An elaborate discussion is to be seen in Manso’s Sparta, on the authorities whom Pausanias has followed in his History of the Messenian Wars, 18te Beilage, tom. ii. p. 264.
“It would evidently be folly (he observes, p. 270), to suppose that in the history of the Messenian wars, as Pausanias lays them before us, we possess the true history of these events.”
[735] Tyrtæus, Fragm. 5, 6 (Schneidewin).
C. F. Hermann conceives the treatment of the Messenians after the first war, as mild, in comparison with what it became after the second (Lehrbuch der Griech. Staatsalterthümer, sect. 31), a supposition which the emphatic words of Tyrtæus render inadmissible.
[736] This is the express comparison introduced by Pausanias, iv. 5, 2.
[737] Plutarch, Sept. Sapient. Convivium, p. 159.
[738] Pausan. iv. 18, 4. Ἀριστομένην δὲ ἔς τε τὰ ἄλλα θεῶν τις, καὶ δὴ καὶ τότε ἐφύλασσεν.
Plutarch (De Herodot. Malignitat. p. 856) states that Herodotus had mentioned Aristomenês as having been made prisoner by the Lacedæmonians, but Plutarch must here have been deceived by his memory, for Herodotus does not mention Aristomenês.
[739] The narrative in Pausanias, iv. 15-24.
According to an incidental notice in Herodotus, the Samians affirmed that they had aided Lacedæmon in war against Messênê,—at what period we do not know (Herodot. iii. 56).