Again, the Arcadians were commanded by Agapenor the son of Ancæus[155]. He would appear not to have been an indigenous sovereign. For we learn from a speech of Nestor in the twenty-third Book[156], that games were celebrated at the burial of Amarynceus by the Epeans, in which he himself overcame in wrestling Ancæus the Pleuronian. Ancæus therefore was not an Arcadian but an Ætolian: and his son Agapenor was probably either the first Arcadian of his race, or else a stranger appointed by Agamemnon to command the Arcadians in the Trojan war. Their having ships from Agamemnon, and a chief either foreign or of non-Arcadian extraction, are facts which tend to mark the Arcadians as politically dependent, and therefore _pro tanto_ as Pelasgian: for it cannot be doubted that whatever in Greece was Pelasgian at the epoch of the _Troica_, was also subordinate to some race of higher and more effective energies.
Again. It will hereafter (I think) be found that the institution of all gymnastic and martial games was Hellenic and not Pelasgic[157]. In the passage last quoted there is a very remarkable statement, that there were present at the games Epeans, Pylians, and Ætolians: that is to say, all the neighbouring tribes, except the Arcadians. Thus we have a strong presumption established that these games were not congenial to Arcadian habits: and if the same can be shown from other sources with respect to the Pelasgians, there is a strong presumption that the Arcadians were themselves Pelasgian.
Once more. In the sixth book Nestor relates, that in his youth the Pylians and Arcadians fought near the town of Pheiæ and the river Iardanos. The Arcadians were commanded by Ereuthalion, who wore the armour of Areithous. Areithous had met his death by stratagem from Lycoorgos, who appropriated the armour, and bequeathed it to his θεραπών, or companion in arms, Ereuthalion. Nestor, on the part of the Pylians, encountered Ereuthalion, and by the aid of Minerva defeated him.
From this tale it would appear, first, that Lycoorgus was king of Arcadia. His name savours of Pelasgian origin, from its relation to Λυκαών of the later tradition respecting Arcadia, and to Lycaon son of Priam, descended by the mother’s side from the Leleges; again, to Lycaon the father of Pandarus; possibly also to the inhabitants of Lycia. The allusion to his having succeeded by stratagem only, is very pointed (148),