Xuthus

A son of Hellen by the nymph Orseis, and a brother of Aeolus and Dorus. He was king of the Peloponnese, and the husband of Creusa, the daughter of Erichthonius, by whom he became the father of Achaeus and Ion.1 These became the mythical ancestors of the Achaeans and the Ionians, two of the four main divisions of ancient Greeks.

Others state that after the death of his father Hellen, Xuthus was expelled from Thessaly by his brothers, and went to Athens, where he married the daughter of Erichthonius. After the death of Erichthonius, Xuthus being chosen arbitrator, adjudged the kingdom to his eldest brother-in-law, Cecrops, in consequence of which he was expelled by the other sons of Erichthonius, and settled at Aegialos in the Peloponnese.2

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References

Notes

  1. Euripides. Ion, 63 ff.; Pseudo-Apollodorus. The Library i, 7.3.
  2. Pausanias. Description of Greece vii, 1.2; comp. Herodotus. Histories vii, 94.

Source

  • Smith, William. (1870). Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. London: Taylor, Walton, and Maberly.

This article incorporates text from Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) by William Smith, which is in the public domain.