In the plain of Eleutheræ, near the temple of Dionysos, is a cavern, and close beside it a fountain. Here, according to the poets, Antiope brought forth Zethos and Amphion, twin sons of Zeus, whom, to conceal her shame, she abandoned where they were born. The infants were immediately afterwards discovered by a shepherd, who, having bathed them in the neighbouring spring, took them to his cot, where they were brought up as his own children.[359] The catastrophe of many an ancient play was brought about by a discovery of the real characters of persons who had been exposed in infancy. Thus Œdipus, whose story is too well known to need repetition, was abandoned on Mount Cithæron. The daughters of Phineus,[360] of whom nothing else has come down to us, had been cast forth in infancy and preserved, and were afterwards brought to be put to death on the same spot; by alluding to which their lives were saved. The sons,[361] likewise, of Tyro, Peleus and Neleus, were deserted by their mother, who placed them in a little bark or chest on the banks of the Enipeus, a circumstance which served afterwards to reveal the parentage of the twins. The story of Romulus and Remus, who were thus abandoned by their vestal mother, is familiar to every reader; and from the example of Moses recorded in the sacred volume, we may infer that the exposing of children was common in remoter ages in Egypt. Pindar,[362] in relating the birth of the prophet Iamos, presents us with a poetical picture of one of these unhappy transactions. Evadne, daughter of Poseidon by the river-nymph Pitana, dwelling at the court of Æpytos a king of Arcadia, going forth, like the daughters of the Patriarchs, to draw water from a fountain, is overtaken by her birth-pangs.