Son of Hellen by the nymph Orseis and brother of Dorus and Aeolus; allotted the Peloponnese, he married Creusa, daughter of Erechtheus of Athens, and fathered Achaeus and Ion, from whom the Achaeans and the Ionians take their names.1
Apollodorus sets Xuthus in the foundation-map of the Greek peoples. Hellen had Dorus, Xuthus, and Aeolus by a nymph Orseis; he named the former Greeks Hellenes after himself and divided the country among these sons. Xuthus received the Peloponnese for his portion, and by Creusa, daughter of Erechtheus, he begat Achaeus and Ion — and from Achaeus and Ion are derived the names of the Achaeans and the Ionians.2
His marriage is fixed again in the Athenian genealogy. Among the children Erechtheus had by Praxithea were the daughters Procris, Creusa, Chthonia, and Orithyia; in the matches that close the line, Chthonia was given to Butes, Procris to Cephalus son of Deion, and Creusa to Xuthus. Through her his house was grafted onto the autochthonous stock of Athens.3
Pausanias tells the story from the losing side, and turns Xuthus into a wanderer twice over. After the death of Hellen the other sons drove him out of Thessaly, charging that he had appropriated some of the ancestral property for himself; he fled to Athens, where he was deemed worthy to wed the daughter of Erechtheus, by whom he had Achaeus and Ion. When Erechtheus died, Xuthus was appointed judge to decide which of the king's sons should succeed; he ruled for Cecrops, the eldest, and was banished from the land by the rest of the sons of Erechtheus.4
His fatherhood of Ion is disputed where it touches Athenian cult. Apollodorus and Pausanias' royal genealogy alike make Ion the son of Xuthus and Creusa; but at the cave-sanctuary of Apollo just beneath the Acropolis gateway, Pausanias reports the belief that it was there the god met Creusa, daughter of Erechtheus — the tradition that would set Apollo, not Xuthus, behind the Ionian line.5
A daughter of his marries into the wider Aeolid map: Apollodorus names Diomede, daughter of Xuthus, as the wife of Deion who reigned over Phocis, by whom Deion had Asterodia and the sons Aenetus, Actor, Phylacus, and Cephalus.6
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the spine ignites as you read · hover a bond on the card — every mention of them lights in the story