[447] Pherekydês and Hellanikus ap. Marcellin. Vit. Thucydid.
init.; Pausan. ii. 29, 4; Plutarch, Solôn, 10. According to
Apollodôrus, however, Pherekydês said that Telamôn was only the
friend of Pêleus, not his brother,—not the son of Æakus (iii. 12,
7): this seems an inconsistency. There was however a warm dispute
between the Athenians and the Megarians respecting the title to
the hero Ajax, who was claimed by both (see Pausan. i. 42, 4;
Plutarch, _l. c._): the Megarians accused Peisistratus of having
interpolated a line into the Catalogue in the Iliad (Strabo, ix.
p. 394).
Teukrus escaped from the perils of the siege of Troy as well as from
those of the voyage homeward, and reached Salamis in safety. But
his father Telamôn, indignant at his having returned without Ajax,
refused to receive him, and compelled him to expatriate. He conducted
his followers to Cyprus, where he founded the city of Salamis: his
descendant Evagoras was recognized as a Teukrid and as an Æakid even in
the time of Isokratês.[448]
[448] Herodot. vii. 90; Isokrat. Enc. Evag. _ut sup._; Sophokl.
Ajax, 984-995; Vellei. Patercul. i. 1; Æschyl. Pers. 891, and
Schol. The return from Troy of Teukrus, his banishment by
Telamôn, and his settlement in Cyprus, formed the subject of the
Τεῦκρος of Sophoklês, and of a tragedy under a similar title by
Pacuvius (Cicero de Orat. i. 58; ii. 46); Sophokl. Ajax, 892;
Pacuvii Fragm. Teucr. 15.—
“Te repudio, nec recipio, natum abdico,
Facesse.”
The legend of Teukros was connected in Attic archæology with the
peculiar functions and formalities of the judicature, ἐν Φρεαττοῖ
(Pausan. i. 28, 12; ii. 29, 7).
Such was the splendid heroic genealogy of the Æakids,—a family renowned
for military excellence. The Æakeion at Ægina, in which prayer and
sacrifice were offered to Æakus, remained in undiminished dignity down
to the time of Pausanias.[449] This genealogy connects together various
eminent gentes in Achaia Phthiôtis, in Ægina, in Salamis, in Cyprus,
and amongst the Epirotic Molossians. Whether we are entitled to infer
from it that the island of Ægina was originally peopled by Myrmidones
from Achaia Phthiôtis, as O. Müller imagines,[450] I will not pretend
to affirm. These mythical pedigrees seem to unite together special
clans or gentes, rather than the bulk of any community—just as we know
that the Athenians generally had no part in the Æakid genealogy, though
certain particular Athenian families laid claim to it. The intimate
friendship between Achilles and the Opuntian hero Patroclus—and the
community of name and frequent conjunction between the Locrian Ajax,
son of Oïleus, and Ajax, son of Telamôn—connect the Æakids with Opus
and the Opuntian Locrians, in a manner which we have no farther means
of explaining. Pindar too represents Menœtius, father of Patroclus, as
son of Aktôr and Ægina, and therefore maternal brother of Æakus.[451]
[449] Hesiod, Fragm. Düntz. Eoiai, 55, y. 43.—
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