Son of Xuthus and a daughter of Erechtheus, brother of Ion; through his father a grandson of Hellen, through his mother a grandson of the Athenian king — the figure in whom the Aeolid stock and the house of Athens are joined.1
When Hellen divided Greece among his sons, Xuthus received the Peloponnese and there begat Achaeus and Ion by Creusa, daughter of Erechtheus; and from Achaeus and Ion, the genealogist says, the Achaeans and Ionians derive their names. He is an eponym before he is a man — a name fixed to a people at the founding generation of the Hellenic house.2
Pausanias gives the eponym a history. After Erechtheus died, Xuthus was made judge of the succession and ruled for Cecrops, the eldest son; for this the other sons of Erechtheus drove him from Attica, and he made his home at Aegialus and died there. Of his sons, Achaeus, with allies gathered from Aegialus and Athens, returned to Thessaly and recovered the throne of his fathers — the Thessalian seat his grandfather Hellen had held — while Ion stayed to win a kingdom among the Aegialians.3
His sons carried the name south. Archander and Architeles, sons of Achaeus, came from Phthiotis to Argos and there became sons-in-law of Danaus, Architeles wedding Automate and Archander wedding Scaea; Archander named his own son Metanastes, the settler. When the sons of Achaeus came to power in Argos and Lacedaemon, Pausanias says, the inhabitants of those towns came to be called Achaeans — the only Peloponnesians, before the Dorian return, to bear that name.4
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the spine ignites as you read · hover a bond on the card — every mention of them lights in the story