Not long after the death of Dorieus, Kleander, despot of Gela, began to raise his city to ascendency over the other Sicilian Greeks, who had hitherto been, if not all equal, at least all independent. His powerful mercenary force, levied in part among the Sikel tribes,[424] did not preserve him from the sword of a Geloan citizen named Sabyllus, who slew him after a reign of seven years: but it enabled his brother and successor Hippokratês to extend his dominion over nearly half of the island. In that mercenary force two officers, Gelo and Ænesidêmus (the latter a citizen of Agrigentum, of the conspicuous family of the Emmenidæ, and descended from Telemachus, the deposer of Phalaris), particularly distinguished themselves. Gelo was descended from a native of Têlos near the Triopian cape, one of the original settlers who accompanied the Rhodian Antiphêmus to Sicily. His immediate ancestor, named Têlinês, had first raised the family to distinction, by valuable aid to a defeated political party, who had been worsted in a struggle, and forced to seek shelter in the neighboring town of Maktorium. Têlinês was possessed of certain peculiar sacred rites (or visible and portable holy symbols, with a privileged knowledge of the ceremonial acts and formalities of divine service under which they were to be shown) for propitiating the subterranean goddesses, Dêmêtêr and Persephonê; “from whom he obtained them, or how he got at them himself (says Herodotus) I cannot say:” but such was the imposing effect of his presence and manner of exhibiting them, that he ventured to march into Gela at the head of the exiles from Maktorium, and was enabled to reinstate them in power,—deterring the people from resistance in the same manner as the Athenians had been overawed by the spectacle of Phyê-Athênê in the chariot along with Peisistratus. The extraordinary boldness of this proceeding excites the admiration of Herodotus, especially as he had been informed that Têlinês was of an unwarlike temperament: the restored exiles rewarded it by granting to him, and to his descendants after him, the hereditary dignity of hierophants of the two goddesses,[425]—a function certainly honorable, and probably lucrative, connected with the administration of consecrated property and with the enjoyment of a large portion of its fruits. [424] Polyænus, v, 6. [425] See about Têlinês and this hereditary priesthood, Herodot. vii, 153. τούτους ὦν ὁ Τηλίνης κατήγαγε ἐς Γέλην, ἔχων οὐδεμίαν ἀνδρῶν δύναμιν, ἀλλ’ ἱρὰ τούτων τῶν θεῶν· ὅθεν δὲ αὐτὰ ἔλαβε, ἢ αὐτὸς ἐκτήσατο, τοῦτο οὐκ ἔχω εἶπαι. τούτοισι δὲ ὦν πίσυνος ἐὼν, κατήγαγε, ἐπ’ ᾧ τε οἱ ἀπόγονοι αὐτοῦ ἱροφάνται τῶν θεῶν ἔσονται: compare a previous passage of this history, vol. i, chap. i, p. 26. It appears from Pindar, that Hiero exercised this hereditary priesthood (Olymp. vi, 160 (95), with the Scholia ad loc. and Scholia ad Pindar. Pyth. ii, 27).