of the sons of Aristomachus, took the kingdom of
Argos. For the two remaining kingdoms, that of Sparta and that of
Messenia, his two nephews, who were to rule jointly, and their uncle
Cresphontes, had to cast lots. Cresphontes wished to have the fertile
Messenia, and induced his brother to acquiesce in a trick which secured
it to him. The lot of Cresphontes and that of his two nephews were to be
placed in a water-jar, and thrown out. Messenia was to belong to him
whose lot came out first. With the connivance of Temenus, Cresphontes
marked as his own lot a pellet composed of baked clay, as the lot of his
nephews, a pellet of unbaked clay; the unbaked pellet was of course
dissolved in the water, while the brick pellet fell out alone. Messenia,
therefore, was assigned to Cresphontes.

Messenia was at this time ruled by Melanthus, a descendant of Neleus.
This ancestor, a prince of the great house of AEolus, had come from
Thessaly and succeeded to the Messenian throne on the failure of the
previous dynasty. Melanthus and his race were thus foreigners in
Messenia and were unpopular. His subjects offered little or no
opposition to the invading Dorians; Melanthus abandoned his kingdom to
Cresphontes, and retired to Athens.

Cresphontes married Merope, whose native country, Arcadia, was not
affected by the Dorian invasion. This marriage, the issue of which was
three sons, connected him with the native population of Peloponnesus. He
built a new capital of Messenia, Stenyclaros, and transferred thither,
from Pylos, the seat of government; he proposed, moreover, says
Pausanias, to divide Messenia into five states, and to confer on the
native Messenians equal privileges with their Dorian conquerors. The
Dorians complained that his administration unduly favoured the
vanquished people; his chief magnates, headed by Polyphontes, himself a
descendant of Hercules, formed a cabal against him, and he was slain
with his two eldest sons. The youngest son of Cresphontes, AEpytus, then
an infant, was saved by his mother, who sent him to her father,
Cypselus, the king of Arcadia, under whose protection he was brought up.

The drama begins at the moment when AEpytus, grown to manhood, returns
secretly to Messenia to take vengeance on his father's murderers. At
this period Temenus was no longer reigning at Argos; he had been
murdered by his sons, jealous of their brother-in-law, Deiphontes. The
sons of Aristodemus, Procles and Eurysthenes, at v