A certain great person whose name was Phido, designing to make himself
lord of the whole Peloponnesus, and more especially desirous that
Argos, being his native country, should be the metropolis of all the
rest, resolved to reduce the Corinthians under his subjection. To this
purpose he sent to them to demand a levy of a thousand young gentlemen,
the most valiant and the chiefest in the prime of their age in the
whole city. Accordingly they sent him a thousand young sparks, brisk
and gallant, under the leading of Dexander, whom they chose to be their
captain. But Phido, designing nothing more than the massacre of these
gentlemen, to the end he might the more easily make himself master of
Corinth when it should be enfeebled by so great a loss (as being by its
situation the chief bulwark to guard the entrance into Peloponnesus),
imparted this contrivance of his to several of his confidants, in
which number was one whose name was Abro; who, having been formerly
acquainted with Dexander, and familiarly entertained by him, discovered
the whole conspiracy to his friend in acknowledgment of his kindness.
By which means the thousand, before they fell into the ambuscade,
retreated and got safe to Corinth. Phido thus disappointed made all
the inquiry imaginable, to find out who it was that had betrayed and
discovered his design. Which Abro understanding fled to Corinth with
his wife and all his family, and settled himself in Melissus, a certain
village in the territory of the Corinthians. There he begat a son, whom
he named Melissus from the name of the place where he was born. The
son of this Melissus was Actaeon, the loveliest and most modest of all
the striplings of his age. For which reason there were several that
fell in love with him, but none with so much ardor as Archias, being of
the race of the Heraclidae, and for wealth and authority the greatest
person in all Corinth. This Archias, when he found that no fair means
and persuasions would prevail upon the young lad, resolved to ravish
him away by force; to which purpose he invited himself to Melissus’s
house, as it were to make merry, accompanied with a great number of his
friends and servants, and by their assistance he made an attempt to
carry away the son by violence. But the father and his friends opposing
the rape, and the neighbors coming in to the rescue of the child, poor
Actaeon, between the one and the other, was pulled and hauled to death;
and Archias with his company departed. Upon this, Melissus carried the
murdered body of his son into the market-place of Corinth, and there,
exposing him to public view, demanded justice to be done upon the
murderers. But finding that the Corinthians only pitied his condition,
without taking any farther notice of the matter, he returned home, and
waited for the grand assembly of the Greeks at the Isthmus. At what
time, getting up to the very top of Neptune’s temple, he exclaimed
against the whole race of the Bacchiadae, and after he had made a
public relation of the good service which his father Abro had done
the Corinthians, he invoked the vengeance of the Gods, and presently
threw himself headlong among the rocks. Soon after the Corinthians
being plagued with a most terrible drought, upon which ensued a violent
famine, they sent to the oracle, to know by what means they might be
delivered from their calamity. To whom the Deity made answer, that
it was Neptune’s wrath, which would not cease till they had revenged
the death of Actaeon. Archias, hearing this (for he was one of those
that were sent to the oracle), never returned again to Corinth, but
sailing into Sicily, built there the city of Syracuse; where, after he
was become the father of two daughters, Ortygia and Syracusa, he was
treacherously slain by Telephus, whom he had preternaturally abused in
his youth, and who, having the command of a ship, sailed along with him
into Sicily.