Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/25

 OXYLUS AND THE ^TOLIANS IN ELIS, 9 his household gods and with a portion of his suhjeds to Attica. 1 The only Dorian establishment in the peninsula not directly connected with the triple partition is Corinth, which is said to have been Dorized somewhat later and under another leader, though still a Herakleid. Hippotes descendant of Herakles in the fourth generation, but not through Hyllus, had been guilty (as already mentioned) of the murder of Karnus the prophet at the camp of Naupaktus, for which he had been ban- ished and remained in exile for ten years ; his son deriving the name of Aletes from the long wanderings endured by the father At the head of a body of Dorians, Aletes attacked Corinth : he pitched his camp on the Solygeian eminence near the city, and harassed the inhabitants with constant warfare until he compelled them to surrender. Even in the time of the Peloponnesian war, the Corinthians professed to identify the hill on which the camp of these assailants had been placed. The great mythical dyn- asty of the Sisyphids was expelled, and Aletes became ruler and OEkist of the Dorian city ; many of the inhabitants, however, -ZEolic or Ionic, departed. 2 The settlement of Oxylus and his JEtolians in Elis is said by some to have been accomplished with very little opposition ; the leader professing himself to be descended from JEtolus, who had been in a previous age banished from Elis into JEtolia, and the two people, Epeians and JEtolians, acknowledging a kindred origin one with the other. 3 At first, indeed, according to Epho- rus, the Epeians appeared in arms, determined to repel the in- truders, but at length it was agreed on both sides to abide the issue of a single combat. Degmenus, the champion of the Epeians, confided in the long shot of his bow and arrow ; but the JEtolian Pyrsechmes came provided with his sling, a weapon then un- known and recently invented by the JEtolians, the range of which was yet longer than that of the bow of his enemy : he 1 Strabo, viii. p. 359 ; Conon, Xarr. 39. Conon, Narrat. 26. Ephor. ap. Strab. viii. p. 389. Thucydides calls the ante-Dorian inhabitants of Corinth jEolians ; Conoi calls them lonians. 3 Ephorus ap. Strabo, x. p. 463.
 * Thucydid. iv. 42. Schol. Pindar. Olymp. xiii.l"; and Nem. vii. 155.