Cresphontes

Brother of Temenus and Aristodemus, Heraclid leader of the successful Dorian invasion. In the three-lot partition of the Peloponnese at Argos (Apollodorus *Bibliotheca* 2.8.4–5) each brother dropped a pebble into a water-jar to be drawn in order; Cresphontes, wanting fertile Messene, replaced his pebble with a clod of earth, which dissolved in the water and left only the two stones for Argos and Lacedaemon. Messene fell to him by default. His subsequent reign at Messene was short: he was killed by Messenian nobles in a palace coup, and only his youngest son Aepytus — smuggled out by his wife Merope to her father in Arcadia — survived to return in adulthood and avenge him, the plot of Euripides's lost *Cresphontes* and the opening move of the Messenian tradition that kept the original Heraclid claim alive against centuries of Spartan domination until the Theban restoration of Messene in 369 BC (Apollod. 2.8.5; Paus. 4.3.3–7; Diod. 4.58.3–5).

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