nounce their enterprise for a
hundred years. This period had now expired; and the great-grandsons of
Hyllus--Temenus, Cresphontes, and Aristodemus--resolved to make a fresh
attempt to recover their birthright. They were assisted in the
enterprise by the Dorians. This people espoused their cause in
consequence of the aid which Hercules himself had rendered to the
Dorian king, AEgimius, when the latter was hard pressed in a contest
with the Lapithae. The invaders were warned by an oracle not to enter
Peloponnesus by the Isthmus of Corinth, but across the mouth of the
Corinthian gulf. The inhabitants of the northern coast of the gulf
were favourable to their enterprise. Oxylus, king of the AEtolians,
became their guide; and from Naupactus they crossed over to
Peloponnesus. A single battle decided the contest. Tisamenus, the son
of Orestes, was defeated and retired with a portion of his Achaean
subjects to the northern coast of Peloponnesus, then occupied by the
Ionians. He expelled the Ionians, and took possession of the country,
which continued henceforth to be inhabited by the Achaeans, and to be
called after them. The Ionians withdrew to Attica, and the greater
part of them afterwards emigrated to Asia Minor.

The Heraclidae and the Dorians now divided between them the dominions
of Tisamenus and of the other Achaean princes. The kingdom of Elis was
given to Oxylus as a recompense for his services as their guide; and it
was agreed that Temenus, Cresphontes, and Eurysthenes and Procles, the
infant sons of Aristodemus (who had died at Naupactus), should draw
lots for Argos, Sparta, and Messenia. Argos fell to Temenus, Sparta to
Eurysthenes and Procles, and Messenia to Cresphontes.

Such are the main features of the legend of the Return of the
Heraclidae. In order to make the story more striking and impressive,
it compresses into a single epoch events which probably occupied
several generations. It is in itself improbable that the brave
Achaeans quietly submitted to the Dorian invaders after a momentary
struggle. We have, moreover, many indications that such was not the
fact, and that it was only gradually and after a long protracted
contest that the Dorians became undisputed masters of the greater part
of Peloponnesus.

Argos was originally the chief Dorian state in Peloponnesus, but at the
time of the first Olympiad its power had been supplanted by that of
Sparta. The progress of Sparta from the second to