Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Aristodemus.
The gallery
The Heraclidae Drawing Lots for the Peloponnese (engraving of an antique gem)
Unknown (engraving after C. W. King, 1869), 1869
This nineteenth-century line engraving reproduces an ancient carved gem long read as the Heraclidae casting lots to divide the conquered Peloponnese. The motif is precisely the episode in which Aristodemus's place falls to his twin sons: Apollodorus (Bibliotheca 2.8.4) records that Temenus and the two sons of Aristodemus, Procles and Eurysthenes, threw stones into the water while Cresphontes contrived to win Messene with a clod of earth, so that Lacedaemon was allotted to Aristodemus's line. The print, drawn from C. W. King and H. A. J. Munro's Q. Horatii Flacci Opera Illustrated from Antique Gems (London, 1869), preserves a glyptic tradition for a scene almost never depicted in surviving monumental art.
Three Warriors Drawing Lots from an Urn (woodcut of a Roman gem, Cabinet des Médailles, Luynes.110)
Unknown (woodcut after an ancient Roman engraved gem), 1869 (woodcut); 1st century BCE (original gem)
A woodcut reproduction of a Roman intaglio in the Cabinet des Médailles of the Bibliothèque nationale de France (Luynes.110), showing three warriors drawing lots from an urn. Scholars identify the scene as the Heraclidae apportioning the kingdoms of the Peloponnese among themselves after the Return — the allotment in which the share of the dead Aristodemus passed to his sons Procles and Eurysthenes, founding the two royal houses of Sparta (Pausanias 3.1.5-7; Apollodorus 2.8.4). The gem is among the rare ancient artefacts to give visual form to the casting of lots that decided the fate of Aristodemus's Spartan line.
Lucanian Red-Figure Column Krater with the Children of Herakles (Herakleidai)
Attributed to the circle of the Policoro Painter, c. 400 BCE
This Lucanian red-figure column krater, now in the Antikensammlung of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (Ant 1969.9), depicts Iolaos with the children of Herakles and is thought to illustrate the opening of Euripides' tragedy Herakleidai. It stands at the head of the Heraclid legend whose later chapter is the Return of the Heraclidae, the campaign in which Aristodemus, son of Aristomachus, marched with his brothers Temenus and Cresphontes to reclaim the Peloponnese. Painted around 400 BCE close to the hand of the Policoro Painter, it is a rare surviving ancient image attached to the saga of Herakles' descendants from whom Aristodemus and the Spartan kings traced their descent.