At Athens they sat as suppliants at the altar of Pity, received the protection of Theseus or Demophon, dwelt in the Tetrapolis,(200) and fought, together with the Athenians, under the command of Hyllus and Iolaus (to whose prayers the gods had granted a second youth), at the pass of Sciron, a battle against Eurystheus; Macaria (probably an entirely symbolical being, but here the daughter of Hercules) having previously offered herself as an expiatory sacrifice. In this action they conquered the Argive king, whom Alcmene with womanish vengeance put to death, and whose tomb the Athenians showed before the temple of the Pallenian Minerva.(201) This is the fable so much celebrated by the tragedians and orators, a _locus communis_ as it were, which the Athenians sometimes even mentioned in their decrees,(202) or wherever it served to show how poorly the Peloponnesians had requited their ancient benefactors. What credit a Lacedæmonian would have given to these stories, we know not; Pindar certainly knew nothing of them, for he states that Iolaus had near _Thebes_ received a momentary renewal of youthful vigour for the purpose of putting to death Eurystheus, after which he immediately expired, and was buried by the Thebans in the family tomb of Amphitryon.(203) In this account Eurystheus is represented as having been conquered in the neighbourhood of Thebes, and in consequence by a Theban army. It is not however necessary to esteem the Athenian tradition as altogether groundless, and purposely invented: it was probably founded on some actual event, and afterwards modified and embellished. The connecting link was without doubt the temple of Hercules in Attica. It was natural that, if the Athenians worshipped that hero, they should wish to have had the merit of protecting his descendants. Hence the sons of Hercules were said to have dwelt in the Tetrapolis at Marathon, where was the chief temple of Hercules in Attica, and in the neighbourhood of which flowed the fountain Macaria, represented as a daughter of that hero. It was on this account, as is reported, that the entire Tetrapolis was during the Peloponnesian war spared by the Lacedæmonians. Many circumstances, which will hereafter be brought forward, seem to show that an union and intercourse subsisted between the Dorians of Peloponnesus and some of the northern towns of Attica,(204) the foundation of which appears to have been laid in the times of the Doric migration, by a settlement of Dorians and Bœotians in these towns. But this settlement had doubtless, when those fables were invented, been already lost in the mass of the Athenian people.