ABSTRACT
Daughter of Eurytus, king of Oechalia. In an archery contest Heracles won her as his prize; but her father would not give her up. She eventually married Heracles’ son Hyllus. See HERACLES.
Son of Xuthus or Apollo by Creusa, daughter of Erechtheus, king of Athens. There were two differing stories about his origin. According to one, Xuthus, the son of Hellen, a Thessalian, went to Athens, where he married Creusa, the youngest daughter of the reigning king, Erechtheus. He had two sons, Achaeus and Ion. Xuthus was eventually asked to select Erechtheus’ heir from among the sons of the king and chose Cecrops, whereupon he was driven by the others from Athens. He took refuge in Achaea in the northern Peloponnese, then called Aegialus (the Coastland). When Xuthus died there, Achaeus returned to Thessaly and Ion tried to conquer Aegialus. But the king of that country, Selinus, offered Ion the hand of his daughter Helice, and made him his heir. When Selinus died, Ion renamed the inhabitants of Aegialus-hitherto known as Pelasgians-Ionians after himself, and on the Gulf of Corinth, at the mouth of the River Selinus, he founded the city of Helice, naming it after his daughter. Some time after these events, war broke out between Eleusis and Athens, and the Athenians invited Ion back to lead them in battle. The Athenians won, but lon was killed and buried at Potami (‘Rivers’) in Attica. Later the Ionians were driven out of Aegialus by the descendants of Achaeus, and these were the circumstances, according to the myth, in which took place their historic migration by way of Attica to the central portion of the west coast of Asia Minor, which they named Ionia.
