"Down in Arcadia's level plain I know,
Tegea lies:—and where woe lies on woe—
Where two bound winds impatient of the yoke,
Are forced to blow—where stroke replies to stroke:
Beneath the earth lies Agamemnon's son,
Bear him to Sparta and Tegea's won."
When the Lacedæmonians heard this, they were as far off the discovery as ever, though they searched every where, till Lichas, one of the Spartans who are called Agathoergi, found it. These Agathoergi consist of citizens who are discharged from serving in the cavalry, such as are senior, five in every year. It is their duty during the year in which they are discharged from the cavalry, not to remain inactive, but go to different places where they are sent by the Spartan commonwealth. Lichas, who was one of these persons, discovered it in Tegea, both meeting with good fortune and employing sagacity. For as the Lacedæmonians had at that time intercourse with the Tegeans, he, coming to a smithy, looked attentively at the iron being forged, and was struck with wonder when he saw what was done. The smith perceiving his astonishment desisted from his work, and said: "O Laconian stranger, you would certainly have been astonished had you seen what I saw, since you are so surprised at the working of iron. For as I was endeavoring to sink a well in this enclosure, in digging, I came to a coffin seven cubits long; and because I did not believe that men were ever taller than they now are, I opened it and saw that the body was equal to the coffin in length, and after I had measured it I covered it up again." The man told him what he had seen, and Lichas, reflecting on what was said, conjectured from the words of the oracle, that this must be the body of Orestes, forming his conjecture on the following reasons: seeing the smith's two bellows he discerned in them the two winds, and in the anvil and hammer the stroke answering to stroke, and in the iron that was being forged the woe that lay on woe; representing it in this way, that iron had been invented to the injury of man. He then returned to Sparta, and gave the Lacedæmonians an account of the whole matter; but they brought a feigned charge against him and sent him into banishment. He, going back to Tegea, related his misfortune to the smith, and wished to hire the enclosure from him, but he would not let it. But in time, when he had persuaded him, he took up his abode there; and having opened the sepulchre and collected the bones, he carried them away with him to Sparta. From that time, whenever they made trial of each other's strength, the Lacedæmonians were by far superior in war; and the greater part of Peloponnesus had been already subdued by them.