Oxylus was succeeded in the kingdom by his son Laias. I could not find that his sons reigned, so I purposely pass them over, for it has not been my desire in this narrative to descend to private personages. But some time afterwards Iphitus, who was of the same family as Oxylus, and a contemporary of Lycurgus the Lacedæmonian legislator, revived the contest at Olympia, and renewed the public gathering there, and established a truce as long as the games lasted. Why the meetings at Olympia had been discontinued I shall narrate when I come to Olympia. And as Greece at this time was nearly ruined by civil wars and by the pestilence, Iphitus bethought him to ask of the god at Delphi a remission from these ills. And they say he was ordered by the Pythian Priestess to join the people of Elis in restoring the Olympian games. Iphitus also persuaded the people of Elis to sacrifice to Hercules, for before this they had an idea that Hercules was hostile to them. And the inscription at Olympia says that Iphitus was the son of Hæmon, but most of the Greeks say he was the son of Praxonides and not of Hæmon. But the ancient records of the people of Elis trace him up to a father of the same name as himself _viz._ Iphitus. The people of Elis took part in the Trojan war, and also in the battles against the Persians when they invaded Greece. And to pass over their frequent disputes with the people of Pisa and the Arcadians in respect to the re-establishment of the games at Olympia, they joined the Lacedæmonians not without reluctance in invading Attica, and not long after they fought against the Lacedæmonians, having formed an alliance with the Mantineans the Argives and the Athenians. And on the occasion of Agis making an incursion into Elis, when Xenias played the traitor, the people of Elis were victorious at Olympia, and routed the Lacedæmonians, and drove them from the precincts of the temple: and some time afterwards the war came to an end on the conditions which I have mentioned before in my account of the Lacedæmonians. And when Philip, the son of Amyntas, could not keep his hands off Greece, the people of Elis, worn out with intestine factions, joined the Macedonians, but not to the point of fighting against the Greeks at Chæronea. But they participated in the attack of Philip upon the Lacedæmonians by reason of their ancient hatred to them. But after the death of Alexander they joined the Greeks in fighting against Antipater and the Macedonians. CHAPTER V.