As originally the Eupatridæ alone cultivated the worship of Apollo, they alone possessed the ceremony of purification, which is here, as elsewhere, mixed up with the rites of the Cretan worship. According to Plutarch,(1057) Ion had instructed the Athenians in religion, _i.e._, in that of Apollo; and the same author relates,(1058) that Theseus established the Eupatridæ as administrators of the government, judges, and interpreters of the sacred rites (ἐξηγηταὶ ὁσίων καὶ ἱερῶν).
By this we are to understand that it was their duty to give information respecting every thing which regarded the _jus sacrum_; which in ancient times especially comprehended expiations and excommunications for homicide. The rites necessary at purification were also entirely in the hands of the Eupatridæ, (πάτρια);(1059) and this is the reason why in old times they took cognizance of every homicide, and in later times of manslaughter, the connexion of which duties with the worship of Apollo will be shown hereafter.(1060)
I have been induced to place these points in as strong a light as possible, from the democratical tendency of Athenian poetry, which endeavoured to obliterate all traces of the forcible occupation of Attica, and of the foreign extraction of the families of the Eupatridæ. On this account the vacant period between the times of the Erecthidæ and Ægidæ was notoriously supplied by arbitrary insertions, and the fable of Ion represented in a thousand various ways. This tendency is also recognised in the tragedy of Ion by Euripides, the artful and ingenious plan of which cannot be sufficiently admired. According to the ancient tradition, Ion was the son of the hero Xuthus, or of the Pythian Apollo (who were originally considered as identical), and probably of Creusa, a native of Attica, which was a mode of expressing his new settlement there. Euripides, on the other hand, separates Ion from Xuthus,(1061) who is always represented as somewhat rude and coarse, and even tyrannical,(1062) and so alters the whole story, that the hero does not appear as a newcomer, but as the legitimate offspring of the female line of the race of the Erecthidæ. By this device the poet preserved the idea that the Athenians were an aboriginal nation, on which they so prided themselves,(1063) and set aside, in a manner most agreeable to their feelings, the fable which contradicted this claim to antiquity. Ion himself in the tragedy gives utterance to some very popular sentiments; and of the power of aristocracy, once so firmly established, the last faint memorial is almost buried in oblivion.(1064)