Page:History of Greece Vol V.djvu/232

 208 mSTOEY OF GREECE. who had hitherto been, if not all equal, at least all independent. His powerful mercenary force, levied in part among the Sikel tribes,! did not preserve him from the sword of a Geloan citizen named Sabyllus, who slew him after a reign of seven years : but it enabled his brother and successor Hippokrates to extend his dominion over nearly half of the island. In that mercenary force two oflDicers, Gelo and -^nesidemus (the latter a citizen of Agrigentum, of the conspicuous family of the Emmenidae, and descended from Telemachus, the deposer of Phalaris), particu larly distinguished themselves. Gelo was descended from a native of Telos near the Triopian cape, one of the original set- tlers who accompanied the Rhodian Antiphemus to Sicily. His immediate ancestor, named Telines, had first raised the family tc distinction, by valuable aid to a defeated political party, who had been worsted in a struggle, and forced to seek shelter in the neighboring town of Maktorium. Telines was possessed of cer- tain peculiar sacred rites (or visible and portable holy symbols, with a privileged knowledge of the ceremonial acts and formali- ties of divine service under which they were to be shown) for propitiating the subterranean goddesses, Demeter and Perse- phone ; " from whom he obtained them, or how he got at them himself (says Hei'odotus) I cannot say : " but such was the im- posing effect of his presence and manner of exhibiting them, that he ventured to march into Gela at the head of the exiles from Maktorium, and was enabled to reinstate them in power, — deterring the people from resistance in the same manner as the Athenians had been overawed by the spectacle of Phye-Athene in the chariot along with Peisistratus. The extraordinary bold- ness of this proceeding excites the admiration of Herodotus, especially as he had been informed that Telines was of an un- warlike temperament : the restored exiles rewarded it by grant- ing to him, and to his descendants after him, the hereditary dignity of hierophants of the two goddesses,^ — a function cer- ' Poh-aenus, v, 6. ' See about Telines and this hereditary priesthood, Herodot. vii, 1 53. TovTov^ uv 6 Trj^ivTic KaT'^ya-ye i^ T£?i7]v, e;^(jv ovdefiiav uvSpiJv dvvafxiv, d/lA' Ipu TOVTUV Tuv ■&euv o^EV 6e avrii eAa/3e, ?/ aiirbc iKTjjaaro, tovto oitK ex'^ elnai. rovroiai de Civ tticvvoc iuv, Karfjyaye, krc' w ts ol anoyovot