Page:The Mythology of All Races Vol 1 (Greek and Roman).djvu/250

92 reason of it and thinking to take him off his guard, attacked him treacherously. Herakles, however, was a master of retaliation, for when he subsequently caught them in an ambuscade, he put Angelas and his sons to death, captured the city of Elis, and gave the kingdom to another. "Then the valiant son of Zeus assembled in Pisa all his hosts and all the spoils of war, and measured off the boundaries of a precinct which he made sacred to his mighty sire. In the midst of the plain did he set aside a level space, the Altis, and fenced it round about. The land without this space did he ordain to be a place for feasting and for rest. Then to Alpheios' stream he sacrificed and to the twelve sovereign gods." In the space which he had consecrated Herakles celebrated the first Olympian games.

From Pisa he went against the city of Pylos, which fell before his arms, and here he encountered Periklymenos, one of the sons of Nereus, who tried to escape his fate by resorting to the powers of transformation which Poseidon had given him. He could change himself into a lion, a snake, a bee, or even so small an insect as a gnat, but when he had taken the form of this last and was about to escape, Herakles' vision was miraculously cleared so that he detected and caught him, and slew him along with all the rest of his family except his brother Nestor. In this struggle Hades fought on the side of the Pylians and was grievously wounded by Herakles.

Among the allies of Nereus had been the sons of Hippokoön of Sparta, against whom Herakles organized an expedition for their opposition to him and for their wanton murder of one of his kinsmen, as well as for a grudge against the Spartans who had withheld cleansing from him after the death of Iphitos. After much persuasion he enlisted on his side King Kepheus of Tegea, and to save Tegea from capture during the absence of its defenders he left with Kepheus's daughter a lock of the Gorgon's hair enclosed in a bronze water-jar. In the war that ensued Iphikles and the men of Tegea were killed, but in spite of this loss Herakles was able in the end to overcome his foes