[318] Apollodôr. ii. 7, 2. Diodôr. iv. 33. Pausan. v. 2, 2; 3, 2. It seems evident from these accounts that the genuine legend represented Hêraklês as having been defeated by the Molionids: the unskilful evasions both of Apollodôrus and Diodôrus betray this. Pindar (Olymp. xi. 25-50) gives the story without any flattery to Hêraklês.
It was on occasion of this conquest of Elis, according to the old mythe which Pindar has ennobled in a magnificent ode, that Hêraklês first consecrated the ground of Olympia, and established the Olympic games. Such at least was one of the many fables respecting the origin of that memorable institution.[320]
[320] The Armenian copy of Eusebius gives a different genealogy respecting Elis and Pisa: Aëthlius, Epeius, Endymiôn, Alexinus; next Œnomaus and Pêlops, then Hêraklês. Some counted ten generations, others _three_, between Hêraklês and Iphitus, who renewed the discontinued Olympic games (see Armen. Euseb. copy c. xxxii. p. 140).
Phyleus, after having restored order in Elis, retired again to Dulichiôn, and left the kingdom to his brother Agasthenês, which again brings us into the Homeric series. For Polyxenos, son of Agasthenês, is one of the four commanders of the Epeian forty ships in the Iliad, in conjunction with the two sons of Eurytos and Kteatos, and with Diôrês son of Amarynceus. Megês, the son of Phyleus, commands the contingent from Dulichiôn and the Echinades.[321] Polyxenos returns safe from Troy, is succeeded by his son Amphimachos,—named after the Epeian chief who had fallen before Troy,—and he again by another Eleios, in whose time the Dôrians and the Hêrakleids invade Peloponnêsus.[322] These two names, barren of actions or attributes, are probably introduced by the genealogists whom Pausanias followed, to fill up the supposed interval between the Trojan war and the Dôrian invasion.
We find the ordinary discrepancies in respect to the series and the members of this genealogy. Thus some called Epeios son of Aëthlius, others son of Endymiôn:[323] a third pedigree, which carries the sanction of Aristotle and is followed by Conôn, designated Eleios, the first settler of Elis, as son of Poseidôn and Eurypylê, daughter of Endymiôn, and Epeios and Alexis as the two sons of Eleios.[324] And Pindar himself, in his ode to Epharmostus the Locrian, introduces with much emphasis another king of the Epeians named Opus, whose daughter, pregnant by Zeus, was conveyed by that god to the old and childless king Locrus: the child when born, adopted by Locrus and named Opus, became the eponymous hero of the city so called in Locris.[325] Moreover Hekatæus the Milesian not only affirmed (contrary both to the Iliad and the Odyssey) that the Epeians and the Eleians were different people, but also added that the Epeians had assisted Hêraklês in his expedition against Augeas and Elis; a narrative very different from that of Apollodôrus and Pausanias, and indicating besides that he must have had before him a genealogy varying from theirs.[326]
