at this assembly.(586) But one chief effect of the Olympian festival appears to have been the production of a more friendly connexion between the Ætolian and Doric races. This fact appears to be established by the tradition that Iphitus introduced the worship of Hercules at Elis, which therefore had previously been peculiar to the Dorians.(587) Apollo, the Doric god, was also at this time regarded as the protector of the sacred armistice of Olympia, as we shall see hereafter.(588) 8. We now proceed immediately to the _Messenian wars_, since it is hardly possible to find one independent event between the commencement of them and the time of Iphitus. These however are really historical, since we have in Tyrtæus a nearly contemporaneous account of the first, and one actually so of the second. The fragments and accounts of his poems are our principal guides for obtaining a correct knowledge of these transactions. And in these alone many circumstances appear in quite a different light from that in which they are represented in the romance of Pausanias. In the latter, the Spartans only are the aggressors, the Messenians only the subjects of attack; but, if we listen to Tyrtæus, the former also had to fight for their own country. But, since even the ancients possessed few remains of Tyrtæus, and as nearly all the historical part of his poems appears to have come down to us, whence did Pausanias derive his copious narrative, and the details with which he has adorned it? Was it from ancient epic poets? Yet of these there is nowhere any mention: and in general an historical event, if it could not be put into an entirely fabulous shape, like the stories of the origin and foundation of many colonies, lay altogether without the province of the early poetry. It is indeed possible that in the Naupactia, which are referred to for the mythical history of Messenia,(589) some historical notices may have occasionally occurred, perhaps too in the works of Cinæthon and Eumelus: but the ancients, who disliked the labour of compiling a history from scattered fragments, probably gave themselves very little trouble to discover them. On the other hand, there existed a series of traditional legends, whose character announces their high antiquity; thus, that of the Messenians, that Aristomenes had _thrice_ offered a _hecatomphonion_, or sacrifice for a hundred enemies slain in battle;(590) whether or no of human victims is doubtful.(591) A share in this sacrifice was also performed by Theoclus, who is called an Elean, because he belonged to a family of the Iamidæ, which, as it appears, was settled in Messenia; but this clan, though scattered about in different places, yet always retained their rights at Olympia.(592) The same character may also be perceived in the legend of Aristomenes thrice incurring the danger of death. On the first of these occasions, when thrown into the Ceadas, he was preserved by a fox, the symbol of Messenia; on the second, whilst his guards were