[3] These legends seem to be a mythical account of the colonization of Aegina, which seems to have been originally inhabited by Pelasgians, and afterwards received colonists from Phthiotis, the seat of the Myrmidons, and from Phlius on the Asopus.

While he reigned in Aegina, Aeacus was renowned in all Greece for his justice and piety, and was frequently called upon to settle disputes not only among men, but even among the gods themselves.

[6] He was such a favourite with the latter, that when Greece was visited by a drought as a consequence of a murder that had been committed, the oracle of Delphi declared that the calamity would not cease unless Aeacus prayed to the gods to end it.

[9] A legend preserved in Pindar relates that Apollo and Poseidon took Aeacus as their assistant in building the walls of Troy.

Thereafter, Apollo prophesied that Troy would fall at the hands of Aeacus's descendants, the Aeacidae (i.e. his sons Telamon and Peleus joined Heracles when he sieged the city during Laomedon's rule.

After his death, Aeacus became one of the three judges in Hades (along with his Cretan half-brothers Rhadamanthus and Minos)[12] and, according to Plato, was specifically concerned with the shades of Europeans upon their arrival to the underworld.

[14] Aeacus had sanctuaries in both Athens and in Aegina,[15] and the Aeginetans regarded him as the tutelary deity of their island and celebrated the Aeacea in his honor.

Aeacus, lamenting the fact that Heracles had stolen Cerberus, sentences Dionysus to Acheron to be tormented by the hounds of Cocytus, the Echidna, the Tartesian eel, and Tithrasian Gorgons.