THE EARLY AGE OF GREECE VOL.I by W.Ridgeway 1901

"
WHO WERE THE MAKERS? 123
124 WHO WERE THE MAKERS ?
fice before the battle of Plataea. Like Agesias, he was a
Archias chose one of a good
family of immemorial antiquity, and
seer and valiant with the spear. For he had almost won the
above all possessed of peculiar mantic powers. This is confirmed
by two pieces of evidence which may not be set aside
pentathlum at Olympia when he only lost the victory through
one bout in the wrestling match : and he was one of the few
lightly. The first is the significant
fact mentioned by Pindar
persons whom the Spartans admitted to the
that the
right of
lamidae had control of an oracle
citizenship'.
Pausanias- saw at Sj)arta the tomb of this branch
they became the caretakers of the altar of Zeus on the intro-
at Olympia even before
of the lamidac which had changed thither their abode from
duction there of the cult of that deity. That there were at
Elis.
Olympia the survivals of rites older than the cult of Zeus is
But thirty years earlier another member of this famous race
demonstrated by the fact that far down into classical times
had wrought great service for Croton in her
there was an annual sacrifice to
final Cronus, under the control of an
struggle
against Sybaris (510 B.C.). The Sybarites declared that the
ancient priestly fjimily called Basilae. As we shall see later,
Crotonians had van([uished tlicm by the aid of foreigners, but
the myth of the wrestling between Zeus and Cronus for the
"the Crotoniates on the other hand maintain that no possession of tiie Jronan
foreigner
( hill probably refers to the introduction
of
lent them aid against the
the
S} barites, savL" and except Callias,
worship of Zeus. The second argument
in favour of the
the Elean, a soothsayer of the i-acc of the lamidae ;
and he
extreme oidy
anticpiity of the family and pedigree of the lamidae
is
forsook Telys, the Sybaritic king, and deserted to their that side,
though they had become the keepers of the altar of Zeus
when he found on sacrificing that the victims were not favourable
to an attack on I'roton '." If this story does little credit to
the Lycaean Mount, yet the lamidae traced their descent
at Olympia and though that god had in name got possession
of
not from
the honour of Callias, it shows that his niantic skill was believed
Zeus, but from Poseidon, the god worship])ed by the
to be
Helots
above all
at Taenarnm, the god whom we suspicion.
shall find predominating
in
In the great battle in which the Mantineans and all th(3
Arcadia, and who helped the Arcadians against the Spartans,
and whose cult
other
wo shall
Arcadians overthrew Agis the Spartan king, Thrasybulus
presently see acting as the common
bond of union
the s(n
between the lonians of Asia
of Aeneas, one of the Janiidae. pi-ophesied \ictory for
> Minor, the
descendants of
th(' Mantiiieans and hin)self took pait
in the
the
battled
ancient Pelasgian inhabitants of Peloponnesus.
The evidence here ])resente(l
i< sntHcient to con\ince any
Xouglit but the strongest ties of immemorial anti(|uity
can
(a-dinai'v r