Page:History of Greece Vol I.djvu/170

 138 HISTORY OF GREECE. stories, his great beauty caused the goddess Selene to become ena- mored of him, and to visit him by night during his sleep : the sleep of Endymion became a proverbial expression for enviable, undisturbed, and deathless repose. 1 Endymion had for issue (Pausanias gives us three different accounts, and Apollodorus a fourth, of the name of his wife) Epeios, JEtolus, Paeon, and a daughter Eurykyde. He caused his three sons to run a race on the stadium at Olympia, and Epeios, being victorious, was re- warded by becoming his successor in the kingdom : it was after him that the people were denominated Epeians. Both the story here mentioned, and still more, the etymologi cal signification of the names Aethlius and Endymion, seem plainly to indicate (as has before been remarked) that this gene- alogy was not devised until after the Olympic games had become celebrated and notorious throughout Greece. Epeios had no male issue, and was succeeded by his nephew Eleios, son of Euykyde by the god Poseidon : the name of the people was then changed from Epeians to Eleians. JEtolus, the brother of Epeios, having slain Apis, son of Phoroneus, was com- pelled to flee from the country : he crossed the Corinthian gulf and settled in the territory then called Kuretis, but to which he gave the name of JEtolia. 2 The son of Eleios, or, according to other accounts, of the god Helios, of Poseidon, or of Phorbas, 3 is Augeas, whom we find mentioned in the Iliad as king of the Epeians or Eleians. Nestor gives a long and circumstantial narrative of his own ex- ploits at the head of his Pylian countrymen against his neighbors the Epeians and their king Augeas, whom he defeated with great loss, slaying Mulios, the king's son-in-law, and acquiring a vast 1 Theocrit. iii. 49 ; xx. 35 ; where, however, Endymion is connected with Latmos in Caria (see Schol. ad loc). 2 Pausan. v. 1. 3-6; Apollodor. i. 7, 6. 3 Apollodor. ii. 5, 5; Schol. Apoll. Ehod. i. 172. In all probability, the old legend made Augeas the son of the god Helios : Helios, Augeas and Aga- tnede arc a triple series parallel to the Corinthian genealogy, Helios, JEetes and Media ; not to mention that the etymology of Augeas connects him with Helios. Theocritus (xx. 55) designates him as the son of the god He- lios, through whose favor his cattle are made to prosper and multiply y'tli uch astonishing success (xx. 117).