Page:History of Greece Vol I.djvu/137

 THE SOLIDS, OR SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF ^EOLUS. 105 genealogy in respect to those eponymous persons. In the drama called Ion, he describes Ion as son of Kreiisa by Apollo, but adopted by Xuthus : according to him, the real sons of Xuthus and Kreiisa are Dorus and Achaeus, 1 eponyms of the Dorians and Achaeans in the interior of Peloponnesus. And it is a still more capital point of difference, that he omits Hellen altogether making Xuthus an Achcean by race, the son of Jolus, who is the son of Zeus. 2 This is the more remarkable, as in the fragments of two other dramas of Euripides, the Melanippe and the -ZEolus, we find Hellen mentioned both as father of JEolus and son of Zeus. 3 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. CHAPTER VI. THE SOLIDS, OR SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF .EOLUS. IF two of the sons of Hellen, Dorus and Xuthus, present to us families comparatively unnoticed in mythical narrative, the third son, ^olus, richly makes up for the deficiency. From him we pass to his seven sons and five daughters, amidst a great abun- dance of heroic and poetical incident. In dealing however with these extensive mythical families, it is necessary to observe, that the legendary world of Greece, in the manner in which it is presented to us, appears invested with a degree of symmetry and coherence which did not originally belong to it. For the old ballads and stories which were sung or 1 Eurip. Ion, 1500. 2 Eurip. Ion, 64. 3 See the Fragments of these two plays in Matthiae's edition ; compare Welcker, Grieclrisch. Tragod. v. ii. p. 842. If we may judge from the Frag- ments of the Latin Melanippe of Ennius (see Fragm. 2, ed. Bothe). Hellen was introduced as one of the characters of the piece. 5*