Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/17

 HISTORY OF GREECE. PART I. CONTINUATION OF LEGENDARY GREECE. CHAPTER XVIII. CLOSING EVENTS OF LEGENDARY GREECE. -PERIOD OF INTER3IK DIATE DARKNESS, BEFORE THE DAWN OF HISTORICAL GREECE. SECTION I. RETURN OF THE HERAKLEIDS INTO PELOPONNESUS. IN one of the preceding chapters, we have traced the descending series of the two most distinguished mythical families in Pelopon- nesus, the Perseids and the Pelopids : we have followed the former down to Herakles and his son Hyllus, and the latter down to Orestes son of Agamemnon, who is left in possession of that ascendancy in the peninsula which had procured for his father the chief command in the Trojan war. The Herakleids, or sons of Herakles, on the other hand, are expelled fugitives, dependent upon foreign aid or protection: Hyllus had perished in single combat with Echemus of Tegea, (connected with the Pelopids by marriage with Timandra sister of Klytasmnestra, 1 ) and a solemn compact had been made, as the preliminary condition of this duel, that no similar attempt at an invasion of the peninsula should be undertaken by his family for the space of one hundred years. At the end of the stipulated period the attempt was renewed, and with complrte success ; but its success was owing, not so much to 1 Ilcsiod, Eoiai, Fragm. 58, p. 43, cd. Duntzcr. TOL. II 1 IOC.