The legend of Athamas connects itself with some sanguinary religious rites and very peculiar family customs, which prevailed at Alos, in Achaia Phthiôtis, down to a time[273] later than the historian Herodotus, and of which some remnant existed at Orchomenos even in the days of Plutarch. Athamas was worshipped at Alos as a hero, having both a chapel and a consecrated grove, attached to the temple of Zeus Laphystios. On the family of which he was the heroic progenitor, a special curse and disability stood affixed. The eldest of the race was forbidden to enter the prytaneion or government-house; and if he was found within the doors of the building, the other citizens laid hold of him on his going out, surrounded him with garlands, and led him in solemn procession to be sacrificed as a victim at the altar of Zeus Laphystios. The prohibition carried with it an exclusion from all the public meetings and ceremonies, political as well as religious, and from the sacred fire of the state: many of the individuals marked out had therefore been bold enough to transgress it. Some had been seized on quitting the building and actually sacrificed; others had fled the country for a long time to avoid a similar fate. [273] Plutarch, Quæst. Græc. c. 38. p. 299. Schol. Apoll. Rhod. ii. 655. The guides who conducted Xerxês and his army through southern Thessaly detailed to him this existing practice, coupled with the local legend, that Athamas, together with Inô, had sought to compass the death of Phryxus, who however had escaped to Kolchis; that the Achæans had been enjoined by an oracle to offer up Athamas himself as an expiatory sacrifice to release the country from the anger of the gods; but that Kytissoros, son of Phryxus, coming back from Kolchis, had intercepted the sacrifice of Athamas,[274] whereby the anger of the gods remained still unappeased, and an undying curse rested upon the family.[275] [274] Of the Athamas of Sophoklês, turning upon this intended, but not consummated sacrifice, little is known, except from a passage of Aristophanês and the Scholia upon it (Nubes, 258).— ἐπὶ τί στέφανον; οἴμοι, Σώκρατες, ὥσπερ με τὸν Ἀθάμανθ᾽ ὅπως μὴ θύσετε. Athamas was introduced in this drama with a garland on his head, on the point of being sacrificed as an expiation for the death of his son Phryxus, when Hêraklês interposes and rescues him. [275] Herodot. vii. 197. Plato, Minôs, p. 315.