10. The systematised tradition next makes mention of a battle which took place between the united force of Peloponnesus, under the command of Tisamenus, the grandson of Agamemnon, and the sons of Aristomachus; in which the latter were victorious, and Peloponnesus fell into their possession. According as it suits the object of the narrator, this engagement is either represented to have been both by sea and land, and to have taken place at the passage,(233) or after the march through Arcadia. We may fairly suppose that it was inferred merely on probable grounds that a battle _must_ have been fought by Tisamenus, whom the tradition represented as prince of the Achæans at the capture of Ægialea.(234) Many traditions agree in stating that the Heraclidæ at that time took the road through Arcadia; Oxylus is said to have led them by this way, that they might not be envious of his fertile territory of Elis;(235) Cresphontes is moreover stated to have been the brother-in-law of Cypselus king of Arcadia, who had his royal seat at Basilis, on the Alpheus, in the country of the Parrhasians.(236)
11. Next comes the division of Peloponnesus among the three brothers Temenus, Cresphontes, and Aristodamus, or his sons. We have to thank the tragedians alone for the invention and embellishment of this fable;(237) that it contains little or no truth is at once evident; for it was not till long after this time that the Dorians possessed the larger part of Peloponnesus;(238) and a division of lands not yet conquered is without example in Grecian history. At the same time it is related that, upon the altars whereon the brothers sacrificed to their grandfather Zeus, there was found a frog for Argos, a snake for Sparta, and a fox for Messenia. It seems however probable that these are mere symbols, by which the inventors (perhaps the hostile Athenians) attempted to represent the character of those nations. For it cannot be supposed that national arms or ensigns are meant; unless indeed we give credit to the pretended discovery of Fourmont, who affirms that he found in the temple of the Amyclæan Apollo a shield with the inscription of Teleclus as general (βάγος), with a snake in the middle; and another of Anaxidamus, with a snake and two foxes.(239) But he has represented the shield of so extraordinary a form, with sharp ends, and indentures on the sides, that the fraud is at once open to detection; and consequently the supposition that the snake was the armorial bearing of Sparta remains entirely unfounded.(240)