A Heraclid who murdered Cresphontes, the Dorian king of Messenia, seized the throne, and forced the widowed queen Merope to marry him against her will; he was slain at last by Aepytus, Merope's surviving son, who recovered his father's kingdom.1
When the descendants of Heracles at last mastered the Peloponnese, they cast lots for Argos, Lacedaemon, and Messene. Temenus and the two sons of Aristodemus threw stones into the urn, but Cresphontes, coveting Messene, cast in a clod of earth that dissolved in the water, so that his lot turned up last and his prize was assured. So Cresphontes got Messene and held it as a Heraclid by right — the lawful tenure that Polyphontes would seize by blood.2
Cresphontes had not long reigned over Messene when Polyphontes, one of the true Heraclids, killed him and came to the throne. To bind his usurpation he took to wife, against her will, Merope, the widow of the man he had slain — so a kinsman of Heracles' line held Messenia by murder and forced marriage alike.3
Apollodorus adds that Cresphontes was murdered together with two of his sons, so that the slaughter fell on the father and his line at once.4
Pausanias tells the fall of Cresphontes without naming Polyphontes at all: when the king had fixed the royal seat at Stenyclerus and governed in favour of the common people, the rich rose in revolt and killed him with all his sons save one. In this telling the murder is a faction's deed, not a single usurper's — a quiet dispute over who shed the king's blood.5
In Hyginus the danger fell next upon the hidden heir. Merope had concealed the infant son she bore to Cresphontes, sending him secretly to a guest-friend in Aetolia, and Polyphontes hunted the boy through the land, promising gold to whoever should kill him. Years later the grown youth came to the king's court claiming the very bounty, saying he himself had slain Cresphontes' son; lodged for the night, he slept while his own mother, deceived and grieving, stole upon him with an axe — until an old servant who had carried him to Aetolia knew his face and stayed her hand. Mother and son then feigned reconciliation with Polyphontes, and as the king made sacrifice the supposed assassin struck Polyphontes dead before the altar, and so won back his father's kingdom.6
Apollodorus names the avenger and the end alike. Merope's third son was called Aepytus, whom she gave to her own father to rear; and when he was come to manhood he returned in secret, killed Polyphontes, and recovered the kingdom of his fathers. With the usurper's death the Cresphontid line was restored to Messenia.7
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the spine ignites as you read · hover a bond on the card — every mention of them lights in the story
