CHAPTER I.
Next to the Hermæ comes Laconia on the West. And according to the Lacedæmonian tradition Lelex the autochthon first reigned in this land, and the people over whom he ruled were called after him Leleges. And Lelex’ sons were Myles and a younger son Polycaon. Where Polycaon went to and why I shall relate elsewhere. But on the death of Myles his son Eurotas succeeded him in the kingdom. He diverted to the sea by a canal all the stagnant water that filled the plain, and as it flowed to the sea in mighty volume and became a noble river, he called it the Eurotas. As he had no male children he left the kingdom to Lacedæmon, whose mother was Taygete, (who gave her name to the mountain Taygetus), and reputed father Zeus. And Lacedæmon married Sparta the daughter of Eurotas, and when he succeeded to the kingdom he first gave the country and inhabitants his own name, and then built and gave his wife’s name to the city Sparta, which is so called even to our day. And Amyclas his son, wishing also himself to leave a memorial behind him, built the little town Amyclæ in Laconia. And of his sons Hyacinthus, the youngest and most handsome, died in his father’s lifetime, and there is a monument of him at Amyclæ close to the statue of Apollo. And on the death of Amyclas the succession devolved upon Argalus his eldest son, and after the death of Argalus upon Cynortas. And Cynortas had a son called Œbalus. He married Gorgophone the daughter of Perseus from Argos, and had a son Tyndareus, with whom Hippocoon contended for the kingdom, claiming it on the ground of seniority. And Icarius and his party espousing Hippocoon’s cause, he far exceeded Tyndareus in power, and compelled him to retire from fear to Pellene, according to the Lacedæmonian account. But the account of the Messenians is that Tyndareus fled to Aphareus in Messenia, and that Aphareus was the son of Perieres and the uterine brother of Tyndareus: and they say he dwelt at Thalamæ in Messenia, and had sons born to him there. And some time afterwards he was restored by Hercules and recovered his kingdom. And his sons reigned after him, as well as his son-in-law Menelaus the son of Atreus, and Orestes the husband of Hermione the daughter of Menelaus. But when the Heraclidæ returned in the reign of Tisamenus the son of Orestes, one party in Messene and Argos made Temenus king, and another section Cresphontes. And in Lacedæmon as Aristodemus had twins there were two royal houses, and they say this was in accordance with the oracle at Delphi. And they say that Aristodemus died at Delphi before the Dorians returned to the Peloponnese. Some indeed, magnifying their own history, say that Aristodemus was shot with arrows by Apollo, because he had not gone to the oracle, but consulted Hercules whom he chanced to meet first, as to how the Dorians should return to the Peloponnese. But the truer account is that the sons of Pylades and Electra, who were cousins of Tisamenus the son of Orestes, murdered Aristodemus. The names of his two sons were Procles and Eurysthenes, who though they were twins were in most respects very unlike one another. But though they hated one another very cordially, yet they jointly combined with Theras, the son of Autesion, their Argive mother’s brother, and their Regent, in establishing a colony at the island which was then called Calliste, Theras hoping that the descendants of Membliarus would abandon the kingdom of their own free will, as in fact they did, reckoning that Theras’ pedigree went up to Cadmus, whereas they were only descendants of Membliarus, a private individual whom Cadmus left in the island as leader of the colonists. And Theras gave his own name to the island instead of Calliste, and the people of Thera even now yearly offer victims to him as their founder. And Procles and Eurysthenes vied with one another in their zeal for carrying out the wishes of Theras, but in all other respects were at variance together. Not that, even if they had been one in heart and mind, I could have put all their descendants into one common pedigree, as cousin with cousin, and cousins’ children, with cousins’ children, and so on, that to the latest posterity they should arithmetically dovetail in with one another. I shall therefore pursue the history of each family separately, and not mix up the two together in one account.