10 HISTORY OF GREECE. thus killed Degmenus, and secured the victory to Oxylus and hia followers. According to one statement, the Epeians were ex- pelled ; according to another, they fraternized amicably with th new-comers : whatever may be the truth as to this matter, it is cer- tain that their name is from this moment lost, and that they never reappear among the historical elements of Greece: 1 we hear from this time forward only of Eleians, said to be of ./Etolian descent. 2 One most important privilege was connected with the posses- sion of the Eleian territory by Oxylus, coupled with his claim on the gratitude of the Dorian kings. The Eleians acquired the ad- ministration of the temple at Olympia, which the Aehasans are said to have possessed before them ; and in consideration of this sacred function, which subsequently ripened into the celebration of the great Olympic games, their territory was solemnly pro- nounced to be inviolable. Such was the statement of Ephorus : 3 we find, in this case as in so many others, that the Return of the Herakleids is made to supply a legendary basis for the historical state of things in Peloponnesus. It was the practice of the great Attic tragedians, with rare ex- ceptions, to select the subjects of their composition from the heroic or legendary world, and Euripides had composed three dramas, now lost, on the adventures of Temenus with his daughter Hyrne- tho and his son-in-law Deiphontes, on the family misfortunes of Kresphontes and Merope, and on the successful valor of Archelaus the son of Temenus in Macedonia, where he was al- leged to have first begun the dynasty of the Temenid kings. Of these subjects the first and second were eminently tragical, and the third, relating to Archelaus, appears to have been undertaken by Euripides in compliment to his contemporary sovereign and 1 Strabo, viii. p. 358 ; Pausan. v. 4, 1 . One of the six towns in Triphylia mentioned by Herodotus is called "Eireiov (Herodot. iv. 149).
- Herodot. viii. 73 ; Pausan. v. 1, 2. Hekatams affirmed that the Epeiana
were completely alien to the Eleians ; Strabo does not seem to have been able to satisfy himself either of the affirmative or negative (Hekatreus, Fr. 348, ed. Didot ; Strabo, viii. p. 341 ).
- Ephorus ap. Strabo. viii. p. 358. The tale of the inhabitants of Pixa,
the territory more immediately bordering upon Olympia, was very different from this.
