sons. When Pandion died at Megara, Nisos succeeded him as king. He had a hero shrine at Megara at the Bluff of Athene the Diver-bird. After this death, his other sons returned to Athens and drove out the sons of
Metion, putting Aegeus on the throne.
Either Pandion II or Pandion I was usually identified with
Pandion, the eponymous hero of the
Attic tribe Pandionis.
^According to Kearns, p. 192, "originally there was only one Pandion"; but see Gantz, p. 235. Harding,
p. 42 says: "It is usual to believe that one or the other of the two was invented for the purpose of fixing the chronographic calculations".
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).