A king of Athens who came to the throne after Cecrops; he named the country from his daughter Atthis before being expelled by Amphictyon, his kinsman by marriage.1
When Cecrops died, Cranaus came to the throne. Apollodorus calls him a son of the soil and says it was in his time that the flood in the age of Deucalion is said to have taken place.2
Pausanias makes the same succession: when Cecrops' son Erysichthon died before his father, the kingdom of Cecrops fell to Cranaus, the most powerful of the Athenians.3
He married a Lacedaemonian wife, Pedias, daughter of Mynes, and begat Cranae, Menaechme, and Atthis; and when Atthis died a maid, Cranaus called the country Atthis after her. Pausanias too derives the land's name from this daughter, saying that from Atthis they call the country Attica, which before was named Actaea.4
In a version Apollodorus records only to reject, it was Cecrops and Cranaus, or else Erysichthon, who arbitrated the strife of Athena and Poseidon for the land; but he insists that Zeus appointed not these men but the twelve gods, who awarded the country to Athena.5
Cranaus was expelled by Amphictyon, who reigned over Attica in his stead, though Amphictyon was his kinsman by marriage, husband of one of his daughters. Pausanias adds that the banished king fled with his supporters to the parish of Lamptrae, where he died and was buried, and that a monument to Cranaus still stood there in his own day.6
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