BOOK II.
consequence. The people die of famine, nor is the hand of the god hfted from off them, until, as for Chryses, a full atonement is made. Hippotes is banished, and the chiefs are then told to take as their guide the three-eyed man, who is found in the Aitolian Oxylos who rides on a one-eyed horse. But as the local myth exhibited Tisa- menos the son of Orestes as at this time the ruler of Peloponnesos, that prince must be brought forward as the antagonist of the returning Herakleids ; and a great battle follows in which he is slain, while, according to one version, Pamphylos and Dymas, the sons of the Dorian Aigimios, fall on the side of the invaders. With the partition of the Peloponnesos among the conquerors the myth comes to an end. Argos falls to the lot of Temenos, while Sparta becomes the portion of the sons of Aristodemos, and Messene that of Kresphontes. A sacrifice is offered by way of thanksgiving by these chiefs on their respective altars ; and as they drew near to complete the rite, on the altar of Sparta was seen a serpent, on that of Argos a toad, on that of Messene a fox. The soothsayers were, of course, ready with their interpretations. The slow and sluggish toad denoted the dull and unenterprising disposition of the future Argive people ; the serpent betokened the terrible energy of the Spartans ; the fox, the wiliness and cunning of the Messenians. As indications of national character, more appropriate emblems might perhaps have been found ; but it may be noted that the toad or frog reappears in the Hindu legend of Bheki, the frog-sun, and in the German story of the frog-prince ; that the serpent in this legend belongs to the class of dragons which appear in the myths of Helios, Medeia, and lamos ; and that the Messenian fox is an animal closely akin to the wolf which we meet in the myths of the Lykian Apollon and the Arkadian Lykaon.^
Section IV.— THE THEBAN WARS.
Adrastos and Am- phiaraos.
In spite of all differences of detail between the legends of the Trojan and the Theban wars, the points of resemblance are at the least as worthy of remark In each case there are two wars and two
' The three sons, Aristodemos, Temenos, and Kresphontes, who in this stage of the myth represent the line of Herakles, are seen again in the three sons of the Gemian Mann, the Mannus of Tacitus : but the names in the Teutonic story are more significant. The names of the three great tribes, Ingsevones, Iscaevones, Herminones, point to Yng, Askr, and Irmin. To Vng, probably, we may trace the English name : in Askr we see the ash- born man, the race of which the Greek spoke as sprung «/c iJLfXiav : Irmin is the old Saxon god, whose name is familiar to us under its later form Herman, the Arminius of Tacitus. — Max Muller, Lectures, second series, 458.
