King of Athens, son of Erichthonius by the Naiad Praxithea, who married his mother's sister Zeuxippe and fathered Procne, Philomela, Erechtheus, and Butes.1
Apollodorus makes Pandion the son of Erichthonius by Praxithea, a Naiad nymph, and his successor on the Athenian throne. In his reign Demeter and Dionysus first came to Attica, Demeter welcomed by Celeus at Eleusis and Dionysus by Icarius, who received from the god a branch of a vine and learned the making of wine.2
Pandion married Zeuxippe, his own mother's sister, and begat two daughters, Procne and Philomela, and twin sons, Erechtheus and Butes. When war broke out with Labdacus over a question of boundaries, he called in Tereus, son of Ares, from Thrace; and having with that help brought the war to a successful close, he gave Tereus his daughter Procne in marriage. When Pandion died, his sons divided the inheritance, Erechtheus taking the kingdom and Butes the priesthood of Athena and Poseidon Erechtheus.3
Ovid gives a different occasion for the fatal match: not a border war but a barbarian host gathered from over the sea that beset the walls of Athens, until Tereus of Thrace scattered it with his arms. Out of gratitude, and dazzled by the Thracian's wealth and descent from Gradivus, Pandion joined his daughter Procne to him in a wedding the marriage-gods shunned and the Furies attended with torches snatched from funeral pyres. Broken by grief before his years were full, Pandion went down among the shades of Tartarus, and Erechtheus, next in line, took the vacant throne.4
Hyginus turns the second marriage into Tereus' own lie: already wed to Procne, he came back to his father-in-law Pandion at Athens and asked for the other daughter, claiming Procne had died. Pandion granted the favour and sent Philomela away in Tereus' keeping with guards, the gift that doomed both sisters.5
Pausanias records that it was for the sake of power that Pandion made the marriage alliance with the king of Thrace, yet he was unlucky in his daughters and left no sons of theirs to avenge him; and he notes a statue of Pandion, well worth seeing, standing on the Athenian Acropolis.6
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