We can no longer follow in detail the process of development and extension which the idea of the Hero underwent. The accounts which we possess show us the fully developed product, not the steps which led up to this result. We first get an idea of the number of Hero-cults existing in Greece during the greatest period of its history from the enormous number of graves or cults of Heroes mentioned by Pausanias in the account of his travels in the age of the Antonines over the most important countries of the Greece that was now fast falling into decay. Nearly all the legendary figures celebrated in epic poetry were now worshipped as Heroes, whether in their own homes (as Achilles in Thessaly, Aias at Salamis, etc.) or in other places that either claimed to possess their graves (as the Delphians did that of Neoptolemos, the people of Sybaris that of Philoktetes, etc.) or else, through the genealogical relationship of their leading families with the Heroes, regarded themselves as closely connected with them (as, for example, the Athenians with Aias and his sons). In the colonies especially the Hero-cults, like the ingredients of the population, may have been a motley crew; thus, in Tarentum the Atreidai, the Tydidai, the Aiakidai, the Laertiadai, and especially the Agamemnonidai were worshipped in a combined Hero-cult, and Achilles also had a temple of his own.[54\4] There were Heroes with famous names who may yet have owed their subsequent elevation to that position, during the times of the greatest extent of the cult, in part to their fame in ancient poetry. Side by side with these were a host of obscurer figures whose memory had been kept alive by their cult alone, which a small circle of country or city folk had paid to them from primitive times. These are the real "national Heroes", of whose worship Drakon had spoken; as true forebears and real ancestors of their country they, too, are called "Archegetai".[55\4] We are told the names of the seven Archegetai of Plataea to whom Aristeides was commanded by the Delphic oracle to sacrifice before the battle of Plataea; not one of them is ever heard of again.[56\4] It might happen that the name of a Hero to whom worship had been paid from time immemorial might no longer be known even to the dwellers near his grave. In the market at Elis there stood a little temple whose roof was supported on wooden pillars; men knew that this was the chapel belonging to a grave, but no one could give the name of the Hero buried there.[57\4] In the market at Herakleia on the Black Sea was a monument of a Hero {127} overshadowed by wild olive-trees; it contained the body of that Hero whom once the Delphian oracle had bidden the founders of Herakleia to placate. The learned differed as to his name; the inhabitants of Herakleia called him simply "the local Hero".[58\4] In the Hippodrome at Olympia stood a round altar at which the chariot horses used to shy. It was disputed what Hero