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In Hesiod's Eoae, Phrixus married Iophassa, daughter of Aeetes, with whom he took refuge, and had four sons, Argos, Phrontis, Melas, Cytisorus (Schol. Apollon. Rhod. ii. 1122).

καθαρμόν: an expiatory offering or scapegoat, as at Athens (Schol. Arist. Eq. 1136) at the festival of the Thargelia two men worthy of death were offered as φαρμακοί, i. e. to make atonement for the people. The ceremony was annual, though perhaps the victims were only put to death in time of plague or famine. Athamas in this local legend is himself about to be offered, and so Sophocles in his Ἀθάμας στεφανήφορος represented him as led to the altar, a victim to the vengeance of Nephele, but saved by Heracles (Schol. Arist. Nub. 257). But in the local myth it would seem that he was to suffer not for his wrongful treatment of Phrixus (a motive apparently borrowed by Sophocles from the Epic poets), but for a famine or plague due to the wrath of Zeus with the whole house, since he is saved by the son of Phrixus, Cytisorus, who thus brings down the wrath of heaven on himself and his posterity. This return of Cytisorus is an expedient necessary in this form of the myth to make Athamas, who had lost all his children, the ancestor of the race. In the ordinary form of the legend, Athamas after the escape of Phrixus goes mad, shoots one son Learchus, and forces Ino to throw herself and her other son Melicertes into the sea. Then he wanders over the earth till he finds a home in Thessaly in the Athamantian plain.

Ἀχαιῶν: the men of the Thessalian Achaia; in the days of the myth the Minyae.

Αἴης (cf. i. 2. 2; vii. 193. 2). The land of Aeetes whose city was Κύτα or Κύταια (hence Cytisorus).

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