CHAPTER III.
And after the death of Alcamenes Polydorus his son succeeded to the kingdom, and the Lacedæmonians sent a colony into Italy to Croton, and to the Locrians at the promontory Zephyrium: and the war that was called the war with Messene was at its height when Polydorus was king. The Lacedæmonians and Messenians give different reasons for this war. Their different accounts, and the progress of the war, will be set forth by me in their turn: but thus much will I record at present that Theopompus the son of Nicander had the greatest hand in the first war with the Messenians, being the king of the other house. And after the end of the war, when Messenia was already conquered by the Lacedæmonians, and Polydorus was in good repute at Sparta, and popular with the Lacedæmonians and especially with the populace, for he exhibited no violence either in word or deed to anyone, and in legal cases tempered justice with mercy, when in short he had a brilliant fame throughout all Greece, he was murdered by Polemarchus a man of no mean family in Lacedæmon, but hotheaded, as indeed he shewed by this murder. And after his death Polydorus received many notable honours from the Lacedæmonians. Polemarchus also had a monument at Sparta, whether being judged to have been a good man previously, or that his relatives buried him privately. During the reign of Eurycrates the son of Polydorus the Messenians patiently endured the Lacedæmonian yoke, nor was any revolution attempted by the Argive people, but in the days of Anaxander the son of Eurycrates—for fate was already driving the Messenians out of all the Peloponnese—the Messenians revolted from the Lacedæmonians, and fought against them for some time, but were eventually conquered, and evacuated the Peloponnese upon conditions of war. And the remnant of them became slaves on Lacedæmonian soil, except those who inhabited the maritime towns. All the circumstances of this war and revolt of the Messenians I have no need to recount in detail in the present part of my history. And Anaxander had a son Eurycrates, and this second Eurycrates a son Leo. During their reigns the Lacedæmonians met with the greatest reverses in fighting against the people of Tegea. And in the reign of Anaxandrides the son of Leo they overcame the people of Tegea, and in the following way. A Lacedæmonian by name Lichas came to Tegea at a time when Lacedæmon and Tegea were at peace together. And on Lichas’ arrival they made a search for the bones of Orestes, and the Spartans sought for them in accordance with an oracle. And Lichas discovered that they were lying in the shop of a blacksmith, and he discovered it in this way: all that he saw in the blacksmith’s shop he compared with the oracle at Delphi, thus he compared the blacksmith’s bellows to the winds, because they produce a strong wind, the hammer was the blow, that which resists the blow was the anvil, and that which was a source of woe to man he naturally referred to iron, for people already began to use iron in battle, for the god would have spoken of brass as a source of woe to man in the days of the heroes. And just as this oracle was given to the Lacedæmonians about the bones of Orestes, so afterwards the Athenians were similarly instructed by the oracle to bring Theseus’ bones to Athens from Scyrus, for otherwise Scyrus could not be taken. And Cimon the son of Miltiades discovered the bones of Theseus, he too by ingenuity, and not long after he took Scyrus. That in the days of the heroes all arms alike were brass is borne witness to by Homer in the lines which refer to the axe of Pisander and the arrow of Meriones. And I have further confirmation of what I assert in the spear of Achilles which is stored up in the temple of Athene at Phaselis, and the sword of Memnon in the temple of Æsculapius at Nicomedia, the former has its tip and handle of brass, and, the latter is of brass throughout. This we know to be the case. And Anaxandrides the son of Leo was the only Lacedæmonian that had two wives together and two households. For his first wife, excellent in other respects, had no children, and when the ephors bade him divorce her, he would not consent to this altogether, but only so far as to take a second wife as well. And the second wife bare a son Cleomenes, and the first wife, though so long barren, after the birth of Cleomenes bare Dorieus, and Leonidas, and Cleombrotus. And after the death of Anaxandrides, the Lacedæmonians though they thought Dorieus the better man both in council and war, reluctantly rejected him, and gave the kingdom to Cleomenes according to their law of primogeniture.