9. At their passage from Naupactus the Dorians stood in great need of the friendship and assistance of the native races, the Ozolian Locrians and Ætolians. The Locrians occupied Naupactus in early times;(224) the Ætolians were their immediate neighbours, and their powerful city of Calydon was the mistress of the region. The Locrians are said to have aided the Dorians in their passage, by deceiving the Peloponnesians with false beacons;(225) and we shall meet hereafter with traces of a lasting amity between the Locrians and Sparta. A most singular, but, doubtless for that very reason, a most ancient dress, has been given by mythology to the union of the Dorians and Ætolians. This connexion, which was indispensable for the passage from Naupactus, is also found implied in other legends, the general character of tradition being to express the same thing in various ways. Of these we may mention the marriage of Hercules with Deianira, the daughter of Œneus the Calydonian.(226) At this time the Dorians were ordered by the oracle to seek a person with three eyes for a leader. This person they recognised in Oxylus the Ætolian, who either sat upon a horse, himself having one eye, or rode upon a one-eyed mule. Difficult as it is to rest satisfied with this interpretation of the oracle, so casual a circumstance having no connexion with the general course of events, yet it appears impossible to discover the true meaning of the word τριόφθαλμος.(227) In all probability this expression for the whole Ætolian race was only delivered in a mythical shape, and the sorry explanation was not invented until a late period.(228) The family of Oxylus is stated to have come from Calydon; so that the Ætolians (who in later times made themselves masters of Elis) appear to have come for the most part from that place.(229) There existed, however, an ancient alliance and affinity between the inhabitants of Elis, the Epeans, and the Ætolians who dwelt on the farther side of the Corinthian gulf; and Oxylus himself was said to have originally belonged to Elis;(230) hence it does not appear that there was any actual war between these two states, but only that the Ætolians were received by the Eleans, and admitted to the rights of citizenship;(231) and at the same time the same honours were permitted to the heroes and heroines of the Ætolians as to their own.(232)