He is mentioned only once in the Homeric Poems. It is when, in the Fifteenth Iliad, Dolops strikes at Meges, son of Phyleus, who is saved by his stout breastplate: by that breastplate,
τόν ποτε Φύλευς
ἤγαγεν ἐξ Ἐφύρης, ποταμοῦ ἀπὸ Σελλήεντος.
ξεῖνος γάρ οἱ ἔδωκεν ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν Εὐφήτης[865].
This case, as it stands, is very simple. Euphetes is manifestly the king of Ephyre: the name of the place supplies the connection with the cradle of the Hellenes; the link is doubled by the name of the river Σελληείς, and his rank presumably stamps him as of a ruling race in the country; for he is a ξεῖνος to a sovereign, and the xenial relation appears to have been always one between persons equal, or nearly so.
The passage, however, affords us no aid towards determining where this Ephyre lay; for it does not tell us where to look for the residence of Phyleus.
Was it the Ephyre of Elis, or was it another Ephyre, mentioned in a passage that we have not yet examined? To this passage let us now turn.
In the Greek Catalogue, Tlepolemus, the son of Hercules, commands nine ships from Rhodes, whither he had migrated, on account of having slain his grand uncle Licymnius. His birth is described as follows,—
ὃν τέκεν Ἀστυόχεια βίῃ Ἡρακληείῃ·
τὴν ἄγετ’ ἐξ Ἐφύρης, ποταμοῦ ἀπὸ Σελληέντος,
πέρσας ἄστεα πολλὰ Διοτρεφέων αἰζηῶν[866].
Hercules then led off Astyocheia from Ephyre beside Selleeis, after having devastated many cities. The opinion may perhaps be sustained from this passage, that the Ephyre mentioned in it is not the Ephyre of Elis, for the following reasons.
1. Tlepolemus[867] emigrates to Rhodes in consequence of homicide. He is more likely to have done this from Thessaly than Elis, for we see no signs of communication between western Peloponnesus and the islands of Asia Minor near the base of the Ægean.
2. If Astyocheia, the mother of Tlepolemus, was also the Astyoche who bore to Mars Ascalaphus and Ialmenus (Il. ii. 513), then he was more likely to be Thessalian than Elian; for Mars, dwelling in Thrace, bordered upon Thessaly, but is not heard of in Southern Greece; and these princes ruled over the Minyeian Orchomenus, which is far from the Peloponnesus, but near Southern Thessaly.