Page:History of Greece Vol I.djvu/205

 ARCADIAN GENEALOGY. 173 Aphareus, after the death of his sons, founded the tv/wa of Arene, and made over most part of his dominions to hi Neleus, with whom we pass into the Pylian genealogy. CHAPTER IX. ARCADIAN GENEALOGY. THE Arcadian divine or heroic pedigree begins with Pelasgus, whom both Hesiod and Asius considered as an indigenous man, though Akusilaus the Argeian represented him as brother of Argos and son of Zeus by Niobe, daughter of Phoroneus : this logographer wished to establish a community of origin between the Argeians and the Arcadians. Lykaen, son of Pelasgus and king of Arcadia, had, by different wives, fifty sons, the most savage, impious and wicked of man- kind : Maenalus was the eldest of them. Zeus, in order that he might himself become a witness of their misdeeds, presented himself to them in disguise. They killed a child and served it up to him for a meal; but the god overturned the table and struck dead with thunder Lykaon and all his fifty sons, with the single exception of Nyktimus, the youngest, whom he spared at the earnest intercession of the goddess Gsea (the Earth). The town near which the table was overturned received the name of Trapezus (Tabletown). This singular legend (framed on the same etymological type as that of the ants in -ZEgina, recounted elsewhere) seems ancient, and may probably belong to the Hesiodic Catalogue. But Pau- sanias tells us a story in many respects different, which was represented to him in Arcadia as the primitive local account, and which becomes the more interesting, as he tells us that he himself fully believes it. Both tales indeed go to illustrate the same historical times, as the grand cause of the subjection of the Messenians by the Spartans : that wrath had been appeased at the time when Epameinondai reconstituted Messene (Pausan. iy. 27, I).