CHAPTER VII.
ION.—HIPPOLYTUS.
"'Sweet is the holiness of youth'—so felt
Time-honoured Chaucer, when he framed that lay
By which the Prioress beguiled the way,
And many a Pilgrim's rugged heart did melt."
So long as the Athenians were a second-rate power in Greece they were content with a military adventurer for the founder of the Ionian race. In a war between Athens and Eubœa, one Xuthus had done them good service; his recompense for it was the hand of the Erectheid princess Creusa, and the issue of the marriage was Ion, from whom the Athenians claimed, remotely, to descend. But when, after the decline of Argos, they had risen to a level with Corinth and Sparta, they aspired to the honour of a divine ancestry on the spear-side, as well as that of a royal one on the spindle. A wandering soldier no longer sufficed; the son of Creusa must not be born in mortal wedlock, but derive his origin from a god. And what deity—in this matter the virgin Pallas Athene was out of the question—was so
