CHAPTER XIX.
And it was almost immediately reported to the Lacedæmonians by deserters that Aristomenes had got home safe: but being considered as incredible as if anyone were to say that a dead man had come to life again, it was only believed in consequence of the following transaction on the part of Aristomenes. The Corinthians sent a force to help the Lacedæmonians to take Eira. Aristomenes, learning from his scouts that they were marching rather carelessly, and that their camps were negligently made up, attacked them by night, and as they were asleep slew most of them, and among others their leaders Hypermenides, and Achladæus, and Lysistratus, and Sidectus. He plundered also the tent of the generals, and the Lacedæmonians soon saw that it was Aristomenes and no other Messenian that had done all this. He sacrificed also to Zeus of Ithome the sacrifice which they call Hecatomphonia. It was of very remote antiquity, and any Messenian who had killed 100 enemies had a right to offer it. And Aristomenes first offered this sacrifice when he fought the battle at Boar’s Memorial, and the slaughter of these Corinthians by night gave him the right to offer this sacrifice a second time. They say also that he offered the sacrifice a third time as the result of various raids. But the Lacedæmonians, as the festival of Hyacinthus was now coming on, made a truce of 40 days with the inhabitants of Eira, and returned home and kept the festival, and some Cretan bowmen, who had been sent for as mercenaries from Lyctus and other towns, made incursions into various parts of Messenia. And as Aristomenes was at some distance from Eira, feeling perfect security as it was truce time, seven of these bowmen lay in wait for him, and took him prisoner, and bound him with the bands of their quivers. And it was evening. And two of them went to Sparta, and announced the capture of Aristomenes to the Lacedæmonians: and the remaining five retired to a farm in Messenia, where a fatherless maiden lived with her mother. The night before this maiden had had a dream. Some wolves (she dreamed) brought a lion to the farm bound and without claws, and she freed the lion from its bonds and got it claws, and then the wolves were torn in pieces by it. And now when the Cretans brought in Aristomenes, the maiden remembered her dream of the previous night, and asked her mother who he was: and when she learnt who he was she took courage, and looked earnestly at him, and understood the meaning of the dream. She therefore poured out wine freely for the Cretans, till drink overpowered them, and then withdrew the sword of the one who was fastest asleep. Then she cut the bonds of Aristomenes, and he took the sword and killed all 5. And Gorgus the son of Aristomenes took the maiden to wife. And thus Aristomenes requited to the damsel her saving of his life, and Gorgus was only 18 when he married her.