CHAPTER XXIV.
Meantime Aristomenes, when he refused the leadership of those who were going on the new colony, married his sister Agnagora to Tharyx of Phigalia, and his two eldest daughters to Damothoidas of Lepreum and Theopompus of Heræum. And he himself went to Delphi and consulted the oracle. What answer was returned is not recorded. But Damagetus a native of Rhodes, the King of Ialysus, had also at this time come to consult the oracle as to where he should marry a wife from, and the Pythian Priestess replied that he was to marry the daughter of the noblest of the Greeks. And Aristomenes had a third daughter, and he married her, thinking her father far the noblest Greek of his time. And Aristomenes went to Rhodes with his daughter, and from thence he intended to go to Sardis to Ardys the son of Gyges, and to Ecbatana the royal residence of the Medes to the Court of King Phraortes, but before he could carry out this intention he chanced to die of some illness, so that the fates did not permit him to wreak his vengeance on the Lacedæmonians. And Damagetus and the people of Rhodes built a splendid monument to him, and paid honours to his memory. The traditions about those who are called the Diagoridæ in Rhodes, (who were descended from Diagoras, the son of Damagetus, the son of Dorieus, the son of Damagetus by the daughter of Aristomenes), I have omitted, that I might not appear to have introduced irrelevant matter.
And the Lacedæmonians, when they had made themselves masters of Messenia, shared it out among themselves all but the territory of the Asinæi, and Mothone they gave to the people of Nauplia who had recently been ejected by the Argives.
And the Messenians who were captured at Eira, and compulsorily incorporated among the Helots, revolted again from the Lacedæmonians in the 79th Olympiad, in which the Corinthian Xenophon was victor, and Archimedes Archon at Athens. And they seized the following opportunity. Some of the Lacedæmonians, on a charge for which they were condemned to death, fled to Tænarum as suppliants; and there the Ephors took them from the altar and slew them. And the wrath of Poseidon came upon those Spartans who had violated his rights of sanctuary, and he adjudged the town to be utterly razed to the ground. And it was after this calamity that the Helots who were Messenians revolted and went to Mount Ithome. And the Lacedæmonians sent for several allies to help to subdue them, and among others for Cimon (the son of Miltiades) their friend, of whom they also begged some Athenian troops. But when these Athenian troops came they suspected them as likely to introduce revolutionary ideas among their own men, so in their suspicion they soon sent them home again from Ithome. But when the Athenians observed that suspicion on the part of the Lacedæmonians they were indignant and became friendly to the Argives, and, when those of the Messenians who were besieged at Ithome were allowed to surrender upon conditions, gave Naupactus to them, (having taken it from the Locrians in Ætolia called Ozolæ). And the Messenians were allowed to surrender partly because of the strength of the place, partly because the Pythian Priestess prophesied to the Lacedæmonians that there would be vengeance from Zeus of Ithome if they violated his right of sanctuary. So they were allowed to evacuate the Peloponnese upon conditions for these reasons.