CHAPTER III.
Let this suffice on the matter. To resume, Hercules afterwards captured and sacked Elis, having got together an army of Argives Thebans and Arcadians: and the people of Elis were assisted by the men of Pylos in Elis and by the men of Pisa. And the men of Pylos were punished by Hercules, and he intended marching against Pisa, but was stopped by the following oracle from Delphi,
“Dear to the Father is Pisa, Pytho has entrusted it to me.”
This oracle was the salvation of Pisa. And to Phyleus Hercules gave up Elis and other places, not so much willingly as standing in awe of Phyleus, to whom he also granted the captives and forgave Augeas. And the women of Elis, as their land was stripped of young men through the war, are said to have prayed to Athene that they might conceive directly they married, and their prayer was granted, and they erected a temple to Athene under the title of Mother. And both the women and men being excessively delighted with their union called the place where they first met Bady (sweet), and also gave the same name in their national dialect to the river flowing there.
And when Phyleus, after setting things in order in Elis, returned to Dulichium, Augeas died being already advanced in age, and was succeeded in the kingdom of Elis by his son Agasthenes, and by Amphimachus, and Thalpius. For the sons of Actor married two sisters, the daughters of Dexamenus who was king at Olenus, and the one had by Theronice Amphimachus, and the other Eurytus had by Theræphone Thalpius. Not that Amarynceus or Diores his son remained all their lives in a private capacity. As we know from Homer in his catalogue of the men of Elis, all their fleet was 40 sail, and half of them were under Amphimachus and Thalpius, and of the remaining half ten were under Diores the son of Amarynceus, and ten under Polyxenus the son of Agasthenes. And Polyxenus coming back safe from Troy had a son Amphimachus, (he gave his son this name I fancy from his friendship to Amphimachus the son of Cteatus who perished at Ilium), and he had a son Eleus, and it was when Eleus was king at Elis that the Dorian host mustered under the sons of Aristomachus with a view to return to the Peloponnese. This oracle came to the kings, that they must make a man with three eyes leader of the return. And as they were in great doubt what the oracle could mean, a muleteer chanced to pass by, whose mule was blind of one eye. And Cresphontes conjecturing that the oracle referred to this man, the Dorians invited him to be their leader. And he urged them to return to the Peloponnese in ships, and not force their way through the isthmus with a land force. This was his advice, and at the same time he piloted the fleet from Naupactus to Molycrium, and they in return for his services agreed to give him at his request the kingdom of Elis. And the man’s name was Oxylus, he was the son of Hæmon, the son of Thoas, who in conjunction with the sons of Atreus had overturned the kingdom of Priam; and between Thoas and Ætolus the son of Endymion there are six generations. And the Heraclidæ were in other respects kinsmen to the kings in Ætolia, besides the fact that the sisters of Thoas were mothers by Hercules of Andræmon and Hyllus. And Oxylus had to flee from Ætolia in consequence of an accident, in throwing a quoit (they say) he missed his aim and unintentionally killed his brother Thermius, or according to some accounts Alcidocus the son of Scopius.