Aeacus

AEACUS By Zeus, not he — but he kissed Aeschylus when he came down, and held out his right hand, and Aeschylus yielded the throne to him;

AEACUS When Euripides came down, he kept showing off to the cloak-snatchers and the cut-purses and the father-beaters and the burglars, which is the multitude there in Hades;

AEACUS No — I feel I'm in heaven whenever I curse my master in secret.

for, if he is speaking of Peleus, he praises Achilles, then Aeacus, then the god;

The maidens wear garlands of crimson blossoms and rushes, the native decoration, and sing of your [child], mistress of the all-hospitable [land], and of rosy-armed Endaïs, who bore [godlike Peleus] and the helmeted warrior Telamon, having gone to bed with Aeacus.

your hair crowned with garlands of flourishing blossoms, [you walk] the lofty streets of the city [of Aeacus, so that] your ancestral island [teems] with gentle-voiced victory processions, in which mortals delight, revealing your overweening strength in the pancratium.

Why then, so has Aeacus, and Minos, and his brother as well!

To think that, when you have escaped from those who wish to be reckoned in the number of judges, you should come to those who are truly called judges — Minos, Rhadamanthus, Aeacus, Triptolemus — and meet with those who have lived justly and in good faith — can this journey seem to you a mean one?

Persuaded by them, then, Aeacus went up onto the Greek mountain, and stretching out his clean hands to heaven, calling on God as the common Father, prayed him to take pity on Hellas, worn down.

we shall find that Aeacus and Rhadamanthys were beloved by the gods for their discretion, Heracles, Castor and Pollux for their courage, and Ganymedes, Adonis, and others like them for their beauty, so that I at any rate am not astonished at those who covet your friendship but at those who are not so disposed.

It is also stated that he was the first to call himself Aeacus;

But of the daughters of Nereus, the Old man of the Sea, Psamathe the fair goddess, was loved by Aeacus through golden Aphrodite and bore Phocus.

In the first place Aeacus, son of Zeus and ancestor of the family of the Teucridae, was so distinguished that when a drought visited the Greeks and many persons had perished, and when the magnitude of the calamity had passed all bounds, the leaders of the cities came as suppliants to him;

During his entire stay among men he ever enjoyed the fairest repute, and after his departure from life it is said that he sits by the side of Pluto and Kore in the enjoyment of the highest honors.

These things being so, if you speak the truth when you assert that they were the discoverers of the best ways of life, then it must follow that those who lived many generations before the Spartans settled there had no part in them—neither those who made the expedition against Troy nor those who were of the generation of Heracles and Theseus or of Minos, son of Zeus, or Rhadamanthus or Aeacus or an …

But in Oenone the honors belong to the great-hearted spirits of Aeacus and his sons.

Aeacus settled disputes even for the gods.

And as for you, sons of Aeacus with your golden chariots,

It was destined that within that most ancient grove one of the ruling race of Aeacus should, for all time to come, stay beside the fine-walled house of the god, and dwell there to preside over the processions of heroes, which are honored by many sacrifices.

For they say that he planted the seed of Aeacus, received by the mother, to be a city-ruler in my illustrious fatherland, and to be a kindly friend and brother to you, Heracles.

As a suppliant I cling to the sacred knees of Aeacus, on behalf of his dear city and these citizens, bringing a Lydian crown embroidered with song, glory from Nemea in the double foot race for Deinias and his father Megas.

And then, suppose that you had to make what show you could of your ancestors, and of Salamis as the native land of Eurysaces, or of Aegina as the home of the yet earlier Aeacus, to impress Artaxerxes, son of Xerxes, how you must expect to be laughed at!

For if a man when he reaches the other world, after leaving behind these who claim to be judges, shall find those who are really judges who are said to sit in judgment there, Minos and Rhadamanthus, and Aeacus and Triptolemus, and all the other demigods who were just men in their lives, would the change of habitation be undesirable?

but when you go before your judge, the son of Aegina, and he grips you and drags you up, you will gape and feel dizzy there no less than I do here, and some one perhaps will give you, yes, a degrading box on the ear, and will treat you with every kind of contumely.

two from Asia, Minos and Rhadamanthus, and one from Europe, Aeacus.

And exactly the same is the procedure of Aeacus:

And, he will say, did the stranger from Elis say also that for Achilles it was beautiful to be buried later than his parents, and for his grandfather Aeacus, and all the others who were born of gods, and for the gods themselves?

Well now, did not Peleus, son of Aeacus, govern these same people in Phthia?

As for the lineage of Alexander, on his father’s side he was a descendant of Heracles through Caranus, and on his mother’s side a descendant of Aeacus through Neoptolemus;

Deliberating on this with myself before I received your advice, I have constituted my sons judges, Minos and Rhadamanthus from Asia, and Aeacus from Europe;

This Archias, then, finding that Hypereides the orator and Aristonicus of Marathon and Himeraeus the brother of Demetrius the Phalerean had taken refuge in the sanctuary of Aeacus at Aegina, haled them away and sent them to Antipater at Cleonae.

For Aeacus, they say, is regarded as the most righteous of Hellenes, and Cychreus the Salaminian has divine honors at Athens, and the virtues of Peleus and Telamon are known to all men.

Well, then, Sciron was a son-in-law of Cychreus, father-in-law of Aeacus, and grandfather of Peleus and Telamon, who were the sons of Endeis, daughter of Sciron and Chariclo.

Even of Aeacus, the warrior seed