The name Θρῂξ, too, which is applied to him, never seems to have spread farther southwards than the hills about Thessaly.
Further, he was coming from Eurytus of Œchalia, who is again named as the lord, apparently, of that city, in ii. 730. But the name Eurytus was one current among the descendants of Actor[838], for a descendant of Actor who bore it is named in the Catalogue a little below: and this latter Eurytus was an Epean chief: and the descendants of Actor are found in the Epean or Elian army of the Eleventh Book. (xi. 709, 739.)
Again, they are found in Thessaly or Phthiotis, for when Mercury had deflowered Polymele, the daughter of Phylas a Thessalian, Echecles, a descendant of Actor, married her; and yet again, they are found near Aspledon[839] and the Minyeian Orchomenos, between Bœotia and Phocis[840].
Again, the Pylian army halted, at a day’s march from the Alpheus, on the Minyeius, a river evidently named from the Minyæ of Peloponnesus. But there was a Minya also in Thessaly[841], of which the site was not precisely known in historic times: and the northern Orchomenos was called Minyeius[842].
There is no part of Middle or of Southern Greece which so abounds in the local and personal notes of connection with Thessaly and the North as Elis and its neighbourhood. Some indications of it have already been given, and many more might be added. As for example, there was an Enipeus[843], a river of Elis, so there was of Pieria and of Phthiotis. Doris, beneath Œta, is reflected or prefigured in the Homeric Dorium of the Pylian territories: the Thessalian Larissa in a Larissa, and a river Larissus, of Elis. The Thessalian name Œchalia is repeated in the district, over which Nestor ruled at the epoch of the Troica; and there is an Arcadian Orchomenos as well as a northern one. Cyparissus in Elis corresponds, again, with a Cyparissus in Phocis. Some other more doubtful indications may close the list. The Parrhasie of Arcadia may be from the same root with the Πύρασος[844] of the dominions of Protesilaus. Perhaps the Thessalian Helos and Pteleos may be akin to Alos in the country of Peleus[845]. The resemblance of names is not confined to the extremities of the line, but is scattered along the path of migration from north to south. It extends also to Laconia.
Nestor in his youth is summoned all the way from Pylos (τηλόθεν), to fight with Pirithous and others in Thessaly; (from whence Polypœtes, the son of Pirithous, led a division of the Greek army,) against the Φῆρες.
Thus far we find some presumptions as to the descent of Augeias, as to his connection with the Hellic institution of the games, and as to the relation between Elis, over which he reigned, and the line northwards into Thessaly; all tending, together with the evidently Hellic character of the Epeans, to shew that he was the representative of one of their ruling tribes.
But he also bears a distinct local mark, the nature of which I shall now endeavour to investigate.
The chieftainship of Agamemnon has been traced and identified by means of his Achæan connection, without any assistance from local or territorial names connected with the abode of his family.
In such a case as his, we could not look for aid of that description: for his house had only been possessed for two generations of their dominions: we have no precise knowledge before that time of the place of their sojourn: and when they rose to power, it was in a territory, and in cities, which appear to have been already of historic fame. It was not therefore likely that their abodes should bear names such as, if they had come in the characters of founders and not of inheritors, they would probably have affixed to them.