X. Before coming to Megara he slew Skeiron by flinging him down a
precipice into the sea, so the story runs, because he was a robber, but
some say that from arrogance he used to hold out his feet to strangers
and bid them wash them, and that then he kicked the washers into the
sea. But Megarian writers, in opposition to common tradition, and, as
Simonides says, "warring with all antiquity," say that Skeiron was not
an arrogant brigand, but repressed brigandage, loved those who were good
and just, and was related to them. For, they point out, Aeakus is
thought to have been the most righteous of all the Greeks, and Kychreus
of Salamis was worshipped as a god, and the virtue of Peleus and Telamon
is known to all. Yet Skeiron was the son-in-law of Kychreus, and
father-in-law of Aeakus, and grandfather of Peleus and Telamon, who were
both of them sons of Endeis, the daughter of Skeiron and his wife
Chariklo. It is not then reasonable to suppose that these, the noblest
men of their time, would make alliances with a malefactor, and give and
receive from him what they prized most dearly. But they say that Theseus
slew Skeiron, not when he first went to Athens, but that afterwards he
took the town of Eleusis which belonged to the Megarians, by dealing
treacherously with Diokles, who was the chief magistrate there, and that
on that occasion he killed Skeiron. This is what tradition says on both
sides.
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