22.5
At that feast they also carry the so-called eiresione, which is a bough of olive wreathed with wool, such as Theseus used at the time of his supplication, and laden with all sorts of fruit-offerings, to signify that scarcity was at an end, and as they go they sing:— Eiresione for us brings figs and bread of the richest, brings us honey in pots and oil to rub off from the body, Strong wine too in a beaker, that one may go to bed mellow. Some writers, however, say that these rites are in memory of the Heracleidae,On the death of Heracles, his children, to escape the wrath of the tyrant Eurystheus, came as suppliants to Athens, bearing branches in their hands. See the Heracleidae of Euripides. who were maintained in this manner by the Athenians; but most put the matter as I have done.
23.1
The ship on which Theseus sailed with the youths and returned in safety, the thirty-oared galley, was preserved by the Athenians down to the time of Demetrius Phalereus.Regent of Athens for Cassander of Macedon, 317-307 B.C. Cf. Plat. Phaedo 58 They took away the old timbers from time to time, and put new and sound ones in their places, so that the vessel became a standing illustration for the philosophers in the mooted question of growth, some declaring that it remained the same, others that it was not the same vessel.
