Page:History of Greece Vol I.djvu/157

 LEGENDS AND RITES OF THE ATHAMANTIDS. 12ft The legend of Athamas connects itself with some sanguinary religious rites and very peculiar family customs, which prevailed at Alos, in Achaia Phthiotis, down to a time 1 later than the his- torian Herodotus, and of which some remnant existed at Orcho- aienos 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 trans- gress 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. The guides who conducted Xerxes and his army through southern Thessaly detailed to him this existing practice, coupled with the local legend, that Athamas, together with Ino, had sought to compass the death of Phryxus, who however had escaped to Kolchis ; that the Achaeans had been enjoined by an oracle to otfer up Athamas himself as an expiatory sacrifice to release the country from the anger of the gods ; but that Kytis- eoros, son of Phryxus, coming back from Kolchis, had intercepted the sacrifice of Athamas, 2 whereby the anger of the gods re- lea: according to him sue died at Pactye in the Chersoncsus (Schol. Apoll. Bhod. ii. 1144). The poet Asius seems to have given the genealogy of Athamas by The misto much in the same manner as we find it in Apollodorus (Pausan. ix. 23, 3). According to the ingenious refinements of Dionysiu.s and Palaephatug (Sehol. ad Apo!l. Rhod. ii. 1144; Palsephat. de Incred. c. 31) the ram of Phryxus was after all a man named Krios, a faithful attendant who aided in his, escape; others imagined a ship with a ram's head at the bow. 1 Plutarch, Quaest. Graec. c. 38. p. 299. Schol. Apoll. Rhod. ii. 655. 1 Of the Athamas of Sophokles, turning upon this intended, but not con