Page:History of Greece Vol I.djvu/201

 LACONIAN AND MESSEXIAN GENEALOGIES. i69 nus is the father of Penelope, wife of Odysseus: the contrast between her behavior and that of Klytaemnestra and Helen became the more striking in consequence of their being so nearly related. Aphareus is the father of Idas and Lynkeus, while Leukippus has for his daughters, Phoebe and Eaeira. Accord- ing to one of the Hesiodic poems, Kastor and Pollux were both sons of Zeus by Leda, while Helen was neither daughter of Zeus nor of Tyndareus, but of Oceanus and Tethys. 1 The brothers Kastor and (Polydeukes, or) Pollux are no less celebrated for th'jir fraternal affection than for their great bodily accomplishments : Kastor, the great charioteer and horse-master; Pollux, the first of pugilists. They are enrolled both among the hunters of the Kalydonian boar and among the heroes of the Argonautic expedition, in which Pollux represses the insolence of Amykus, king of the Bebrykes, on the coast of Asiatic Thrace the latter, a gigantic pugilist, from whom no rival has ever escaped, challenges Pollux, but is vanquished and killed in the fight.2 The two brothers also undertook an expedition into Attica, for the purpose of recovering their sister Helen, who had been carried off by Theseus in her early youth, and deposited by him at Aphidna, while he accompanied Perithous to the under-world, in order to assist his friend in carrying off Persephone. The force of Kastor and Pollux was irresistible, and when they re- demanded their sister, the people of Attica were anxious to restore her: but no one knew where Theseus had deposited his prize. The invaders, not believing in the sincerity of this denial, pro- ceeded to ravage the country, Avhich would have been utterly ruined, had not Dekelus, the eponymus of Dekeleia, been able to indicate Aphidna as the place of concealment. The autochtho- nous Titakus betrayed Aphidna to Kastor and Pollux, and Helen 1 Hesiod. ap. Schol. Pindar. Nem. x. 150. Fragm. Hcsiod. Diintzer, 58. p. 44. Tyndarcus was worshipped as a god at Lacedaemon ("Varro ap. Serv. ad Virgil. JEneid. viii. 275). 2 Apollon. Rhod. ii. 1-96. Apollod. i. 9, 20. Theocrit. xxii. 26-133. In the account of Apollonius and Apollodorus, Amykns is slain in the contest; in that of Theocritus he is only conquered and forced to give in, with a promise to renounce for the future his brutal conduct; the, re were several different narratives. See Schol. Apollon. Rhod ii. 106. VOL V 8