Cresphontes, son of Aristomachus and brother of Temenus, was a Heraclid who returned to the Peloponnese; when the conquered land was divided he gained Messene for himself, married Merope, and was later murdered together with his sons, all but the infant Aepytus, who survived to avenge him.1
In the reign of Tisamenus son of Orestes the Heraclids returned to the Peloponnese: Temenus and Cresphontes, the sons of Aristomachus, together with the sons of the third brother Aristodemus, who had already died. When the conquered country was parted out, Argos fell to Temenus and Messene to Cresphontes, while at Lacedaemon the twin sons of Aristodemus established two royal houses.2
Apollodorus tells how the three shares were assigned by lot, the contenders agreeing to cast tokens into a pitcher of water. Temenus and the two sons of Aristodemus, Procles and Eurysthenes, threw in stones; but Cresphontes, wishing Messene to fall to him, threw in instead a clod of earth. The clod dissolved in the water, so that only the other two lots could be drawn, and Messene was thus left to him by the trick.3
Pausanias preserves a different version of the same cheat: Cresphontes asked for Messenia, claiming seniority over Aristodemus, and Temenus put the lots of Cresphontes and of the sons of Aristodemus into a jar of water, the lot drawn first to choose first. Temenus had both lots made of clay, but the rivals' were sun-dried and Cresphontes' only unbaked, so that his dissolved away and the other was drawn first — by which contrivance Messenia was left to Cresphontes.4
Cresphontes took to wife Merope, daughter of Cypselus, then king of the Arcadians; Pausanias relates that Cypselus, learning of the expedition, married his daughter to the son of Aristomachus whom he found unwed, and so by winning over Cresphontes had nothing to fear from the Dorians. Of their children the youngest was Aepytus. Reigning over Messenia, Cresphontes made Stenyclerus the royal seat.5
Cresphontes had not long reigned over Messene when he was murdered together with two of his sons, and Polyphontes, one of the true Heraclids, seized the throne and took Merope to wife against her will; but her third son Aepytus, reared in secret away from the kingdom, returned grown and slew Polyphontes to recover the realm of his fathers.6
Pausanias gives the murder otherwise: because Cresphontes governed for the most part in favour of the common people, the rich rose against him and killed him and all his sons save Aepytus alone.7
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