Glion?——Ah, twenty years, it cuts[27]All meaning from a name!White houses prank where once were huts.Glion, but not the same!And yet I know not! All unchangedThe turf, the pines, the sky!The hills in their old order ranged;The lake, with Chillon by!And, 'neath those chestnut-trees, where stiffAnd stony mounts the way,The crackling husk-heaps burn, as ifI left them yesterday!Across the valley, on that slope,The huts of Avant shine!Its pines, under their branches, opeWays for the pasturing kine.Full-foaming milk-pails, Alpine fare,Sweet heaps of fresh-cut grass,Invite to rest the traveller thereBefore he climb the pass—The gentian-flower'd pass, its crownWith yellow spires aflame;[28]Whence drops the path to Allière down,And walls where Byron came,[29]By their green river, who doth changeHis birth-name just below;Orchard, and croft, and full-stored grangeNursed by his pastoral flow.But stop!—to fetch back thoughts that strayBeyond this gracious bound,The cone of Jaman, pale and grey,See, in the blue profound!Ah, Jaman! delicately tallAbove his sun-warm'd firs—What thoughts to me his rocks recall,What memories he stirs!And who but thou must be, in truth,Obermann! with me here?Thou master of my wandering youth,But left this many a year!Yes, I forget the world's work wrought,Its warfare waged with pain;An eremite with thee, in thoughtOnce more I slip my chain,And to thy mountain-chalet come,And lie beside its door,And hear the wild bee's Alpine hum,And thy sad, tranquil lore!Again I feel the words inspireTheir mournful calm; serene,Yet tinged with infinite desireFor all thatmighthave been—The harmony from which man swervedMade his life's rule once more!The universal order served,Earth happier than before!—While thus I mused, night gently ranDown over hill and wood.Then, still and sudden, ObermannOn the grass near me stood.Those pensive features well I knew,On my mind, years before,Imaged so oft! imaged so true!—A shepherd's garb he wore,A mountain-flower was in his hand,A book was in his breast.Bent on my face, with gaze which scann'dMy soul, his eyes did rest."And is it thou," he cried, "so longHeld by the world which weLoved not, who turnest from the throngBack to thy youth and me?"And from thy world, with heart opprest,Choosest thounowto turn?—Ah me! we anchorites read things best,Clearest their course discern!"Thou fledst me when the ungenial earth,Man's work-place, lay in gloom.Return'st thou in her hour of birth,Of hopes and hearts in bloom?"Perceiv'st thou not the change of day?Ah! Carry back thy ken,What, some two thousand years! SurveyThe world as it was then!"Like ours it look'd in outward air.Its head was clear and true,Sumptuous its clothing, rich its fare,No pause its action knew;"Stout was its arm, each thew and boneSeem'd puissant and alive—But, ah! its heart, its heart was stone,And so it could not thrive!"On that hard Pagan world disgustAnd secret loathing fell.Deep weariness and sated lustMade human life a hell."In his cool hall, with haggard eyes,The Roman noble lay;He drove abroad, in furious guise,Along the Appian way."He made a feast, drank fierce and fast,And crown'd his hair with flowers—No easier nor no quicker pass'dThe impracticable hours."The brooding East with awe beheldHer impious younger world.The Roman tempest swell'd and swell'd,And on her head was hurl'd."The East bow'd low before the blastIn patient, deep disdain;She let the legions thunder past,And plunged in thought again."So well she mused, a morning brokeAcross her spirit grey;A conquering, new-born joy awoke,And fill'd her life with day."'Poor world,' she cried, 'so deep accurst,That runn'st from pole to poleTo seek a draught to slake thy thirst—Go, seek it in thy soul!"She heard it, the victorious West,In crown and sword array'd!She felt the void which mined her breast,She shiver'd and obey'd."She veil'd her eagles, snapp'd her sword,And laid her sceptre down;Her stately purple she abhorr'd,And her imperial crown."She broke her flutes, she stopp'd her sports,Her artists could not please;She tore her books, she shut her courts,She fled her palaces;"Lust of the eye and pride of lifeShe left it all behind,And hurried, torn with inward strife,The wilderness to find."Tears wash'd the trouble from her face!She changed into a child!'Mid weeds and wrecks she stood—a placeOf ruin—but she smiled!"Oh, had I lived in that great day,How had its glory newFill'd earth and heaven, and caught awayMy ravish'd spirit too!"No thoughts that to the world belongHad stood against the waveOf love which set so deep and strongFrom Christ's then open grave."No cloister-floor of humid stoneHad been too cold for me.For me no Eastern desert loneHad been too far to flee."No lonely life had pass'd too slow,When I could hourly scanUpon his Cross, with head sunk low,That nail'd, thorn-crowned Man!"Could see the Mother with her ChildWhose tender winning artsHave to his little arms beguiledSo many wounded hearts!"And centuries came and ran their course,And unspent all that timeStill, still went forth that Child's dear force,And still was at its prime."Ay, ages long endured his spanOf life—'tis true received—That gracious Child, that thorn-crown'd Man!—He lived while we believed."While we believed, on earth he went,And open stood his grave.Men call'd from chamber, church, and tent;And Christ was by to save."Now he is dead! Far hence he liesIn the lorn Syrian town;And on his grave, with shining eyes,The Syrian stars look down."In vain men still, with hoping new,Regard his death-place dumb,And say the stone is not yet to,And wait for words to come."Ah, o'er that silent sacred land,Of sun, and arid stone,And crumbling wall, and sultry sand,Sounds now one word alone!"Unduped of fancy, henceforth manMust labour!—must resignHis all too human creeds, and scanSimply the way divine!"But slow that tide of common thought,Which bathed our life, retired;Slow, slow the old world wore to nought,And pulse by pulse expired."Its frame yet stood without a breachWhen blood and warmth were fled;And still it spake its wonted speech—But every word was dead."And oh, we cried, that on this corseMight fall a freshening storm!Rive its dry bones, and with new forceA new-sprung world inform!"—Down came the storm! O'er France it pass'dIn sheets of scathing fire;All Europe felt that fiery blast,And shook as it rush'd by her."Down came the storm! In ruins fellThe worn-out world we knew.It pass'd, that elemental swell!Again appear'd the blue;"The sun shone in the new-wash'd sky,And what from heaven saw he?Blocks of the past, like icebergs high,Float on a rolling sea!"Upon them plies the race of manAll it before endeavour'd;'Ye live,' I cried, 'ye work and plan,And know not ye are sever'd!"'Poor fragments of a broken worldWhereon men pitch their tent!Why were ye too to death not hurl'dWhen your world's day was spent?"'That glow of central fire is doneWhich with its fusing flameKnit all your parts, and kept you one—But ye, ye are the same!"'The past, its mask of union on,Had ceased to live and thrive.The past, its mask of union gone,Say, is it more alive?"'Your creeds are dead, your rites are dead,Your social order too!Where tarries he, the Power who said:See, I make all things new?"'The millions suffer still, and grieve,And what can helpers healWith old-world cures men half believeFor woes they wholly feel?"'And yet men have such need of joy!But joy whose grounds are true;And joy that should all hearts employAs when the past was new."'Ah, not the emotion of that past,Its common hope, were vain!Some new such hope must dawn at last,Or man must toss in pain."'But now the old is out of date,The new is not yet born,And who can bealoneelate,While the world lies forlorn?'"Then to the wilderness I fled.—There among Alpine snowsAnd pastoral huts I hid my head,And sought and found repose."It was not yet the appointed hour.Sad, patient, and resign'd,I watch'd the crocus fade and flower,I felt the sun and wind."The day I lived in was not mine,Man gets no second day.In dreams I saw the future shine—But ah! I could not stay!"Action I had not, followers, fame;I pass'd obscure, alone.The after-world forgets my name,Nor do I wish it known."Composed to bear, I lived and died,And knew my life was vain,With fate I murmur not, nor chide,At Sèvres by the Seine"(If Paris that brief flight allow)My humble tomb explore!It bears:Eternity, be thouMy refuge!and no more."But thou, whom fellowship of moodDid make from haunts of strifeCome to my mountain-solitude,And learn my frustrate life;"O thou, who, ere thy flying spanWas past of cheerful youth,Didst find the solitary manAnd love his cheerless truth—"Despair not thou as I despair'd,Nor be cold gloom thy prison!Forward the gracious hours have fared,And see! the sun is risen!"He breaks the winter of the past;A green, new earth appears.Millions, whose life in ice lay fast,Have thoughts, and smiles, and tears."What though there still need effort, strife?Though much be still unwon?Yet warm it mounts, the hour of life!Death's frozen hour is done!"The world's great order dawns in sheen,After long darkness rude,Divinelier imaged, clearer seen,With happier zeal pursued."With hope extinct and brow composedI mark'd the present die;Its term of life was nearly closed,Yet it had more than I."But thou, though to the world's new hourThou come with aspect marr'd,Shorn of the joy, the bloom, the powerWhich best befits its bard—"Though more than half thy years be past,And spent thy youthful prime;Though, round thy firmer manhood cast,Hang weeds of our sad time"Whereof thy youth felt all the spell,And traversed all the shade—Though late, though dimm'd, though weak, yet tellHope to a world new-made!"Help it to fill that deep desire,The want which rack'd our brain,Consumed our heart with thirst like fire,Immedicable pain;"Which to the wilderness drove outOur life, to Alpine snow,And palsied all our word with doubt,And all our work with woe—"What still of strength is left, employThat end to help attain:One common wave of thought and joyLifting mankind again!"—The vision ended. I awokeAs out of sleep, and noVoice moved;—only the torrent brokeThe silence, far below.Soft darkness on the turf did lie.Solemn, o'er hut and wood,In the yet star-sown nightly sky,The peak of Jaman stood.Still in my soul the voice I heardOf Obermann!—--awayI turned; by some vague impulse stirr'd,Along the rocks of NayePast Sonchaud's piny flanks I gazeAnd the blanch'd summit bareOf Malatrait, to where in hazeThe Valais opens fair,And the domed Velan, with his snows,Behind the upcrowding hills,Doth all the heavenly opening closeWhich the Rhone's murmur fills;—And glorious there, without a sound,Across the glimmering lake,High in the Valais-depth profound,I saw the morning break.
Glion?——Ah, twenty years, it cuts[27]All meaning from a name!White houses prank where once were huts.Glion, but not the same!
And yet I know not! All unchangedThe turf, the pines, the sky!The hills in their old order ranged;The lake, with Chillon by!
And, 'neath those chestnut-trees, where stiffAnd stony mounts the way,The crackling husk-heaps burn, as ifI left them yesterday!
Across the valley, on that slope,The huts of Avant shine!Its pines, under their branches, opeWays for the pasturing kine.
Full-foaming milk-pails, Alpine fare,Sweet heaps of fresh-cut grass,Invite to rest the traveller thereBefore he climb the pass—
The gentian-flower'd pass, its crownWith yellow spires aflame;[28]Whence drops the path to Allière down,And walls where Byron came,[29]
By their green river, who doth changeHis birth-name just below;Orchard, and croft, and full-stored grangeNursed by his pastoral flow.
But stop!—to fetch back thoughts that strayBeyond this gracious bound,The cone of Jaman, pale and grey,See, in the blue profound!
Ah, Jaman! delicately tallAbove his sun-warm'd firs—What thoughts to me his rocks recall,What memories he stirs!
And who but thou must be, in truth,Obermann! with me here?Thou master of my wandering youth,But left this many a year!
Yes, I forget the world's work wrought,Its warfare waged with pain;An eremite with thee, in thoughtOnce more I slip my chain,
And to thy mountain-chalet come,And lie beside its door,And hear the wild bee's Alpine hum,And thy sad, tranquil lore!
Again I feel the words inspireTheir mournful calm; serene,Yet tinged with infinite desireFor all thatmighthave been—
The harmony from which man swervedMade his life's rule once more!The universal order served,Earth happier than before!
—While thus I mused, night gently ranDown over hill and wood.Then, still and sudden, ObermannOn the grass near me stood.
Those pensive features well I knew,On my mind, years before,Imaged so oft! imaged so true!—A shepherd's garb he wore,
A mountain-flower was in his hand,A book was in his breast.Bent on my face, with gaze which scann'dMy soul, his eyes did rest.
"And is it thou," he cried, "so longHeld by the world which weLoved not, who turnest from the throngBack to thy youth and me?
"And from thy world, with heart opprest,Choosest thounowto turn?—Ah me! we anchorites read things best,Clearest their course discern!
"Thou fledst me when the ungenial earth,Man's work-place, lay in gloom.Return'st thou in her hour of birth,Of hopes and hearts in bloom?
"Perceiv'st thou not the change of day?Ah! Carry back thy ken,What, some two thousand years! SurveyThe world as it was then!
"Like ours it look'd in outward air.Its head was clear and true,Sumptuous its clothing, rich its fare,No pause its action knew;
"Stout was its arm, each thew and boneSeem'd puissant and alive—But, ah! its heart, its heart was stone,And so it could not thrive!
"On that hard Pagan world disgustAnd secret loathing fell.Deep weariness and sated lustMade human life a hell.
"In his cool hall, with haggard eyes,The Roman noble lay;He drove abroad, in furious guise,Along the Appian way.
"He made a feast, drank fierce and fast,And crown'd his hair with flowers—No easier nor no quicker pass'dThe impracticable hours.
"The brooding East with awe beheldHer impious younger world.The Roman tempest swell'd and swell'd,And on her head was hurl'd.
"The East bow'd low before the blastIn patient, deep disdain;She let the legions thunder past,And plunged in thought again.
"So well she mused, a morning brokeAcross her spirit grey;A conquering, new-born joy awoke,And fill'd her life with day.
"'Poor world,' she cried, 'so deep accurst,That runn'st from pole to poleTo seek a draught to slake thy thirst—Go, seek it in thy soul!
"She heard it, the victorious West,In crown and sword array'd!She felt the void which mined her breast,She shiver'd and obey'd.
"She veil'd her eagles, snapp'd her sword,And laid her sceptre down;Her stately purple she abhorr'd,And her imperial crown.
"She broke her flutes, she stopp'd her sports,Her artists could not please;She tore her books, she shut her courts,She fled her palaces;
"Lust of the eye and pride of lifeShe left it all behind,And hurried, torn with inward strife,The wilderness to find.
"Tears wash'd the trouble from her face!She changed into a child!'Mid weeds and wrecks she stood—a placeOf ruin—but she smiled!
"Oh, had I lived in that great day,How had its glory newFill'd earth and heaven, and caught awayMy ravish'd spirit too!
"No thoughts that to the world belongHad stood against the waveOf love which set so deep and strongFrom Christ's then open grave.
"No cloister-floor of humid stoneHad been too cold for me.For me no Eastern desert loneHad been too far to flee.
"No lonely life had pass'd too slow,When I could hourly scanUpon his Cross, with head sunk low,That nail'd, thorn-crowned Man!
"Could see the Mother with her ChildWhose tender winning artsHave to his little arms beguiledSo many wounded hearts!
"And centuries came and ran their course,And unspent all that timeStill, still went forth that Child's dear force,And still was at its prime.
"Ay, ages long endured his spanOf life—'tis true received—That gracious Child, that thorn-crown'd Man!—He lived while we believed.
"While we believed, on earth he went,And open stood his grave.Men call'd from chamber, church, and tent;And Christ was by to save.
"Now he is dead! Far hence he liesIn the lorn Syrian town;And on his grave, with shining eyes,The Syrian stars look down.
"In vain men still, with hoping new,Regard his death-place dumb,And say the stone is not yet to,And wait for words to come.
"Ah, o'er that silent sacred land,Of sun, and arid stone,And crumbling wall, and sultry sand,Sounds now one word alone!
"Unduped of fancy, henceforth manMust labour!—must resignHis all too human creeds, and scanSimply the way divine!
"But slow that tide of common thought,Which bathed our life, retired;Slow, slow the old world wore to nought,And pulse by pulse expired.
"Its frame yet stood without a breachWhen blood and warmth were fled;And still it spake its wonted speech—But every word was dead.
"And oh, we cried, that on this corseMight fall a freshening storm!Rive its dry bones, and with new forceA new-sprung world inform!
"—Down came the storm! O'er France it pass'dIn sheets of scathing fire;All Europe felt that fiery blast,And shook as it rush'd by her.
"Down came the storm! In ruins fellThe worn-out world we knew.It pass'd, that elemental swell!Again appear'd the blue;
"The sun shone in the new-wash'd sky,And what from heaven saw he?Blocks of the past, like icebergs high,Float on a rolling sea!
"Upon them plies the race of manAll it before endeavour'd;'Ye live,' I cried, 'ye work and plan,And know not ye are sever'd!
"'Poor fragments of a broken worldWhereon men pitch their tent!Why were ye too to death not hurl'dWhen your world's day was spent?
"'That glow of central fire is doneWhich with its fusing flameKnit all your parts, and kept you one—But ye, ye are the same!
"'The past, its mask of union on,Had ceased to live and thrive.The past, its mask of union gone,Say, is it more alive?
"'Your creeds are dead, your rites are dead,Your social order too!Where tarries he, the Power who said:See, I make all things new?
"'The millions suffer still, and grieve,And what can helpers healWith old-world cures men half believeFor woes they wholly feel?
"'And yet men have such need of joy!But joy whose grounds are true;And joy that should all hearts employAs when the past was new.
"'Ah, not the emotion of that past,Its common hope, were vain!Some new such hope must dawn at last,Or man must toss in pain.
"'But now the old is out of date,The new is not yet born,And who can bealoneelate,While the world lies forlorn?'
"Then to the wilderness I fled.—There among Alpine snowsAnd pastoral huts I hid my head,And sought and found repose.
"It was not yet the appointed hour.Sad, patient, and resign'd,I watch'd the crocus fade and flower,I felt the sun and wind.
"The day I lived in was not mine,Man gets no second day.In dreams I saw the future shine—But ah! I could not stay!
"Action I had not, followers, fame;I pass'd obscure, alone.The after-world forgets my name,Nor do I wish it known.
"Composed to bear, I lived and died,And knew my life was vain,With fate I murmur not, nor chide,At Sèvres by the Seine
"(If Paris that brief flight allow)My humble tomb explore!It bears:Eternity, be thouMy refuge!and no more.
"But thou, whom fellowship of moodDid make from haunts of strifeCome to my mountain-solitude,And learn my frustrate life;
"O thou, who, ere thy flying spanWas past of cheerful youth,Didst find the solitary manAnd love his cheerless truth—
"Despair not thou as I despair'd,Nor be cold gloom thy prison!Forward the gracious hours have fared,And see! the sun is risen!
"He breaks the winter of the past;A green, new earth appears.Millions, whose life in ice lay fast,Have thoughts, and smiles, and tears.
"What though there still need effort, strife?Though much be still unwon?Yet warm it mounts, the hour of life!Death's frozen hour is done!
"The world's great order dawns in sheen,After long darkness rude,Divinelier imaged, clearer seen,With happier zeal pursued.
"With hope extinct and brow composedI mark'd the present die;Its term of life was nearly closed,Yet it had more than I.
"But thou, though to the world's new hourThou come with aspect marr'd,Shorn of the joy, the bloom, the powerWhich best befits its bard—
"Though more than half thy years be past,And spent thy youthful prime;Though, round thy firmer manhood cast,Hang weeds of our sad time
"Whereof thy youth felt all the spell,And traversed all the shade—Though late, though dimm'd, though weak, yet tellHope to a world new-made!
"Help it to fill that deep desire,The want which rack'd our brain,Consumed our heart with thirst like fire,Immedicable pain;
"Which to the wilderness drove outOur life, to Alpine snow,And palsied all our word with doubt,And all our work with woe—
"What still of strength is left, employThat end to help attain:One common wave of thought and joyLifting mankind again!"
—The vision ended. I awokeAs out of sleep, and noVoice moved;—only the torrent brokeThe silence, far below.
Soft darkness on the turf did lie.Solemn, o'er hut and wood,In the yet star-sown nightly sky,The peak of Jaman stood.
Still in my soul the voice I heardOf Obermann!—--awayI turned; by some vague impulse stirr'd,Along the rocks of Naye
Past Sonchaud's piny flanks I gazeAnd the blanch'd summit bareOf Malatrait, to where in hazeThe Valais opens fair,
And the domed Velan, with his snows,Behind the upcrowding hills,Doth all the heavenly opening closeWhich the Rhone's murmur fills;—
And glorious there, without a sound,Across the glimmering lake,High in the Valais-depth profound,I saw the morning break.
Apollodorus says:—"Cresphontes had not reigned long in Messenia when he was murdered, together with two of his sons. And Polyphontes reigned in his stead, he, too, being of the family of Hercules; and he had for his wife, against her will, Merope, the widow of the murdered king. But Merope had borne to Cresphontes a third son, called Æpytus; him she gave to her own father to bring up. He, when he came to man's estate, returned secretly to Messenia, and slew Polyphontes and the other murderers of his father."Hyginus says:—"Merope sent away and concealed her infant son. Polyphontes sought for him everywhere in vain. He, when he grew up, laid a plan to avenge the murder of his father and brothers. In pursuance of this plan he came to king Polyphontes and reported the death of the son of Cresphontes and Merope. The king ordered him to be hospitably entertained, intending to inquire further of him. He, being very tired, went to sleep, and an old man, who was the channel through whom the mother and son used to communicate, arrives at this moment in tears, bringing word to Merope that her son had disappeared from his protector's house, and was slain. Merope, believing that the sleeping stranger is the murderer of her son, comes into the guest-chamber with an axe, not knowing that he whom she would slay was her son; the old man recognised him, and withheld Merope from slaying him. The king, Polyphontes, rejoicing at the supposed death of Æpytus, celebrated a sacrifice; his guest, pretending to strike the sacrificial victim, slew the king, and so got back his father's kingdom."
Apollodorus says:—"Cresphontes had not reigned long in Messenia when he was murdered, together with two of his sons. And Polyphontes reigned in his stead, he, too, being of the family of Hercules; and he had for his wife, against her will, Merope, the widow of the murdered king. But Merope had borne to Cresphontes a third son, called Æpytus; him she gave to her own father to bring up. He, when he came to man's estate, returned secretly to Messenia, and slew Polyphontes and the other murderers of his father."
Hyginus says:—"Merope sent away and concealed her infant son. Polyphontes sought for him everywhere in vain. He, when he grew up, laid a plan to avenge the murder of his father and brothers. In pursuance of this plan he came to king Polyphontes and reported the death of the son of Cresphontes and Merope. The king ordered him to be hospitably entertained, intending to inquire further of him. He, being very tired, went to sleep, and an old man, who was the channel through whom the mother and son used to communicate, arrives at this moment in tears, bringing word to Merope that her son had disappeared from his protector's house, and was slain. Merope, believing that the sleeping stranger is the murderer of her son, comes into the guest-chamber with an axe, not knowing that he whom she would slay was her son; the old man recognised him, and withheld Merope from slaying him. The king, Polyphontes, rejoicing at the supposed death of Æpytus, celebrated a sacrifice; his guest, pretending to strike the sacrificial victim, slew the king, and so got back his father's kingdom."
The events on which the action of the drama turns belong to the period of transition from the heroic and fabulous to the human and historic age ofGreece. The doings of the hero Hercules, the ancestor of the Messenian Æpytus, belong to fable; but the invasion of Peloponnesus by the Dorians under chiefs claiming to be descended from Hercules, and their settlement in Argos, Lacedæmon, and Messenia, belong to history. Æpytus is descended on the father's side from Hercules, Perseus, and the kings of Argos; on the mother's side from Pelasgus, and the aboriginal kings of Arcadia. Callisto, the daughter of the wicked Lycaon, and the mother, by Zeus, of Arcas, from whom the Arcadians took their name, was the granddaughter of Pelasgus. The birth of Arcas brought upon Callisto the anger of the virgin-goddess Artemis, whose service she followed: she was changed into a she-bear, and in this form was chased by her own son, grown to manhood. Zeus interposed, and the mother and son were removed from the earth, and placed among the stars. Callisto became the famous constellation of the Great Bear; her son became Arcturus, Arctophylax, or Boötes. From this son of Callisto were descended Cypselus, the maternal grandfather of Æpytus, and the children of Cypselus, Laias and Merope.
The story of the life of Hercules, the paternal ancestor of Æpytus, is so well known that there is no need to record it. The reader will remember that, although entitled to the throne of Argos by right of descent from Perseus and Danaus, and to the thrones of Sparta and Messenia by right of conquest, Hercules yet passed his life in labours and wanderings, subjected by the decree of fate to the commands of his kinsman, the feeble and malignant Eurystheus. At his death he bequeathed to his offspring, the Heracleidæ, his own claims to the kingdoms of Peloponnesus, and to the persecution of Eurystheus. They at first sought shelter with Ceyx, king of Trachis; he was too weak to protect them, and they then took refuge at Athens. The Athenians refused to deliver them up at the demand of Eurystheus; he invaded Attica, and a battle was fought near Marathon, in which, after Macaria, a daughter of Hercules, had devoted herself for the preservation of her house, Eurystheus fell, and the Heracleidæ and their Athenian protectors were victorious. The memory of Macaria's self-sacrifices was perpetuated by the name of a spring of water on the plain of Marathon, the spring Macaria. The Heracleidæ then endeavoured to effect their return to Peloponnesus. Hyllus, the eldest of them, inquired of the oracle at Delphi respecting their return; he was told to return by thenarrow passageand in thethird harvest. Accordingly, in the third year from that time Hyllus led an army to the Isthmus of Corinth; but there he was encountered by an army of Achaians and Arcadians, and fell in single combat with Echemus, king of Tegea. Upon this defeat the Heracleidæ retired to northern Greece; there, after much wandering, they finally took refuge with Ægimius, king of the Dorians, who appears to havebeen the fastest friend of their house, and whose Dorian warriors formed the army which at last achieved their return. But, for a hundred years from the date of their first attempt, the Heracleidæ were defeated in their successive invasions of Peloponnesus. Cleolaus and Aristomachus, the son and grandson of Hyllus, fell in unsuccessful expeditions. At length the sons of Aristomachus, Temenus, Cresphontes, and Aristodemus, when grown up, repaired to Delphi and taxed the oracle with the non-fulfilment of the promise made to their ancestor Hyllus. But Apollo replied that his oracle had been misunderstood; for that by thethird harvesthe had meant the third generation, and by thenarrow passagehe had meant the straits of the Corinthian Gulf. After this explanation the sons of Aristomachus built a fleet at Naupactus; and finally, in the hundredth year from the death of Hyllus and the eightieth from the fall of Troy, the invasion was again attempted and was this time successful. The son of Orestes, Tisamenus, who ruled both Argos and Lacedæmon, fell in battle; many of his vanquished subjects left their homes and took refuge in Achaia.
The spoil was now to be divided among the conquerors. Aristodemus, the youngest of the sons of Aristomachus, did not survive to enjoy his share. He was slain at Delphi by the sons of Pylades and Electra, the kinsman, through their mother, of the house of Agamemnon, that house which the Heracleidæ with their Dorian army had dispossessed. The claims of Aristodemus descended to his two sons, Procles and Eurysthenes, children under the guardianship of their maternal uncle, Theras. Temenus, the eldest 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 Æolus, 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, Æpytus, 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 Æpytus, 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 variance with their uncle and ex-guardian, Theras, were reigning at Sparta.
Laias,uncle ofÆpytus,brother ofMerope.Æpytus,son ofMeropeandCresphontes.Polyphontes,king ofMessenia.Merope,widow ofCresphontes,the murdered king ofMessenia.The Chorus,ofMessenianmaidens.Arcas,an old man ofMerope'shousehold.Messenger.Guards, Attendants, etc.
The Scene is before the royal palace inStenyclaros,the capital ofMessenia.In the foreground is the tomb ofCresphontes.The action commences at day-break.