Alcathous of Elis Aetolia, and when his brother Callipolis hastened to carry the sad tidings to his father, he found him engaged in offering a sacrifice to Apollo, and thinking it unfit to offer sacrifices at such a moment, he snatched away the wood from the altar. Alcathous imagining this to be an act of deliberate sacrilege, killed his son on the spot with a piece of wood. The acropolis of Megara was called by a name derived from that of Alcathous. Alcathous was grandfather of the hero Ajax, via his daughter Periboea, who married Telamon, and of Iolaus, nephew and charioteer of
Greek tragedy the deep problems of current Athenian society. In such plays, "the poet alludes directly to fifth-century events or developments, but moves them back into the mythological past. In this category [can be placed] Aeschylus’ Persians and Oresteia." In the case of Aeschylus' tragedy "The Persians", it was performed in 472 BC in Athens, eight years after the battle of Salamis, when the war with Persia was still in progress. It tells the story of the Persian fleet's defeat at Salamis and how the ghost of former Persian King Darius accuses his son Xerxes of "hubris" against the Greeks for waging