Ixīon
（
Ἰξίων). The son of Antion or Peision, or, according to
some, of Phlegyas. Others, again, gave him the god Ares for a father. He obtained the
hand of Dia, the daughter of Deīoueus, having promised his father-in-law large
gifts; but he did not keep his agreement and Deïoneus seizing his horses detained
them as a pledge. Ixion then sent messengers to say that the gifts were ready if he would come
to bring them. Deloneus accordingly came, but his treacherous son-in-law had prepared in his
house a pit filled with fire and carefully covered over, into which the unsuspecting man fell
and perished. After this deed Ixion was stricken with madness, and the atrocity of his crime
was such that neither gods nor men would absolve him, till at length Zeus took pity on him and
purified him, and admitted him to Olympus. Here again, incapable of good, Ixion cast a lustful
eye on Heré, the wife of his divine benefactor. She, however, in concert with Zeus,
formed a cloud in the likeness of herself, which Ixion embraced. Having boasted of his
good-fortune, Zeus precipitated him into Erebus, where Hermes fastened him with brazen bands
to an ever-revolving fiery wheel, lying upon which he is forever seourged and forced to cry
out “Benefactors should be honoured!” The offspring of Ixion and the cloud
was a son, Centaurus, who afterwards, having intercourse with the mares of Maguesia, begot the
race of centaurs. See
Centauri.
The myth of Ixion is probably of great antiqnity, as the customs on which it is founded only
prevailed in the Heroic Age. Its chief object seems to have been to inspire a horror of the
violation of hospitality on the part of those who, having committed homicide, were admitted to
the house and table of the one who had consented to perform the rites by which the guilt of
the offender was supposed to be removed. On Ixion, see the poem by Robert Browning in his
Jocoseria.
