Description of Greece

​Heracles afterwards captured and sacked Elis, having gathered an army of Argives, Thebans, and Arcadians; those from Pylos in Elis and the Pisans also came to the aid of the Eleans. Heracles punished the former, but an oracle from Delphi restrained him from the campaign against the Pisans, which ran as follows: “The Father cares for Pisa, and Pytho’s vales are my concern.” This oracle indeed proved to be the salvation of the Pisans. Heracles restored the land of Elis and the rest of the property to Phyleus, out of respect for Phyleus rather than of his own free will; for he allowed him to keep the captives and permitted Augeas not to pay any penalty.

​The women of the Eleans, since their land was desolated of those in the prime of life, are said to have prayed to Athena that they might conceive immediately when they copulated with their husbands; and their prayer was fulfilled, and they established a sanctuary of Athena with the surname of Mother. Both the women and the men were exceedingly delighted with their union, and they call the place itself Badu where they first came together, and the river that flows there, in their local dialect, Badu water.

​When Phyleus, after setting affairs in Elis in order, withdrew again to Dulichium, fate overtook Augeas when he was advanced in years, and Agasthenes, the son of Augeas, and Amphimachus and Thalpius took the kingship of the Eleans; for when the sons of Actor brought twin sisters into their house, daughters of Dexamenus who reigned in Olenus, Amphimachus was born to one from Theronice, and Thalpius to Eurytus from Theraiphone.

​Nor indeed did Amarynceus himself remain a private citizen, nor did Diores the son of Amarynceus. This Homer also indicated in the Catalogue of the Eleans, making their entire fleet to consist of forty ships, and of these half were stationed under Amphimachus and Thalpius, and of the remaining twenty, Diores the son of Amarynceus led ten ships, and Polyxenus the son of Agasthenes led another ten. To Polyxenus, when he returned safe from Troy, a son Amphimachus was born—Polyxenus gave this name to his child, as it seems to me, out of friendship for Amphimachus the son of Cteatus who died at Ilium—and to Amphimachus was born Eleius;

​and while Eleius was reigning in Elis, at that time the expedition of the Dorians with the sons of Aristomachus was gathering for their return to the Peloponnese. An oracle was given to their kings to make the three-eyed one the leader of the return. While they were at a loss as to what the oracle meant, they happened to meet a man riding a mule, and one of the eyes of the mule had been destroyed;

​Cresphontes having realized that the oracle pointed to this man, the Dorians thus made him one of themselves. He urged them to descend to the Peloponnese by ships and not to try with a land army through the isthmus. He gave this advice and at the same time led them on the voyage from Naupactus to Molycrium; and they, in return for this, agreed to give him the land of Elis at his request. The man was Oxylus, the son of Haemon, the son of Thoas; this Thoas was he who had helped the sons of Atreus to destroy the empire of Priam, and the generations from Thoas trace back six generations to Aetolus, the son of Endymion.

​And the Heracleidae were also otherwise related to the kings in Aetolia, and the mothers of Thoas the son of Andraemon and of Hyllus the son of Heracles were sisters. And it had happened that Oxylus was an exile from Aetolia; for they say that while throwing the discus he missed and committed an involuntary murder, and that the one killed by the discus was Thermius, the brother of Oxylus, or, according to others, Alcidocus the son of Scopius.