The Europeayt Sky-god. 375
honour among the many Myrmidones, or whether they now dishonour him through Hellas and Phthia because old age hath come upon his hands and feetJ^ ^^ In historical times the Spartans were warned by the Delphic Apollo to " beware of a lame reign." ^*^ The oracle ran as follows :^^
Sparta, fur all thy pomp and pride beware, Lest sound of foot thou have a halting reign : Then shall disease unlooked for hold thee long And rolling waves of man-consuming war.
How Diopeithes pressed these lines against the claims of the lame Agesilaus, while Lysander insisted that they were an allegorical condemnation of the bastard Leotychides, is matter of common knowledge. It is also on record ^^ that Archidamus, the father of Agesilaus, was fined by the ephors for having married too short a wife: "'for,' said they, ' she will bear us not kings but kinglets.' " At Athens the last of the regular kings was Codrus ; and Pausanias ^^ a propos of his successor mentions an instruct- ive incident. " Medon and Nileus, the eldest of the sons of Codrus, quarrelled about the sovereignty, and Nileus declared that he would not endure to be ruled by Medon, because Medon was lame of one leg. They agreed to refer the question to the Delphic oracle, and the Pythian priestess gave the kingdom of Athens to Medon. So Nileus and the rest of the sons of Codrus set out to found a colony." ^^ In course of time the duties of the Athenian king as priest, general, and judge passed into the hands of the priestly king [^a(TLkev<i), the war-leader (nr o\efiap')(p<i), and the
« Od., ii.494ff. ^ Xen. Hellen., 3. 3. 3.
^' Plut. vit. Ages. 3, vit. Lys. 22, Paus., 3. 8. 9. The first of these sources reads "diseases" {vovaoi) in the third line ; the other two have "troubles"
^- Theophrastus ap. Plut. vit. Ages., 2.
^ Paus., 7. 2. I, Frazer.
^* See further infra, p. 396 ff.
