CHAPTER II.
Now in the campaign against Augeas Hercules had no opportunity to win laurels, for as the sons of Actor were in their prime for daring and vigour of youth, the allied forces of Hercules were constantly routed by them, until the Corinthians announced a truce during the Isthmian games, and the sons of Actor went to see the games, and Hercules lay in ambush for them and slew them at Cleonæ. And the perpetrator of the deed being unknown, Moline the mother of the lads took the greatest pains to discover their murderer. And when she discovered who it was, then the people of Elis claimed compensation for the murder from the Argives, for Hercules dwelt in Argolis at Tiryns. And as the Argives refused to give up Hercules, they next begged hard of the Corinthians, that all Argolis should be scratched from the Isthmian games. But being unsuccessful in this also, they say Moline put a curse upon the citizens if they went to the Isthmian games. And these curses of Moline are observed up to this day, and all the athletes at Elis make a practice of never going to the Isthmian contest. And there are two different traditions about this. One of them states that Cypselus the tyrant at Corinth offered a golden statue to Zeus at Olympia, but, Cypselus dying before his name was inscribed on the votive offering, the Corinthians asked the people of Elis to allow them to inscribe publicly the name of Corinth on the votive offering, and the people of Elis refusing they were angry with them, and forbade them to contend at the Isthmian games. But how would the Corinthians have been admitted at the contests at Olympia, if they had excluded the people of Elis from the Isthmian games? But the other tradition states that Prolaus, a man of much repute among the people of Elis, and Lysippe his wife had two sons Philanthus and Lampus, and they went to the Isthmian games, the one intending to compete in the pancratium among the boys, the other in wrestling, and before the games came on they were strangled or killed in some way by their rivals: and that was why Lysippe imposed her curses on the people of Elis, if they would not of their own accord cease to attend the Isthmian games. This tradition too is easily shewn to be a silly one. For Timon a native of Elis had victories in the pentathlum in all the other Greek contests, and there is an effigy of him at Olympia, and some elegiac verses which enumerate the various crowns that he carried off as victor, and the reason why he did not participate in the Isthmian contest. This is one couplet. “Our hero was prevented coming to the land of Sisyphus by the strife that arose in consequence of the sad fate of the sons of Molione.”