Euripidês also deviates very materially from the Hesiodic genealogy
in respect to these eponymous persons. In the drama called Iôn, he
describes Iôn as son of Kreüsa by Apollo, but adopted by Xuthus:
according to him, the real sons of Xuthus and Kreüsa are Dôrus and
Achæus,[232]—eponyms of the Dôrians and Achæans in the interior of
Peloponnêsus. And it is a still more capital point of difference, that
he omits Hellên altogether—making Xuthus an Achæan by race, the son of
Æolus, who is the son of Zeus.[233] This is the more remarkable, as
in the fragments of two other dramas of Euripidês, the Melanippê and
the Æolus, we find Hellên mentioned both as father of Æolus and son of
Zeus.[234] To the general public even of the most instructed city of
Greece, fluctuations and discrepancies in these mythical genealogies
seem to have been neither surprising nor offensive.
[232] Eurip. Ion, 1590.
[233] Eurip. Ion, 64.
[234] See the Fragments of these two plays in Matthiae’s edition;
compare Welcker, Griechisch. Tragöd. v. ii. p. 842. If we may
judge from the Fragments of the Latin Melanippê of Ennius (see
Fragm. 2, ed. Bothe), Hellên was introduced as one of the
characters of the piece.
CHAPTER VI.
THE ÆOLIDS, OR SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF ÆOLUS.
If two of the sons of Hellên, Dôrus and Xuthus, present to us families
comparatively unnoticed in mythical narrative, the third son, Æolus,
richly makes up for the deficiency. From him we pass to his seven sons
and five daughters, amidst a great abundance of heroic and poetical
incident.
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