Such are the main features of what Pausanias calls[739] the second Messenian war, or of what ought rather to be called the Aristomeneïs of the poet Rhianus. That after the foundation of Messênê, and the recall of the exiles by Epameinondas. favor and credence was found for many tales respecting the prowess of the ancient hero whom they invoked[740] in their libations,—tales well calculated to interest the fancy, to vivify the patriotism, and to inflame the anti-Spartan antipathies, of the new inhabitants,—there can be little doubt. And the Messenian maidens of that day may well have sung, in their public processional sacrifices,[741] how “Aristomenês pursued the flying Lacedæmonians down to the mid-plain of Stenyklêrus, and up to the very summit of the mountain.” From such stories, traditions they ought not to be denominated, Rhianus may doubtless have borrowed; but if proof were wanting to show how completely he looked at his materials from the point of view of the poet, and not from that of the historian, we should find it in the remarkable fact noticed by Pausanias. Rhianus represented Leotychides as having been king of Sparta during the second Messenian war; now Leotychides, as Pausanias observes, did not reign until near a century and a half afterwards, during the Persian invasion.[742]
To the great champion of Messenia, during this war, we may oppose, on the side of Sparta, another remarkable person, less striking as a character of romance, but more interesting, in many ways, to the historian,—I mean, the poet Tyrtæus, a native of Aphidnæ in Attica, an inestimable ally of the Lacedæmonians during most part of this second struggle. According to a story,—which, however, has the air partly of a boast of the later Attic orators,—the Spartans, disheartened at the first successes of the Messenians, consulted the Delphian oracle, and were directed to ask for a leader from Athens. The Athenians complied by sending Tyrtæus, whom Pausanias and Justin represent as a lame man and a schoolmaster, despatched with a view of nominally obeying the oracle, and yet rendering no real assistance.[743] This seems to be a coloring put upon the story by later writers, but the intervention of the Athenians in the matter, in any way, deserves little credit.[744] It seems more probable that the legendary connection of the Dioskuri with Aphidnæ, celebrated at or near that time by the poet Alkman, brought about, through the Delphian oracle, the presence of the Aphidnæan poet at Sparta. Respecting the lameness of Tyrtæus, we can say nothing: but that he was a schoolmaster (if we are constrained to employ an unsuitable term) is highly probable,—for in that day, minstrels, who composed and sung poems, were the only persons from whom the youth received any mental training. Moreover, his sway over the youthful mind is particularly noted in the compliment paid to him, in after-days, by king Leonidas: “Tyrtæus was an adept in tickling the souls of youth.”[745] We see enough to satisfy us that he was by birth a stranger, though he became a Spartan by the subsequent recompense of citizenship conferred upon him,—that he was sent through the Delphian oracle,—that he was an impressive and efficacious minstrel, and that he had, moreover, sagacity enough to employ his talents for present purposes and diverse needs; being able, not merely to reanimate the languishing courage of the baffled warrior, but also to soothe the discontents of the mutinous. That his strains, which long maintained undiminished popularity among the Spartans,[746] contributed much to determine the ultimate issue of this war, there is no reason to doubt; nor is his name the only one to attest the susceptibility of the Spartan mind in that day towards music and poetry. The first establishment of the Karneian festival, with its musical competition, at Sparta, falls during the period assigned by Pausanias to the second Messenian war: the Lesbian harper, Terpander, who gained the first recorded prize at this solemnity, is affirmed to have been sent for by the Spartans pursuant to a mandate from the Delphian oracle, and to have been the means of appeasing a sedition. In like manner, the Kretan Thalêtas was invited thither during a pestilence, which his art, as it is pretended, contributed to heal (about 620 B. C.); and Alkman, Xenokritus, Polymnastus, and Sakadas, all foreigners by birth, found favorable reception, and acquired popularity, by their music and poetry. With the exception of Sakadas, who is a little later, all these names fall in the same century as Tyrtæus, between 660 B. C.-610 B. C. The fashion which the Spartan music continued for a long time to maintain, is ascribed chiefly to the genius of Terpander.[747]
The training in which a Spartan passed his life consisted of exercises warlike, social, and religious, blended together. While the individual, strengthened by gymnastics, went through his painful lessons of fatigue, endurance, and aggression,—the citizens collectively were kept in the constant habit of simultaneous and regulated movement in the warlike march, in the religious dance, and in the social procession. Music and song, being constantly employed to direct the measure and keep alive the spirit[748] of these multitudinous movements, became associated with the most powerful feelings which the habitual self-suppression of a Spartan permitted to arise, and especially with those sympathies which are communicated at once to an assembled crowd; indeed, the musician and the minstrel were the only persons who ever addressed themselves to the feelings of a Lacedæmonian assembly. Moreover, the simple music of that early day, though destitute of artistical merit, and superseded afterwards by more complicated combinations, had, nevertheless, a pronounced ethical character; it wrought much more powerfully on the impulses and resolutions of the hearers, though it tickled the ear less gratefully, than the scientific compositions of after-days. Farther, each particular style of music had its own appropriate mental effect,—the Phrygian mode imparted a wild and maddening stimulus; the Dorian mode created a settled and deliberate resolution, exempt alike from the desponding and from the impetuous sentiments.[749] What is called the Dorian mode, seems to be in reality the old native Greek mode, as contradistinguished from the Phrygian and Lydian,—these being the three primitive modes, subdivided and combined only in later times, with which the first Grecian musicians became conversant. It probably acquired its title of Dorian from the musical celebrity of Sparta and Argos, during the seventh and sixth centuries before the Christian era; but it belonged as much to the Arcadians and Achæans as to the Spartans and Argeians. And the marked ethical effects, produced both by the Dorian and the Phrygian modes in ancient times, are facts perfectly well-attested, however difficult they may be to explain upon any general theory of music.
That the impression produced by Tyrtæus at Sparta, therefore, with his martial music, and emphatic exhortations to bravery in the field, as well as union at home, should have been very considerable, is perfectly consistent with the character both of the age and of the people; especially, as he is represented to have appeared pursuant to the injunction of the Delphian oracle. From the scanty fragments remaining to us of his elegies and anapæsts, however, we can satisfy ourselves only of two facts: first, that the war was long, obstinately contested, and dangerous to Sparta as well as to the Messenians; next, that other parties in Peloponnesus took part on both sides, especially on the side of the Messenians. So frequent and harassing were the aggressions of the latter upon the Spartan territory, that a large portion of the border land was left uncultivated: scarcity ensued, and the proprietors of the deserted farms, driven to despair, pressed for a redivision of the landed property in the state. It was in appeasing these discontents that the poem of Tyrtæus, called Eunomia, “Legal order,” was found signally beneficial.[750] It seems certain that a considerable portion of the Arcadians, together with the Pisatæ and the Triphylians, took part with the Messenians; there are also some statements numbering the Eleians among their allies, but this appears not probable. The state of the case rather seems to have been, that the old quarrel between the Eleians and the Pisatæ, respecting the right to preside at the Olympic games, which had already burst forth during the preceding century, in the reign of the Argeian Pheidôn, still continued. Unwilling dependents of Elis, the Pisatæ and Triphylians took part with the subject Messenians, while the masters at Elis and Sparta made common cause, as they had before done against Pheidôn.[751] Pantaleôn, king of Pisa, revolting from Elis, acted as commander of his countrymen in coöperation with the Messenians; and he is farther noted for having, at the period of the 34th Olympiad (644 B. C.), marched a body of troops to Olympia, and thus dispossessed the Eleians, on that occasion, of the presidency: that particular festival,—as well as the 8th Olympiad, in which Pheidôn interfered,—and the 104th Olympiad, in which the Arcadians marched in,—were always marked on the Eleian register as non-Olympiads, or informal celebrations. We may reasonably connect this temporary triumph of the Pisatans with the Messenian war, inasmuch as they were no match for the Eleians single-handed, while the fraternity of Sparta with Elis is in perfect harmony with the scheme of Peloponnesian politics which we have observed as prevalent even before and during the days of Pheidôn.[752] The second Messenian war will thus stand as beginning somewhere about the 33d Olympiad, or 648 B. C., between seventy and eighty years after the close of the first, and lasting, according to Pausanias, seventeen years; according to Plutarch, more than twenty years.[753]
Many of the Messenians who abandoned their country after this second conquest are said to have found shelter and sympathy among the Arcadians, who admitted them to a new home and gave them their daughters in marriage; and who, moreover, punished severely the treason of Aristokratês, king of Orchomenus, in abandoning the Messenians at the battle of the Trench. That perfidious leader was put to death, and his race dethroned, while the crime as well as the punishment was farther commemorated by an inscription, which was to be seen near the altar of Zeus Lykæus, in Arcadia. The inscription doubtless existed in the days of Kallisthenês, in the generation after the restoration of Messênê. But whether it had any existence prior to that event, or what degree of truth there may be in the story of Aristokratês, we are unable to determine:[754] the son of Aristokratês, named Aristodêmus, is alleged in another authority to have reigned afterwards at Orchomenus.[755] That which stands strongly marked is, the sympathy of Arcadians and Messenians against Sparta,—a sentiment which was in its full vigor at the time of the restoration of Messênê.
The second Messenian war was thus terminated by the complete subjugation of the Messenians. Such of them as remained in the country were reduced to a servitude probably not less hard than that which Tyrtæus described them as having endured between the first war and the second. In aftertimes, the whole territory which figures on the map as Messenia,—south of the river Nedon, and westward of the summit of Taygetus,—appears as subject to Sparta, and as forming the western portion of Laconia; distributed, in what proportion we know not, between Periœkic towns and Helot villages. By what steps, or after what degree of farther resistance, the Spartans conquered this country, we have no information; but we are told that they made over Asinê to the expelled Dryopes from the Argolic peninsula and Mothônê to the fugitives from Nauplia.[756] Nor do we hear of any serious revolt from Sparta in this territory until one hundred and fifty years afterwards,[757] subsequent to the Persian invasion,—a revolt which Sparta, after serious efforts, succeeded in crushing. So that the territory remained in her power until her defeat at Leuktra, which led to the foundation of Messênê by Epameinondas. The fertility of the plains,—especially of the central portion near the river Pamisus, so much extolled by observers, modern as well as ancient,—rendered it an acquisition highly valuable. At some time or other, it must of course have been formally partitioned among the Spartans, but it is probable that different and successive allotments were made, according as the various portions of territory, both to the east and to the west of Taygetus, were conquered. Of all this we have no information.[758]
Imperfectly as these two Messenian wars are known to us, we may see enough to warrant us in making two remarks. Both were tedious, protracted, and painful, showing how slowly the results of war were then gathered, and adding one additional illustration to prove how much the rapid and instantaneous conquest of Laconia and Messenia by the Dorians, which the Herakleid legend sets forth, is contradicted by historical analogy. Both were characterized by a similar defensive proceeding on the part of the Messenians,—the occupation of a mountain difficult of access, and the fortification of it for the special purpose and resistance,—Ithômê (which is said to have had already a small town upon it) in the first war, Eira in the second. It is reasonable to infer from hence, that neither their principal town Stenyklêrus, nor any other town in their country, was strongly fortified, so as to be calculated to stand a siege; that there were no walled towns among them analogous to Mykenæ and Tiryns on the eastern portion of Peloponnesus; and that, perhaps, what were called towns were, like Sparta itself, clusters of unfortified villages. The subsequent state of Helotism into which they were reduced is in consistency with this dispersed village residence during their period of freedom.
The relations of Pisa and Elis form a suitable counterpart and sequel to those of Messenia and Sparta. Unwilling subjects themselves, the Pisatans had lent their aid to the Messenians,—and their king, Pantaleôn, one of the leaders of this combined force, had gained so great a temporary success, as to dispossess the Eleians of the agonothesia or administration of the games for one Olympic ceremony, in the 34th Olympiad. Though again reduced to their condition of subjects, they manifested dispositions to renew their revolt at the 48th Olympiad, under Damophôn, the son of Pantaleôn, and the Eleians marched into their country to put them down, but were persuaded to retire by protestations of submission. At length, shortly afterwards, under Pyrrhus, the brother of Damophôn, a serious revolt broke out. The inhabitants of Dyspentium, and the other villages in the Pisatid, assisted by those of Makistus, Skillus, and the other towns in Triphylia, took up arms to throw off the yoke of Elis; but their strength was inadequate to the undertaking. They were completely conquered; Dyspontium was dismantled, and the inhabitants of it obliged to flee the country, from whence most of them emigrated to the colonies of Epidamnus and Apollonia, in Epirus. The inhabitants of Makistus and Skillus were also chased from their abodes, while the territory became more thoroughly subject to Elis than it had been before. These incidents seem to have occurred about the 50th Olympiad, or B. C. 580; and the dominion of Elis over her Periœkic territory was thus as well assured as that of Sparta.[759] The separate denominations both of Pisa and Triphylia became more and more merged in the sovereign name of Elis: the town of Lepreum alone, in Triphylia, seems to have maintained a separate name and a sort of half-autonomy down to the time of the Peloponnesian war, not without perpetual struggles against the Eleians.[760] But towards the period of the Peloponnesian war, the political interests of Lacedæmon had become considerably changed, and it was to her advantage to maintain the independence of the subordinate states against the superior: accordingly, we find her at that time upholding the autonomy of Lepreum. From what cause the devastation of the Triphylian towns by Elis, which Herodotus mentions as having happened in his time, arose, we do not know; the fact seems to indicate a continual yearning for their original independence, which was still commemorated, down to a much later period, by the ancient Amphiktyony, at Samikum, in Triphylia, in honor of Poseidôn,—a common religious festival frequented by all the Triphylian towns and celebrated by the inhabitants of Makistus, who sent round proclamation of a formal truce for the holy period.[761] The Lacedæmonians, after the close of the Peloponnesian war, had left them undisputed heads of Greece, formally upheld the independence of the Triphylian towns against Elis, and seem to have countenanced their endeavors to attach themselves to the Arcadian aggregate, which, however, was never fully accomplished. Their dependence on Elis became loose and uncertain, but was never wholly shaken off.[762]