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[1] Korax died without issue, and at about this time came Epopeus from Thessaly and took the kingdom. In his reign the first hostile army is said to have invaded the land, which before this had enjoyed unbroken peace. The reason was this. Antiope, the daughter of Nykteus, had a name among the Greeks for beauty, and there was also a report that her father was not Nykteus but Asopos, the river that separates the territories of Thebes and Plataea.
[2] This woman Epopeus carried off but I do not know whether he asked for her hand or adopted a bolder policy from the beginning. The Thebans came against him in arms, and in the battle Nykteus was wounded. Epopeus also was wounded, but won the day. Nykteus they carried back ill to Thebes, and when he was about to die he appointed to be regent of Thebes his brother Lykos for Labdacus, the son of Polydoros, the son of Kadmos, being still a child, was the ward of Nykteus, who on this occasion entrusted the office of guardian to Lykos. He also besought him to attack Aigialeia with a larger army and bring vengeance upon Epopeus; Antiope herself, if taken, was to be punished.
[3] As to Epopeus, he forthwith offered sacrifice for his victory and began a temple of Athena, and when this was complete he prayed the goddess to make known whether the temple was finished to her liking, and after the prayer they say that olive oil flowed before the temple. Afterwards Epopeus also died of his wound, which he had neglected at first, so that Lykos had now no need to wage war. For Lamedon, the son of Koronos, who became king after Epopeus, gave up Antiope. As she was being taken to Thebes by way of Eleutherai, she was delivered there on the road.
Homer traces their descent to the more august side of their family, and says that they were the first founders of Thebes, in my opinion distinguishing the lower city from the Kadmeia.
[5] When Lamedon became king he took to wife an Athenian woman, Pheno, the daughter of Klytios. Afterwards also, when war had arisen between him and Arkhandros and Arkhiteles, the sons of Achaeus, he brought in as his ally Sikyon from Attica, and gave him Zeuxippe his daughter to wife. This man became king, and the land was named after him Sikyonia, and the city Sikyon instead of Aigiale. But they say that Sikyon was not the son of Marathon, the son of Epopeus, but of Metion the son of Erekhtheus. Asios confirms their statement, while Hesiod makes Sikyon the son of Erekhtheus, and Ibycus says that his father was Pelops.
[6] Sikyon had a daughter Khthonophyle, and they say that she and Hermes were the parents of Polybus. Afterwards she married Phlias, the son of Dionysus, and gave birth to Androdamas. Polybus gave his daughter Lysianassa to Talaos the son of Bias, king of the Argives; and when Adrastos fled from Argos he came to Polybus at Sikyon, and afterwards on the death of Polybus he became king at Sikyon. When Adrastos returned to Argos, Ianiskos, a descendant of Klytios the father-in-law of Lamedon, came from Attica and was made king, and when Ianiskos died he was succeeded by Phaistos, said to have been one of the children of Hēraklēs.
[7] After Phaistos in obedience to an oracle migrated to Crete, the next king is said to have been Zeuxippos, the son of Apollo and the nymph Syllis. On the death of Zeuxippos, Agamemnon led an army against Sikyon and king Hippolytus, the son of Rhopalus, the son of Phaistos. In terror of the army that was attacking him, Hippolytus agreed to become subject to Agamemnon and the Mycenaeans. This Hippolytus was the father of Lacestades. Phalkes the son of Temenus, with the Dorians, surprised Sikyon by night, but did Lacestades no harm, because he too was one of the Herakleidai, and made him partner in the kingdom.
Description of Greece. Pausanias. ed. W. H. S. Jones, ed. H. A. Ormerod, ed. Gregory Nagy. . .