Cresphontes
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In
Peloponnesus. He became king of Messene
.
Cresphontes and his brothers complained to the oracle that its instructions had proved fatal to those who had followed them (the
Apollo) and the fleet destroyed, because one of the Heraclidae had slain an Acarnanian
soothsayer.
The oracle, being again consulted by Temenus, bade him offer an
Orestes
, the chief ruler in the peninsula, who was defeated and slain.
The Heraclidae, who thus became practically masters of Peloponnesus, proceeded to distribute its territory among themselves by lot.
Lacedaemon to Procles and Eurysthenes, the twin sons of Aristodemus; and Messene to Cresphontes. The fertile district of Elis had been reserved by agreement for Oxylus
. The Heraclidae ruled in Lacedaemon until 221 BC, but disappeared much earlier in the other countries.
Notes
- ^ Zimmerman, J. E. (1964). Dictionary of Classical Mythology. New York: Harper & Row. p. 72.
See also
Sources
- Bibliotheca ii. 8.
- Diodorus Siculus, iv. 57, 58.
- Pausanias, i. 32, 41, ii. 13, 18, iii. I, iv. 3, v. 3.
- Heraclidae.
- Pindar, Pythia, ix. 137.
- Herodotus, ix. 27.
- Karl Otfried Müller. Dorians, Part I, Chapter 3.
- Connop Thirlwall. History of Greece, Chapter VII.
- George Grote. History of Greece, Part I, Chapter XVIII.
- Georg Busolt. Griechische Geschichte, Part I, Chapter 11, Section 7, where a list of authorities is given.