Scanty as our information is, it just enables us to make out a progressive increase of force and dominion on the part of the Spartans, resulting from the organization of Lykurgus. Of this progress, a farther manifestation is found, besides the conquest of the Achæans in the south by Têleklus and Alkamenês, in their successful opposition to the great power of Pheidôn the Argeian, related in a previous chapter. We now approach the long and arduous efforts by which they accomplished the subjugation of their brethren the Messenian Dorians.
CHAPTER VII.
FIRST AND SECOND MESSENIAN WARS.
That there were two long contests between the Lacedæmonians and Messenians, and that in both the former were completely victorious, is a fact sufficiently attested. And if we could trust the statements in Pausanias,—our chief and almost only authority on the subject,—we should be in a situation to recount the history of both these wars in considerable detail. But unfortunately, the incidents narrated in that writer have been gathered from sources which are, even by his own admission, undeserving of credit,—from Rhianus, the poet of Bênê in Krete, who had composed an epic poem on Aristomenês and the second Messenian war, about B. C. 220,—and from Myrôn of Priênê, a prose author whose date is not exactly known, but belonging to the Alexandrine age, and not earlier than the third century before the Christian era. From Rhianus, we have no right to expect trustworthy information, while the accuracy of Myrôn is much depreciated by Pausanias himself,—on some points even too much, as will presently be shown. But apart from the mental habits either of the prose writer or the poet, it does not seem that any good means of knowledge were open to either of them, except the poems of Tyrtæus, which we are by no means sure that they ever consulted. The account of the two wars, extracted from these two authors by Pausanias, is a string of tableaux, several of them, indeed, highly poetical, but destitute of historical coherence or sufficiency: and O. Müller has justly observed, that “absolutely no reason is given in them for the subjection of Messenia.”[726] They are accounts unworthy of being transcribed in detail into the pages of genuine history, nor can we pretend to do anything more than verify a few leading facts of the war.
The poet Tyrtæus was himself engaged on the side of the Spartans in the second war, and it is from him that we learn the few indisputable facts respecting both the first and the second. If the Messenians had never been reëstablished in Peloponnesus, we should probably never have heard any farther details respecting these early contests. That reëstablishment, together with the first foundation of the city called Messênê on Mount Ithomê, was among the capital wounds inflicted on Sparta by Epameinondas, in the year B. C. 369,—between three hundred and two hundred and fifty years after the conclusion of the second Messenian war. The descendants of the old Messenians, who had remained for so long a period without any fixed position in Greece, were incorporated in the new city, together with various Helots and miscellaneous settlers who had no claim to a similar genealogy. The gods and heroes of the Messenian race were reverentially invoked at this great ceremony, especially the great hero Aristomenês;[727] and the site of Mount Ithomê, the ardor of the newly established citizens, the hatred and apprehension of Sparta, operating as a powerful stimulus to the creation and multiplication of what are called traditions, sufficed to expand the few facts known respecting the struggles of the old Messenians into a variety of details. In almost all these stories we discover a coloring unfavorable to Sparta, contrasting forcibly with the account given by Isokratês, in his Discourse called Archidamus, wherein we read the view which a Spartan might take of the ancient conquests of his forefathers. But a clear proof that these Messenian stories had no real basis of tradition, is shown in the contradictory statements respecting the principal Hero Aristomenês; for some place him in the first, others in the second, of the two wars. Diodôrus and Myrôn both placed him in the first; Rhianus, in the second. Though Pausanias gives it as his opinion that the account of the latter is preferable, and that Aristomenês really belongs to the second Messenian war, it appears to me that the one statement is as much worthy of belief as the other, and that there is no sufficient evidence for deciding between them,—a conclusion which is substantially the same with that of Wesseling, who thinks that there were two persons named Aristomenês, one in the first and one in the second war.[728] This inextricable confusion respecting the greatest name in Messenian antiquity, shows how little any genuine stream of tradition can here be recognized.
Pausanias states the first Messenian war as beginning in B. C. 743 and lasting till B. C. 724,—the second, as beginning in B. C. 685 and lasting till B. C. 668. Neither of these dates rest upon any assignable positive authority; but the time assigned to the first war seems probable, while that of the second is apparently too early. Tyrtæus authenticates both the duration of the first war, twenty years, and the eminent services rendered in it by the Spartan king Theopompus.[729] He says, moreover, speaking during the second war, “the fathers of our fathers conquered Messênê;” thus loosely indicating the relative dates of the two.
The Spartans (as we learn from Isokratês, whose words date from a time when the city of Messênê was only a recent foundation) professed to have seized the territory, partly in revenge for the impiety of the Messenians in killing their own king, the Herakleid Kresphontês, whose relative had appealed to Sparta for aid,—partly by sentence of the Delphian oracle. Such were the causes which had induced them first to invade the country, and they had conquered it after a struggle of twenty years.[730] The Lacedæmonian explanations, as given in Pausanias, seem for the most part to be counter-statements arranged after the time when the Messenian version, evidently the interesting and popular account, had become circulated.
It has already been stated that the Lacedæmonians and Messenians had a joint border temple and sacrifice in honor of Artemis Limnatis, dating from the earliest times of their establishment in Peloponnesus. The site of this temple, near the upper course of the river Nedon, in the mountainous territory north-east of Kalamata, but west of the highest ridge of Taygetus, has recently been exactly verified,—and it seems in these early days to have belonged to Sparta. That the quarrel began at one of these border sacrifices was the statement of both parties, Lacedæmonians and Messenians. According to the latter, the Lacedæmonian king Têleklus laid a snare for the Messenians, by dressing up some youthful Spartans as virgins, and giving them daggers; whereupon a contest ensued, in which the Spartans were worsted and Têleklus slain. That Têleklus was slain at the temple by the Messenians, was also the account of the Spartans,—but they affirmed that he was slain in attempting to defend some young Lacedæmonian maidens, who were sacrificing at the temple, against outrageous violence from the Messenian youth.[731] In spite of the death of this king, however, the war did not actually break out until some little time after, when Alkamenês and Theopompus were kings at Sparta, and Antiochus and Androklês, sons of Phintas, kings of Messenia. The immediate cause of it was a private altercation between the Messenian Polycharês (victor at the fourth Olympiad, B. C. 764) and the Spartan Euæphnus. Polycharês, having been grossly injured by Euæphnus, and his claim for redress having been rejected at Sparta, took revenge by aggressions upon other Lacedæmonians; the Messenians refused to give him up, though one of the two kings, Androklês, strongly insisted upon doing so, and maintained his opinion so earnestly against the opposite sense of the majority and of his brother Antiochus, that a tumult arose, and he was slain. The Lacedæmonians, now resolving upon war, struck the first blow without any formal declaration, by surprising the border town of Ampheia, and putting its defenders to the sword. They farther overran the Messenian territory, and attacked some other towns, but without success. Euphaês, who had now succeeded his father Antiochus as king of Messenia, summoned the forces of the country and carried on the war against them with energy and boldness. For the first four years of the war, the Lacedæmonians made no progress, and even incurred the ridicule of the old men of their nation as faint-hearted warriors: in the fifth year, however, they undertook a more vigorous invasion, under their two kings, Theopompus and Polydôrus, who were met by Euphaês with the full force of the Messenians. A desperate battle ensued, in which it does not seem that either side gained much advantage: nevertheless, the Messenians found themselves so much enfeebled by it, that they were forced to take refuge on the fortified mountain of Ithômê, abandoning the rest of the country. In their distress, they sent to solicit counsel and protection from Delphi, but their messenger brought back the appalling answer that a virgin, of the royal race of Æpytus, must be sacrificed for their salvation: in the tragic scene which ensues, Aristodêmus puts to death his own daughter, yet without satisfying the exigencies of the oracle. The war still continued, and in the thirteenth year of it another hard-fought battle took place, in which the brave Euphaês was slain, but the result was again indecisive. Aristodêmus, being elected king in his place, prosecuted the war strenuously: the fifth year of his reign is signalized by a third general battle, wherein the Corinthians assist the Spartans, and the Arcadians and Sikyonians are on the side of Messenia; the victory is here decisive on the side of Aristodêmus, and the Lacedæmonians are driven, back into their own territory.[732] It was now their turn to send envoys and ask advice from the Delphian oracle; while the remaining events of the war exhibit a series, partly of stratagems to fulfil the injunctions of the priestess,—partly of prodigies in which the divine wrath is manifested against the Messenians. The king Aristodêmus, agonized with the thought that he has slain his own daughter without saving his country, puts an end to his own life.[733] In the twentieth year of the war, the Messenians abandoned Ithômê, which the Lacedæmonians razed to the ground: the rest of the country being speedily conquered, such of the inhabitants as did not flee either to Arcadia or to Eleusis, were reduced to complete submission.
Such is the abridgment of what Pausanias[734] gives as the narrative of the first Messenian war. Most of his details bear the evident stamp of mere late romance; and it will easily be seen that the sequence of events presents no plausible explanation of that which is really indubitable,—the result. The twenty years’ war, and the final abandonment of Ithômê, is attested by Tyrtæus beyond all doubt, as well as the harsh treatment of the conquered. “Like asses, worn down by heavy burdens,”[735] says the Spartan poet, “they were compelled to make over to their masters an entire half of the produce of their fields, and to come in the garb of woe to Sparta, themselves and their wives, as mourners at the decease of the kings and principal persons.” The revolt of their descendants, against a yoke so oppressive, goes by the name of the second Messenian war.
Had we possessed the account of the first Messenian war as given by Myrôn and Diodorus, it would evidently have been very different from the above, because they included Aristomenês in it, and to him the leading parts would be assigned. As the narrative now stands in Pausanias, we are not introduced to that great Messenian hero,—the Achilles of the epic of Rhianus,[736]—until the second war, in which his gigantic proportions stand prominently forward. He is the great champion of his country in the three battles which are represented as taking place during this war: the first, with indecisive result, at Deræ; the second, a signal victory on the part of the Messenians, at the Boar’s Grave; the third, an equally signal defeat, in consequence of the traitorous flight of Aristokratês, king of the Arcadian Orchomenus, who, ostensibly embracing the alliance of the Messenians, had received bribes from Sparta. Thrice did Aristomenês sacrifice to Zeus Ithomatês the sacrifice called Hekatomphonia,[737] reserved for those who had slain with their own hands a hundred enemies in battle. At the head of a chosen band, he carried his incursions more than once into the heart of the Lacedæmonian territory, surprised Amyklæ and Pharis, and even penetrated by night into the unfortified precinct of Sparta itself, where he suspended his shield, as a token of defiance, in the temple of Athênê Chalkiœkus. Thrice was he taken prisoner, but on two occasions marvellously escaped before he could be conveyed to Sparta: the third occasion was more fatal, and he was cast by order of the Spartans into the Keadas, a deep, rocky cavity in Mount Taygetus, into which it was their habit to precipitate criminals. But even in this emergency the divine aid[738] was not withheld from him. While the fifty Messenians who shared his punishment, were all killed by the shock, he alone was both supported by the gods so as to reach the bottom unhurt, and enabled to find an unexpected means of escape. For when, abandoning all hope, he had wrapped himself up in his cloak to die, he perceived a fox creeping about among the dead bodies: waiting until the animal approached him, he grasped its tail, defending himself from its bites as well as he could by means of his cloak; and being thus enabled to find the aperture by which the fox had entered, enlarged it sufficiently for crawling out himself. To the surprise both of friends and enemies, he again appeared, alive and vigorous, at Eira. That fortified mountain on the banks of the river Nedon, and near the Ionian sea, had been occupied by the Messenians, after the battle in which they had been betrayed by Aristokratês, the Arcadian; it was there that they had concentrated their whole force, as in the former war at Ithômê, abandoning the rest of the country. Under the conduct of Aristomenês, assisted by the prophet Theoklus, they maintained this strong position for eleven years. At length, they were compelled to abandon it; but, as in the case of Ithômê, the final determining circumstances are represented to have been, not any superiority of bravery or organization on the part of the Lacedæmonians, but treacherous betrayal and stratagem, seconding the fatal decree of the gods. Unable to maintain Eira longer, Aristomenês, with his sons, and a body of his countrymen, forced his way through the assailants, and quitted the country,—some of them retiring to Arcadia and Elis, and finally migrating to Rhegium. He himself passed the remainder of his days in Rhodes, where he dwelt along with his son-in-law, Damagêtus, the ancestor of the noble Rhodian family, called the Diagorids, celebrated for its numerous Olympic victories.