At Argos, Deiphontes — a Heraclid descended through Antimachus, Thrasyanor, and Ctesippus son of Heracles — was the husband of Hyrnetho and the trusted favourite of Temenus, who employed him over his own sons as general in war and adviser on all occasions.1
Temenus openly employed Deiphontes, son of Antimachus, son of Thrasyanor, son of Ctesippus, son of Heracles, as his general in war and his counsellor in all things, in place of his own sons. He had already made Deiphontes his son-in-law, for Hyrnetho was his favourite daughter, and men suspected that he meant to divert the throne to her and Deiphontes. For this his sons plotted against him, and Ceisus, the eldest, seized the kingdom. (Pausanias here spells the name Delphontes, the same man called Deiphontes elsewhere.)2
Apollodorus tells the favour and its issue plainly: Temenus, passing over his sons Agelaus, Eurypylus, and Callias, favoured his daughter Hyrnetho and her husband Deiphontes, and so the sons hired certain fellows to murder their father. When the murder was done, the army decided that the kingdom belonged to Hyrnetho and Deiphontes.3
Pityreus handed the Epidaurian land over to Deiphontes and the Argives without a struggle and withdrew to Athens, and so Deiphontes and the Argives took possession of Epidauria. On the death of Temenus these seceded from the rest of the Argives — Deiphontes and Hyrnetho through hatred of the sons of Temenus, and the army with them, because it respected Deiphontes and Hyrnetho more than Ceisus and his brothers.4
Ceisus and his brothers knew they would wound Deiphontes most by parting him from Hyrnetho. So Cerynes and Phalces — for Agraeus, the youngest, disapproved of the scheme — drove to Epidaurus, halted their chariot beneath the wall, and called their sister out under pretence of parley. They urged her to leave Deiphontes for a husband who ruled more subjects and a richer land, but Hyrnetho answered that Deiphontes was a dear husband to her and a blameless son-in-law to Temenus, while they ought rather to be called the murderers of Temenus. At that the youths seized her, set her in the chariot, and drove away.5
An Epidaurian told Deiphontes that Cerynes and Phalces had carried Hyrnetho off against her will, and he rushed to the rescue as the Epidaurians reinforced him. Overtaking the runaways, he shot Cerynes dead, but feared to loose an arrow at Phalces, who held Hyrnetho fast, and in the struggle she was killed. Then Deiphontes and his children — for sons had already been born to him, Antimenes, Xanthippus, and Argeus, and a daughter, Orsobia — took up her body and carried it to the place afterward named Hyrnethium, where they built her a hero-shrine and decreed that no broken branch of its trees should ever be carried off or used, but be left sacred to her.6
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