Page:History of Greece Vol I.djvu/120

 88 msToirr OF GREECE. passage. .ZEgyptos and his sons followed them to Argos and still pressed their suit, to which Danaos found himself compelled to assent ; but on the wedding night he furnished each of his daugh- ters with a dagger, and 'enjoined them to murder their husbands during the hour of sleep. His orders were obeyed by all, with the single exception of Hypermnestra, who preserved her hus- band Lynkeus, incurring displeasure and punishment from her father. He afterwards, however, pardoned her ; and when, by the voluntary abdication of Gelanor, he became king of Argos, Lynkeus was recognized as his son-in-law and ultimately suc- ceeded him. The remaining daughters, having been purified by Athene and Hermes, were given in marriage to the victors in a gymnic contest publicly proclaimed. From Danaos was derived the name of Danai, applied to the inhabitants of the Argeian territory, 1 and to the Homeric Greeks generally. From the legend of the Dana'ides we pass to two barren names of kings, Lynkeus and his son Abas. The two sons of Abas were Akrisios and Prestos, who, after much dissension, divided between them the Argeian territory ; Akrisios ruling at Argos, and Proetos at Tiryns. The families of both formed the theme of romantic stories. To pass over for the present the legend of Bellerophon, and the unrequited passion which the wife of Prcetos conceived for him, we are told that the daughters of Proetos, beautiful, and solicited in marriage by suitors from all Greece r were smitten with leprosy and driven mad, wandering in unseemly guise throughout Peloponnesus. The visitation had overtaken them, according to Hesiod, because they refused to take part in the Bacchic rites; according to Pherekydes and the Argeian Akusilaus, 2 because they had treated scornfully the wooden statue 1 Apollod. ii. 1. The Snppliccs of yEschylus is the commencing drama of a trilogy on this subject of the Danafdes, 'iKerldef, At'ywTmot, Aavat- def. Welcker, Griechisch. Tragodien, vol. i. p. 48 : the two latter are lost. The old epic poem called Danats or DanaTdes, which is mentioned in the Tabula Iliaca as containing 5000 verses, has perished, and is unfortunately , very little alluded to: see Ddntzer, Epic. Graec. Fragm. p. 3; Welcker, Dcr Episch. Kyklns, p. 35. Apollod. I.e.; Pherekyd. ap. Schol. Horn. Odyss. xv. 225; Ilcsiod, Fragm. Marktsch. Fr. 36, 37, 38. These Fragments belong to the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women : Apollodorus seems to refer to some other of the numerous Hesiodic poems, Diodorus (iv. 68) assigns the anger of Diony sos as the cause.