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When they had made themselves masters of Peloponnese, they set up three altars of Paternal Zeus, and sacrificed upon them, and cast lots for the cities. So the first drawing was for Argos, the second for Lacedaemon, and the third for Messene. And they brought a pitcher of water, and resolved that each should cast in a lot. Now Temenus and the two sons of Aristodemus, Procles and Eurysthenes, threw stones; but Cresphontes, wishing to have Messene allotted to him, threw in a clod of earth. As the clod was dissolved in the water, it could not be but that the other two lots should turn up. The lot of Temenus having been drawn first, and that of the sons of Aristodemus second, Cresphontes got

Messene.[*](As to the drawing of the lots, and the stratagem by which Cresphontes secured Messenia for himself, see Polyaenus, Strateg. i.6; Paus. 4.3.4ff. Sophocles alludes to the stratagem (Soph. Aj. 1283ff., with the Scholiast on Soph. Aj. 1285).)

And on the altars on which they sacrificed they found signs lying: for they who got Argos by the lot found a toad; those who got Lacedaemon found a serpent; and those who got Messene found a fox.[*](In the famous paintings by Polygnotus at Delphi, the painter depicted Menelaus, king of Sparta, with the device of a serpent on his shield. See Paus. 10.26.3. The great Messenian hero Aristomenes is said to have escaped by the help of a fox from the pit into which he had been thrown by the Lacedaemonians. See Paus. 4.18.6ff. I do not remember to have met with any evidence, other than that of Apollodorus, as to the association of the toad with Argos.) As to these signs the seers said that those who found the toad had better stay in the city ( seeing that the animal has no strength when it walks); that those who found the serpent would be terrible in attack, and that those who found the fox would be wily. Now Temenus, passing over his sons Agelaus, Eurypylus, and Callias, favoured his daughter Hyrnetho and her husband Deiphontes; hence his sons hired some fellows to murder their father.[*](Compare Paus. 2.19.1; Paus. 2.28.2ff., who agrees as to the names of Hyrnetho and her husband Deiphontes, but differs as to the sons of Temenus, whom he calls Cisus, Cerynes, Phalces, and Agraeus.) On the perpetration of the murder the army decided that the kingdom belonged to Hyrnetho[*](The grave of Hyrnetho was shown at Argos, but she is said to have been accidentally killed by her brother Phalces near Epidaurus, and long afterwards she was worshipped in a sacred grove of olives and other trees on the place of her death. See Paus. 2.23.3; Paus. 2.28.3-7.) and Deiphontes. Cresphontes had not long reigned over Messene when he was murdered with two of his sons;[*](Compare Paus. 4.3.7.) and Polyphontes, one of the true Heraclids, came to the

throne and took to wife, against her will, Merope, the wife of the murdered man.[*](Compare Hyginus, Fab. 137.) But he too was slain. For Merope had a third son, called Aepytus, whom she gave to her own father to bring up. When he was come to manhood he secretly returned, killed Polyphontes, and recovered the kingdom of his fathers.[*](Compare Paus. 4.3.7ff. (who does not name Polyphontes); Hyginus, Fab. 184. According to Hyginus, the name of the son of Cresphontes who survived to avenge his father's murder was Telephon. This story of Merope, Aepytus, and Polyphontes is the theme of Matthew Arnold's tragedy Merope, an imitation of the antique.)