by Pausanias
[5.1.2] The rest of Peloponnesus belongs to immigrants. The modern Corinthians are the latest inhabitants of Peloponnesus, and from my time to the time when they received their land from the Roman Emperor is two hundred and seventeen years. The Dryopians reached the Peloponnesus from Parnassus, the Dorians from Oeta.
[5.1.3] The Eleans we know crossed over from Calydon and Aetolia generally. Their earlier history I found to be as follows. The first to rule in this land, they say, was Aethlius, who was the son of Zeus and of Protogeneia, the daughter of Deucalion, and the father of Endymion.
[5.1.4] The Moon, they say, fell in love with this Endymion and bore him fifty daughters. Others with greater probability say that Endymion took a wife Asterodia – others say she was Cromia, the daughter of Itonus, the son of Amphictyon; others again, Hyperippe, the daughter of Arcas – but all agree that Endymion begat Paeon, Epeius, Aetolus, and also a daughter Eurycyda. Endymion set his sons to run a race at Olympia for the throne; Epeius won, and obtained the kingdom, and his subjects were then named Epeans for the first time.
[5.1.5] Of his brothers they say that Aetolus remained at home, while Paeon, vexed at his defeat, went into the farthest exile possible, and that the region beyond the river Axius was named after him Paeonia. As to the death of Endymion, the people of Heracleia near Miletus do not agree with the Eleans for while the Eleans show a tomb of Endymion, the folk of Heracleia say that he retired to Mount Latmus and give him honor, there being a shrine of Endymion on Latmus.
[5.1.6] Epeius married Anaxiroe, the daughter of Coronus, and begat a daughter Hyrmina, but no male issue. In the reign of Epeius the following events also occurred. Oenomaus was the son of Alxion (though poets proclaimed his father to be Ares, and the common report agrees with them), but while lord of the land of Pisa he was put down by Pelops the Lydian, who crossed over from Asia.
[5.1.7] On the death of Oenomaus, Pelops took possession of the land of Pisa and its bordering country Olympia, separating it from the land of Epeius. The Eleans said that Pelops was the first to found a temple of’ Hermes in Peloponnesus and to sacrifice to the god, his purpose being to avert the wrath of the god for the death of Myrtilus.
[5.1.8] Aetolus, who came to the throne after Epeius, was made to flee from Peloponnesus, because the children of Apis tried and convicted him of unintentional homicide. For Apis, the son of Jason, from Pallantium in Arcadia, was run over and killed by the chariot of Aetolus at the games held in honor of Azan. Aetolus, son of Endymion, gave to the dwellers around the Achelous their name, when he fled to this part of the mainland. But the kingdom of the Epeans fell to Eleius, the son of Eurycyda, daughter of Endymion and, believe the tale who will, of Poseidon. It was Eleius who gave the inhabitants their present name of Eleans in place of Epeans.
[5.1.9] Eleius had a son Augeas. Those who exaggerate his glory give a turn to the name Eleius and make Helius to be the father of Augeas. This Augeas had so many cattle and flocks of goats that actually most of his land remained untilled because of the dung of the animals. Now he persuaded Heracles to cleanse for him the land from dung, either in return for a part of Elis or possibly for some other reward.
[5.1.10] Heracles accomplished this feat too, turning aside the stream of the Menius into the dung. But, because Heracles had accomplished his task by cunning, without toil, Augeas refused to give him his reward, and banished Phyleus, the elder of his two sons, for objecting that he was wronging a man who had been his benefactor. He made preparations himself to resist Heracles, should he attack Elis; more particularly he made friends with the sons of Actor and with Amarynceus. Amarynceus, besides being a good soldier,
[5.1.11] had a father, Pyttius, of Thessalian descent, who came from Thessaly to Elis. To Amarynceus, therefore, Augeas also gave a share in the government of Elis; Actor and his sons had a share in the kingdom and were natives of the country. For the father of Actor was Phorbas, son of Lapithus, and his mother was Hyrmina, daughter of Epeius. Actor named after her the city of Hyrmina, which he founded in Elis.
[5.2.1] II. Heracles accomplished no brilliant feat in the war with Augeas. For the sons of Actor were in the prime of courageous manhood, and always put to flight the allies under Heracles, until the Corinthians proclaimed the Isthmian truce, and the sons of Actor came as envoys to the meeting. Heracles set an ambush for then, at Cleonae and murdered them. As the murderer was unknown, Moline, more than any of the other children, devoted herself to detecting him.
[5.2.2] When she discovered him, the Eleans demanded satisfaction for the crime from the Argives, for at the time Heracles had his home at Tiryns. When the Argives refused them satisfaction, the Eleans as an alternative pressed the Corinthians entirely to exclude the Argive people from the Isthmian games. When they failed in this also, Moline is said to have laid curses on her countrymen, should they refuse to boycott the Isthmian festival. The curses of Moline are respected right down to the present day, and no athlete of Elis is wont to compete in the Isthmian games.
[5.2.3] There are two other accounts, differing from the one that I have given. According to one of them Cypselus, the tyrant of Corinth, dedicated to Zeus a golden image at Olympia. As Cypselus died before inscribing his own name on the offering, the Corinthians asked of the Eleans leave to inscribe the name of Corinth on it, but were refused. Wroth with the Eleans, they proclaimed that they must keep away from the Isthmian games. But how could the Corinthians themselves take part in the Olympic games if the Eleans against their will were shut out by the Corinthians from the Isthmian games?
[5.2.4] The other account is this. Prolaus, a distinguished Elean, had two sons, Philanthus and Lampus, by his wife Lysippe. These two came to the Isthmian games1 to compete in the boys’ pancratium, and one of them intended to wrestle. Before they entered the ring they were strangled or done to death in some other way by their fellow competitors. Hence the curses of Lysippe on the Eleans, should they not voluntarily keep away from the Isthmian games. But this story too proves on examination to be silly.
[5.2.5] For Timon, a man of Elis, won victories in the pentathlum at the Greek games, and at Olympia there is even a statue of him, with an elegiac inscription giving the crowns he won and also the reason why he secured no Isthmian victory. The inscription sets forth the reason thus:–
But from going to the land of Sisyphus he was hindered by a quarrel
About the baleful death of the Molionids.
If the proposed emendation be adopted the meaning will be: “one to compete in the boys’ pancratium, the other in wrestling.”
[5.3.1] III. Enough of my discussion of this question. Heracles afterwards took Elis and sacked it, with an army he had raised of Argives, Thebans and Arcadians. The Eleans were aided by the men of Pisa and of Pylus in Elis. The men of Pylus were punished by Heracles, but his expedition against Pisa was stopped by an oracle from Delphi to this effect
My father cares for Pisa, but to me in the hollows of Pytho.
This oracle proved the salvation of Pisa. To Phyleus Heracles gave up the land of Elis and all the rest, more out of respect for Phyleus than because he wanted to do so: he allowed him to keep the prisoners, and Augeas to escape punishment.
[5.3.2] The women of Elis, it is said, seeing that their land had been deprived of its vigorous manhood, prayed to Athena that they might conceive at their first union with their husbands. Their prayer was answered, and they set up a sanctuary of Athena surnamed Mother. Both wives and husbands were so delighted at their union that they named the place itself, where they first met, Bady (sweet), and the river that runs thereby Bady Water, this being a word of their native dialect.
[5.3.3] When Phyleus had returned to Dulichium after organizing the affairs of Elis, Augeas died at an advanced age, and the kingdom of Elis devolved on Agasthenes, the son of Augeas, and on Amphimachus and Thalpius. For the sons of Actor married twin sisters, the daughters of Dexamenus who was king at Olenus; Amphimachus was born to one son and Theronice, Thalpius to her sister Theraephone
and Eurytus.
[5.3.4] However, neither Amarynceus himself nor his son Diores remained common people. Incidentally this is shown by Homer in his list of the Eleans; he makes their whole fleet to consist of forty ships, half of them under the command of Amphimachus and Thalpius, and of the remaining twenty he puts ten under Diores, the son of Amarynceus, and ten under Polyxenus, the son of Agasthenes. Polyxenus came back safe from Troy and begat a son, Amphimachus. This name I think Polyxenus gave his son because of his friendship with Amphimachus, the son of Cteatus, who died at Troy.
[5.3.5] Amphimachus begat Eleius, and it was while Eleius was king in Elis that the assembly of the Dorian army under the sons of Aristomachus took place, with a view to returning to the Peloponnesus. To their kings was delivered this oracle, that they were to choose the “one with three eyes” to lead them on their return. When they were at a loss as to the meaning of the oracle, they were met by a man driving a mule, which was blind of one eye.
[5.3.6] Cresphontes inferred that this was the man indicated by the oracle, and so the Dorians made him one of themselves. He urged them to descend upon the Peloponnesus in ships, and not to attempt to go across the Isthmus with a land army. Such was his advice, and at the same time he led them on the voyage from Naupactus to Molycrium. In return they agreed to give him at his request the land of Elis. The man was Oxylus, son of Haemon, the son of Thoas. This was the Thoas who helped the sons of Atreus to destroy the empire of Priam, and from Thoas to Aetolus the son of Endymion are six generations.
[5.3.7] There were ties of kindred between the Heracleidae and the kings of Aetolia; in particular the mothers of Thoas, the son of Andraemon, and of Hyllus, the son of Heracles, were sisters.
It fell to the lot of Oxylus to be an outlaw from Aetolia. The story goes that as he was throwing the quoit he missed the mark and committed unintentional homicide. The man killed by the quoit, according to one account, was Thermius, the brother of Oxylus; according to another it was Alcidocus, the son of Scopius.
[5.4.1] IV. The following story is also told of Oxylus. He suspected that, when the sons of Aristomachus saw that the land of Elis was a goodly one, and cultivated throughout, they would be no longer willing to give it to him. He accordingly led the Dorians through Arcadia and not through Elis. Oxylus was anxious to get the kingdom of Elis without a battle, but Dius would not give way; he proposed that, instead of their fighting a pitched battle with all their forces, a single soldier should be chosen from each army to fight as its champion.
[5.4.2] This proposal chanced to find favour with both sides, and the champions chosen were the Elean Degmenus, an archer, and Pyraechmes, a slinger, to represent the Aetolians. Pyraechmes won and Oxylus got the kingdom. He allowed the old inhabitants, the Epeans, to keep their possessions, except that he introduced among them Aetolian colonists, giving them a share in the land. He assigned privileges to Dius, and kept up after the ancient manner the honors paid to heroes, especially the worship of Augeas, to whom even at the present day hero-sacrifice is offered.
[5.4.3] He is also said to have induced to come into the city the dwellers in the villages near the wall, and by increasing the number of the inhabitants to have made Elis larger and generally more prosperous. There also came to him an oracle from Delphi, that he should bring in as co-founder “the descendant of Pelops.” Oxylus made diligent search, and in his search he discovered Agorius, son of Damasius, son of Penthilus, son of Orestes. He brought Agorius himself from Helice in Achaia, and with him a small body of Achaeans.
[5.4.4] The wife of Oxylus they say was called Pieria, but beyond this nothing more about her is recorded. Oxylus is said to have had two sons, Aetolus and Laias. Aetolus died before his parents, who buried him in a tomb which they caused to be made right in the gate leading to Olympia and the sanctuary of Zeus. That they buried him thus was due to an oracle forbidding the corpse to be laid either without the city or within it. Right down to our own day the gymnasiarch sacrifices to Aetolus as to a hero every year.
ELIS, HISTORY
[5.4.5] After Oxylus the kingdom devolved on Laias, son of Oxylus. His descendants, however, I find did not reign, and so I pass them by, though I know who they were; my narrative must not descend to men of common rank. Later on Iphitus, of the line of Oxylus and contemporary with Lycurgus, who drew up the code of laws for the Lacedaemonians, arranged the games at Olympia and reestablished afresh the Olympic festival and truce, after an interruption of uncertain length. The reason for this interruption I will set forth when my narrative deals with Olympia.
[5.4.6] At this time Greece was grievously worn by internal strife and plague, and it occurred to Iphitus to ask the god at Delphi for deliverance from these evils. The story goes that the Pythian priestess ordained that Iphitus himself and the Eleans must renew the Olympic games. Iphitus also induced the Eleans to sacrifice to Heracles as to a god, whom hitherto they had looked upon as their enemy. The inscription at Olympia calls Iphitus the son of Haemon, but most of the Greeks say that his father was Praxonides and not Haemon, while the ancient records of Elis traced him to a father of the same name.
[5.4.7] The Eleans played their part in the Trojan war, and also in the battles of the Persian invasion of Greece. I pass over their struggles with the Pisans and Arcadians for the management of the Olympian games. Against their will they joined the Lacedaemonians in their invasion of Athenian territory, and shortly afterwards they rose up with the Mantineans and Argives against the Lacedaemonians, inducing Athens too to join the alliance.
[5.4.8] When Agis invaded the land, and Xenias turned traitor, the Eleans won a battle near Olympia, routed the Lacedaemonians and drove them out of the sacred enclosure; but shortly afterwards the war was concluded by the treaty I have already spoken of in my account of the Lacedaemonians.
[5.4.9] When Philip the son of Amyntas would not let Greece alone, the Eleans, weakened by civil strife, joined the Macedonian alliance, but they could not bring themselves to fight against the Greeks at Chaeroneia. They joined Philip’s attack on the Lacedaemonians because of their old hatred of that people, but on the death of Alexander they fought on the side of the Greeks against Antipater and the Macedonians.
[5.5.1] V. Later on Aristotimus, the son of Damaretus, the son of Etymon, became despot of Elis, being aided in his attempt by Antigonus, the son of Demetrius, who was king in Macedonia. After a despotism of six months Aristotimus was deposed, a rising against him having been organized by Chilon, Hellanicus, Lampis and Cylon; Cylon it was who with his own hand killed the despot when he had sought sanctuary at the altar of Zeus the Saviour. Such were the wars of the Eleans, of which my present enumeration must serve as a summary.
[5.5.2] The land of Elis contains two marvels. Here, and here only in Greece, does fine flax grow; and secondly, only over the border, and not within it, can the mares be impregnated by asses. The cause of this is said to have been a curse. The fine flax of Elis is as fine as that of the Hebrews, but it is not so yellow.
LEPREUS
[5.5.3] As you go from Elis there is a district stretching down to the sea. It is called Samicum, and above it on the right is what is called Triphylia, in which is the city Lepreus. The citizens of this city wish to belong to the Arcadians, but it is plain that from the beginning they have been subject to the Eleans. Such of them as have won Olympic victories have been announced by the herald as Eleans from Lepreus, and Aristophanes in a comedy calls Lepreus a town of the Eleans. Leaving the river Anigrus on the left there is a road leading to Lepreus; from Samicum another leads to it from Olympia and a third from Elis. The longest of them is a day’s journey.
[5.5.4] The city got its name, they say, from its founder Lepreus the son of Pyrgeus. There was also a story that Lepreus contended with Heracles: that he was as good a trencherman. Each killed an ox at the same time and prepared it for the table. It turned out, even as Lepreus maintained, that he was as powerful a trencherman as Heracles. Afterwards he made bold to challenge him to a duel. Lepreus,
they say, lost, was killed, and was buried in the land of Phigaleia. The Phigalians, however, could not show a tomb of Lepreus.
[5.5.5] I have heard some who maintained that Lepreus was founded by Leprea, the daughter of Pyrgeus. Others say that the first dwellers in the land were afflicted with the disease leprosy, and that the city received its name from the misfortune of the inhabitants. The Lepreans told me that in their city once was a temple of Zeus Leucaeus (Of the White Poplar), the grave of Lycurgus, son of Aleus, and the grave of Caucon, over which was the figure of a man holding a lyre.
[5.5.6] But as far as I could see they had no tomb of distinction, and no sanctuary of any deity save one of Demeter. Even this was built of unburnt brick, and contained no image. Not far from the city of the Lepreans is a spring called Arene, and they say that it derives its name from the wife of Aphareus.
THE RIVERS ANIGRUS & ACIDAS
[5.5.7] Returning again to Samicum, and passing through the district, we reach the mouth of the Anigrus. The current of this river is often held back by violent gales, which carry the sand from the open sea against it and stop the onward flow of the water. So whenever the sand has become soaked on both sides, by the sea without and by the river within, beasts and still more travellers on foot are in danger of sinking into it.
[5.5.8] The Anigrus descends from the mountain Lapithus in Arcadia, and right from its source its water does not smell sweet but actually stinks horribly. Before it receives the tributary Acidas it plainly cannot support fish-life at all. After the rivers unite, the fish that come down into the Anigrus with the water are uneatable, though before, if they are caught in the Acidas, they are eatable.
[5.5.9] I heard from an Ephesian that the Acidas was called Iardanus in ancient times. I repeat his statement, though I have nowhere found evidence in support of it. I am convinced that the peculiar odor of the Anigrus is due to the earth through which the water springs up, just as those rivers beyond Ionia, the exhalation from which is deadly to man, owe their peculiarity to the same cause. Some Greeks say that Chiron,