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[1] The following story is also told of Oxylos. He suspected that, when the sons of Aristomakhos saw that the land of Elis was good and cultivated throughout, they would be no longer willing to give it to him. He accordingly led the Dorians through Arcadia and not through Elis. Oxylos was anxious to get the kingdom of Elis without a battle, but Dios would not give way; he proposed that, instead of their fighting a pitched battle with all their forces, a single soldier should be chosen from each army to fight as its champion.
[2] This proposal chanced to find favor with both sides, and the champions chosen were the Eleian Degmenos, an archer, and Pyraikhmes, a slinger, to represent the Aetolians. Pyraikhmes won, and Oxylos got the kingdom. He allowed the old inhabitants, the Epeians, to keep their possessions, except that he introduced among them Aetolian colonists, giving them a share in the land. He assigned privileges to Dios and kept up after the ancient manner the honors paid to heroes, especially the worship of Augeias, to whom even at the present day hero-sacrifice is offered.
[3] He is also said to have induced to come into the city the dwellers in the villages near the wall, and by increasing the number of the inhabitants to have made Elis larger and generally more prosperous. There also came to him an oracle from Delphi that he should bring in as cofounder “the descendant of Pelops.” Oxylos made diligent search, and in his search, he discovered Agorios, son of Damasios, son of Penthilos, son of Orestes. He brought Agorios himself from Helike in Achaea and with him a small body of Achaeans.
[4] The wife of Oxylos, they say, was called Pieria, but beyond this nothing more about her is recorded. Oxylos is said to have had two sons, Aitolos and Laias. Aitolos died before his parents, who buried him in a tomb which they caused to be made right in the gate leading to Olympia and the sanctuary of Zeus. That they buried him thus was due to an oracle forbidding the corpse to be laid either without the city or within it. Right down to our own day, the gymnasiarch sacrifices to Aitolos as to a hero every year.
[5] After Oxylos, the kingdom devolved on Laias, son of Oxylos. His descendants, however, I find did not reign, and so I pass them by, though I know who they were; my narrative must not descend to men of common rank. Later on Iphitos, of the line of Oxylos and contemporary with Lycurgus [Lykourgos], who drew up the code of laws for the Lacedaemonians, arranged the Games at Olympia and reestablished afresh the Olympic festival and truce after an interruption of uncertain length. The reason for this interruption I will set forth when my narrative deals with Olympia.
[6] At this time, Greece was grievously worn by internal strife and plague, and it occurred to Iphitos to ask the god at Delphi for deliverance from these evils. The story goes that the Pythian priestess ordained that Iphitos himself and that the Eleians must renew the Olympic Games. Iphitos also induced the Eleians to sacrifice to Hēraklēs as to a god, whom hitherto they had looked upon as their enemy. The inscription at Olympia calls Iphitos the son of Haimon, but most of the Greeks say that his father was Praxonides and not Haimon, while the ancient records of Elis traced him to a father of the same name.
[7] The Eleians played their part in the Trojan War and also in the battles of the Persian invasion of Greece. I pass over their struggles with the Pisans and Arcadians for the management of the Olympian Games. Against their will, they joined the Lacedaemonians in their invasion of Athenian territory, and shortly afterwards, they rose up with the Mantineians and Argives against the Lacedaemonians, inducing Athens too to join the alliance.
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[8] When Agis invaded the land and Xenias turned traitor, the Eleians won a battle near Olympia, routed the Lacedaemonians, and drove them out of the sacred enclosure; but shortly afterwards, the war was concluded by the treaty I have already spoken of in my account of the Lacedaemonians.
[9] When Philip the son of Amyntas would not let Greece alone, the Eleians, weakened by civil strife, joined the Macedonian alliance, but they could not bring themselves to fight against the Greeks at Khaironeia. They joined Philip’s attack on the Lacedaemonians
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because of their old hatred of that people, but on the death of Alexander, they fought on the side of the Greeks against Antipatros and the Macedonians.
Description of Greece. Pausanias. ed. W. H. S. Jones, ed. H. A. Ormerod, ed. Gregory Nagy. . .