He led an attempt to capture Mycenae during the reign of Tisamenus, but, having misinterpreted the oracle, failed and fell in the battle.
He assembled other hypomeiones around himself of whom the most dangerous, according to Xenophon, was the seer Tisamenus, a descendant of an Elean of the same name who had received Spartan citizenship after the Greco-Persian Wars.
A decisive, battle was fought with Tisamenus, son of Orestes, the chief ruler in the peninsula, who was defeated and slain.
Their presence was contested by a united Peloponnesian Achaean army (except for Arcadia) under Tisamenus, an Atreid.
Tisamenos was induced to leave Elis and advise Sparta, in return for which he and his heirs were accorded citizenship, the only outsiders ever to have been honoured in this way; Pausanias noted at Sparta in the 2nd century BCE ""a tomb to the soothsayers from Elis, the so-called Iamidai".
His son by Hermione, Tisamenus, became ruler after him but was eventually killed by the Heracleidae.
A decisive battle was fought with Tisamenus, son of Orestes, the chief ruler in the peninsula, who was defeated and slain.