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powerful gained the victory. This gave occasion to a fable,
how Hercules overcame the Achelous in fight, and received in
marriage as the prize of his victory, Deianeira, daughter of
Oeneus. Sophocles introduces her, saying,
My suitor was a river, I mean the Achelous, who demanded me of my
father under three forms; one while coming as a bull of perfect form,
another time as a spotted writhing serpent, at another with the body of a
man and the forehead of a bull. note
Some writers add, that this was the horn of Amaltheia, which
Hercules broke off from the Achelous, and presented to
Oeneus as a bridal gift. Others, conjecturing the truth included in this story, say, that Achelous is reported to have
resembled a bull, like other rivers, in the roar of their waters,
and the bendings of their streams, which they term horns;
and a serpent from its length and oblique course; and bull-fronted because it was compared to a bull's head; and that
Hercules, who, on other occasions, was disposed to perform
acts of kindness for the public benefit, so particularly, when he
was desirous of contracting an alliance with Oeneus, performed
for him these services; he prevented the river from overflowing its banks, by constructing mounds and by diverting its
streams by canals, and by draining a large tract of the Paracheloitis, which had been injured by the river; and this is the
horn of Amaltheia.
Homer says, that in the time of the Trojan war the Echinades, and the Oxeiae were subject to Meges,
son of the hero Phyleus, beloved of Jupiter, who formerly repaired to
Dulichium on account of a quarrel with his father. note
The father of Phyleus was Augeas, king of Elis, and of the
Epeii. The Epeii then, who possessed these islands, were
those who had migrated to Dulichium with Phyleus.
20
The islands of the Taphii, and formerly of the Teleboae, among which was Taphus, now called Taphius, were distinct from the Echinades, not separated by distance, (for they lie near one another,) but because they were ranged under different chiefs, Taphii and Teleboae. In earlier times Amphitryon, in conjunction with Cephalus, the son of Deioneus, an exile from Athens, attacked, and then delivered them up to the government of Cephalus. But the poet says that
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Strabo, Geography (English) (XML Header) [genre: prose] [word count] [lemma count] [Str.].