5. These documents, if we were in possession of them, would afford a valuable foundation for an account of the three centuries before regular history begins; but merely an outline, which would require to be filled up from other sources. This might partly be done from the writings of the Lyric poets, who flourished at that time, as Eumelus, Thaletas, Tyrtæus, Alcman, and Terpander;[570] which writers had frequent intercourse with the Spartans, and introduced the events of the time into their poetry to a much greater degree than the epic poets. And in fact we find in the fragments of Tyrtæus and Alcman a lively representation of the feelings and manners of the period. The next source of information is oral tradition, which, though erring continually with regard to names and numbers, yet always relates something essential; and, finally, the political institutions continuing to exist in later times, which had their origin in this period.
These, and no other than these, can have been the means employed by the authors who wrote on the affairs of Laconia, in the century when history was approaching to maturity, such as Hellanicus, Charon, and Herodotus; and either directly or indirectly must have afforded materials to those who treated of the times of Lycurgus during the later age of Greek learning. But how little do we recognise the ancient [pg 152] simplicity and liveliness which characterise all the genuine remains of that time, in the historical style of Ephorus and Hermippus,[571] and their followers. The object of these writers was to assimilate, as much as possible, the notions of antiquity to those of their own time, and to attempt in some way or other to represent every act as proceeding from such motives as would have actuated their own contemporaries. They have with a truly unsparing hand rubbed off the venerable rust of ancient tradition, and, totally mistaking the most powerful springs of action then prevalent, moulded all events of which any records had been preserved, into a connected form more suited to a modern history. It is almost impossible to describe with what unlucky zeal Plutarch, where Lycurgus only embodied in laws the political feelings of his race and nation, ascribes to that legislator plans and views generally unsatisfactory, and often absolutely childish.
6. If now we apply the method above stated to the history of Lycurgus, we shall find that we have absolutely no account of him as an individual person. Tradition very properly represents him as intimately connected with the temple of Delphi (by which the Dorians, and especially the state of Sparta, were at that time entirely led), and with Crete, the earliest civilized state of the Doric race. This connexion was generally represented under the form of a journey to both places; his tomb was also shown both at Cirrha and at Pergamia in Crete. It was easy to imagine that the reforms of Lycurgus were violently [pg 153] opposed, and produced tumults and disturbances.[572] But the story of Alcander putting out one of Lycurgus's eyes (probably a popular tale) is founded on a false explanation of the title of Pallas Optiletis.[573] It was indeed an ancient tradition that he was guardian of a Spartan king; but the common report of this being Charilaus[574] is not quite certain, as we have seen above; and in order to account for both his travels and regency, he was reported to have abdicated the latter in order to avoid suspicion.[575] If we set aside all fictions of this description, which have almost the spirit of a moral tale, like the Cyropædia of Xenophon, there remains very little traditional lore. Of his legislation we will treat hereafter.[576]
7. It is very singular that historians should have mentioned so little of the action of Lycurgus, which comes next in importance to that which has been just discussed;[577] I mean the share that he had in founding the sacred armistice and games at Olympia, which event was without doubt the commencement of a more tranquil state of affairs in Peloponnesus. Lycurgus, as the representative of the Doric race, Iphitus, of the Ætolians and Eleans, and Cleosthenes,[578] the son [pg 154] of Cleonicus of Pisa, the city to which the temple of Olympia properly belonged, and which had not then lost the management of it, in conjunction perhaps with several others, drew up the fundamental law of the Peloponnesian armistice. This contained two heads. First, that the whole territory of the Eleans (who acted as masters of the games, after the expulsion of the Pisatans, every year with more exclusive power) should remain for ever free from hostile inroads and ravages, insomuch that even armed troops were only to be allowed a passage on condition of first laying down their arms;[579] secondly, that during the time of the festival a cessation of arms should also be proclaimed throughout the rest of Peloponnesus. But, since there was little agreement among the individual states in the computation of time, and as the Eleans alone were acquainted with the exact time at which the quadrennial festival came round, and perhaps also in order to make the injunction of the god more impressive, the Eleans always sent feciales round to the different states, “heralds of the season, the Elean truce-bearers of Zeus;”[580] these persons proclaimed the Olympic armistice, first to their own countrymen, and then to the other Peloponnesians: after which time no army was to invade another's territory.[581] The fine which was to have been paid by the Spartans in the Peloponnesian war for having sent [pg 155] out soldiers after this period was two minas for each hoplite, the very sum which by the agreement of the Peloponnesians was required for the ransom of prisoners of war;[582] whence it is evident that the transgressors of the truce were considered as becoming slaves of the god, and were to be ransomed again from him. The decree was pronounced by the tribunal of the temple at Elis, according to the “Olympian law.”[583] The fine was divided between the Eleans and the treasury at the temple of Olympia. To this temple also were paid all penalties incurred by the infraction of treaties;[584] nay, sometimes whole cities were bound to pay a fixed tribute every year to the god.[585] By these and similar laws was the armistice protected, which doubtless was not intended merely to secure the celebration of the games from disturbance, but also to effect a peaceable meeting of the Peloponnesians, and thus to give occasion for the settling of disputes, and the conclusion of alliances. Even in the Peloponnesian war public business was transacted at this assembly.[586] But one chief effect of the Olympian festival appears to have been the production of a more friendly connexion between the Ætolian and Doric races. This fact appears to be established by the tradition that Iphitus introduced the worship of Hercules at Elis, which therefore had previously been peculiar to the Dorians.[587] Apollo, the Doric god, was also at this time regarded as the protector of the sacred armistice of Olympia, as we shall see hereafter.[588]
8. We now proceed immediately to the Messenian wars, since it is hardly possible to find one independent event between the commencement of them and the time of Iphitus. These however are really historical, since we have in Tyrtæus a nearly contemporaneous account of the first, and one actually so of the second. The fragments and accounts of his poems are our principal guides for obtaining a correct knowledge of these transactions. And in these alone many circumstances appear in quite a different light from that in which they are represented in the romance of Pausanias. In the latter, the Spartans only are the aggressors, the Messenians only the subjects of attack; but, if we listen to Tyrtæus, the former also had to fight for their own country. But, since even the ancients possessed few remains of Tyrtæus, and as nearly all the historical part of his poems appears to have come down to us, whence did Pausanias derive his copious narrative, and the details with which he has adorned it? Was it from ancient epic poets? Yet of these there is nowhere any mention: and in general an historical event, if it could not be put into an entirely fabulous shape, like the stories of the origin and foundation of many colonies, lay altogether without the province of the early poetry. It is indeed possible that in the Naupactia, which are referred to for the mythical history of Messenia,[589] some historical notices may have occasionally occurred, perhaps too in the works of Cinæthon and Eumelus: but the ancients, who disliked the labour of compiling a history from scattered fragments, probably gave themselves very little trouble to discover them. On the other hand, [pg 157] there existed a series of traditional legends, whose character announces their high antiquity; thus, that of the Messenians, that Aristomenes had thrice offered a hecatomphonion, or sacrifice for a hundred enemies slain in battle;[590] whether or no of human victims is doubtful.[591] A share in this sacrifice was also performed by Theoclus, who is called an Elean, because he belonged to a family of the Iamidæ, which, as it appears, was settled in Messenia; but this clan, though scattered about in different places, yet always retained their rights at Olympia.[592] The same character may also be perceived in the legend of Aristomenes thrice incurring the danger of death. On the first of these occasions, when thrown into the Ceadas, he was preserved by a fox, the symbol of Messenia; on the second, whilst his guards were asleep, he turned to the fire and burnt in two the cords that bound his limbs,[593] a story more certainly derived from tradition than the love-adventure which supplies its place in Pausanias: the third time however that he fell into the hands of his enemies, they cut open his breast, and found a hairy heart.[594]
9. Traditions of this kind were probably circulating in different forms among the victorious Lacedæmonians,[595] amongst the refugee Messenians in Italy and Naupactus, the subject Messenians who remained in the country, and the other Peloponnesians, when they were recalled into existence by the re-establishment of the Messenian state by Epaminondas. Even before the battle of Leuctra, the Bœotians, on the advice of an oracle, hung up as a trophy the shield of Aristomenes,[596] the device of which was a spread eagle:[597] and when Epaminondas recalled the Messenian fugitives from Italy, Sicily, and even from Libya, and had erected them, with numerous Helots and people collected from various quarters, into a new state,[598] Aristomenes was especially invoked before the foundation of the city.[599] In this manner the ancient traditions were enabled to gain a new footing, and to be developed in a connected form. Several writers now seized upon a subject which had begun to excite so great interest, of whom Rhianus the poet and Myron the prose-writer are known to us.[600] Myron gave an account of the first Messenian war down to the death of Aristodemus; but, in the opinion of Pausanias, utterly regardless whether or no he related falsehood and incredibilities; thus, in the teeth of all tradition, he introduced Aristomenes, [pg 159] the hero of the second war, into the first; and he wrote with an evident bias against Sparta.[601] Rhianus, however, a native of Bena in Crete, celebrated the actions of Aristomenes, in the second war, from the battle near the Great Trench (Μεγάλη Τάφρος), until the end of the war, as Homer had done those of Achilles; and although Pausanias has disproved some of his statements of particular facts from Tyrtæus,[602] yet he has frequently followed him, and especially in the poetical embellishments of his narrative.[603] He never mentions any historians, such as Ephorus, Theopompus, Antiochus, or Callisthenes.[604] Rhianus, however, though he might not have exclusively adopted the Messenian account,[605] yet, as far as we can judge from Pausanias, gave the reins to his fancy, and mixed up many circumstances and usages of later times with the ancient tradition.[606] It is not therefore our intention [pg 160] either to divert the reader with a continued narration of these fictions, at the expense of truth, or fatigue him by a detailed criticism of them, but merely to lay before him the chief circumstances, as they are known with historical certainty.
10. The first war is distinctly stated by Tyrtæus to have lasted nineteen years, and in the twentieth the enemy left their country, and fled from the mountain Ithome.[607] The same authority also gives the time which elapsed between the first and second wars, viz., that the grandfathers were engaged in the first, the grandchildren in the second.[608] The date of the first war is fixed by Polychares, who is stated to have been the author of it,[609] having been conqueror in the race at the [pg 161] 4th Olympiad[610] (764 B.C.); and it agrees well with this date that Eumelus, who was contemporary with Archias the founder of Syracuse (in the 5th Olympiad), composed a poem for free Messenia. Pausanias places the commencement (we know not on what grounds) at Olymp. 9. 2, (743 B.C.) the termination nineteen years later, Olymp. 14. 1. (724 B.C.) The interval between the two wars he states (though on what authority we know not, and contrary to Tyrtæus) to have been thirty-nine years;[611] so that the second would have lasted from Olymp. 23. 4. to Olymp. 28. 1. (or from 685 to 668 B.C.)[612] We shall, however, find hereafter that the date of this war was probably later by several years, though not so late as Diodorus fixed it, according to whom the war began in Olymp. 35. 3.[613] We also know from Tyrtæus that the Spartan [pg 162] king who completed the subjugation of Messenia was Theopompus.[614] Now, with respect to the origin of this war, it may be first traced in the increase of power, which Sparta, before the beginning of the Olympiads, owed to the exertions of its king Teleclus; this prince having succeeded in subduing the neighbouring city of Amyclæ, and in reducing several other Achæan towns to a state of dependence on Sparta.[615] Indeed, if we correctly understand an insulated notice,[616] Teleclus razed the town of Nedon, on the frontiers of Messenia and Laconia,[617] and transplanted its inhabitants to the towns of Pœessa, Echeiæ, and Tragis. Hence arose border wars between the Dorians at Sparta and those at Stenyclarus. The temple of Artemis Limnatis,[618] the possession of which was disputed between the two nations (though its festival was common to both), afforded, as may be discovered from the romance of Pausanias,[619] the immediate ground for the war. For even in the reign of Tiberius the Lacedæmonians supported their claim to this temple by ancient annals and oracles;[620] while the Messenians, on the other hand, brought forward the document already quoted, according to which this temple, together with the whole territory of Dentheleatis, in which it was situated, belonged to them. Dissensions in Messenia must have [pg 163] hastened the breaking out of the war, since it is certain that Hyamia, one of the five provinces of Messenia, was given by the Spartans to the Androclidæ, a branch of the family of the Æpytidæ.[621] The history of the first war contains traces of a lofty and sublime poetical tradition: for example, that Aristodemus, though ready to appease the wrath of the gods by the blood of his own daughter,[622] yet was unable to effect his purpose; that the damsel was put to death in vain; and upon this, recognising the will of the gods that Messenia should fall, and being terrified by portentous omens, he slaughtered himself upon the tomb of his murdered child.[623] The war seems to have been confined chiefly to the vicinity of Ithome, which stronghold, situated in the midst of the country, commanded both the plain of Stenyclarus and that of the Pamisus. The reduction of this fortress necessarily entailed the subjugation of the whole country, and many of the Messenians began to emigrate. With this event the Doric colony of Rhegium is connected. Heraclides of Pontus[624] merely relates, that some Messenians (who happened to be at this time at Macistus in Triphylia, in consequence of the violation of some Spartan virgins) united themselves to the Chalcidian founders of this town (who had been sent out from Delphi). He probably means those Messenians who wished to make a reparation for the violation of the Spartan virgins in the temple of Artemis Limnatis, and were in consequence [pg 164] expelled by their own countrymen.[625] But, according to Pausanias,[626] even this body of Messenians received the district of Hyamia; and the Messenians did not migrate to Rhegium until after the taking of Ithome under Alcidamidas, and again after the second Messenian war under Gorgus and Manticlus, son of Theoclus, one of the Iamidæ.[627] Anaxilas the tyrant (who lived after Olymp. 70) afterwards derived his family from the Messenians,[628] who constituted in general the first nobility of the town of Rhegium.[629]
The establishment of Tarentum is connected with the history of the first Messenian war; but it is wrapped up in such unintelligible fables (chiefly owing perhaps to an ignorance of Lacedæmonian institutions), that all we can learn from them is, that Tarentum was at that time founded from Sparta.[630]
11. In a fragment of Tyrtæus we find some very distinct traces of the condition of the subject Messenians after the first war, which will be separately considered hereafter. The second war clearly broke out in the north-eastern part of the country, on the frontier towards Arcadia, where the ancient towns of Andania and Œchalia were situated. In all probability this tract of country had never been subjugated [pg 165] by the Spartans. Aristomenes, the hero of this war, was born at Andania,[631] from which town he harassed the Spartans by repeated inroads and attacks. In his first march he advanced as far as the plain of Stenyclarus; but after the victory at the Boar's Grave he returned to Andania. But this attempt of the Messenians to recover their independence became of serious importance by the share which the greater part of the states in Peloponnesus took in it. For Strabo,[632] quoting Tyrtæus, states, that the Eleans, Argives, Arcadians, and Pisatans[633] assisted the Messenians in this struggle. The Pisatans were led by Pantaleon the son of Omphalion, who celebrated the 34th Olympiad in the place of the Eleans;[634] which fact enables us accurately to fix the time (644 B.C.).—At the head of the Arcadians was Aristocrates, whom Pausanias calls a Trapezuntian, the son of Hicetas, and mentions [pg 166] his treachery at the battle near the Trench, on the subsequent discovery of which the Arcadians deprived his family of the sovereignty of Arcadia.[635] The same account is also given by Callisthenes,[636] and both writers quote the inscription on a pillar erected near the mountain-altar of Zeus Lycæus in memory of the traitor's detection. Now we know from good authority[637] that Aristocrates was in fact king only of Orchomenus in Arcadia,[638] of which his family was so far from losing the sovereignty, that his son Aristodamus ruled over it, and also over a great part of Arcadia. The date of Aristocrates[639] appears to have been about 680-640 B.C.[640]
The Lacedæmonians were therefore in this war really pressed by an enemy of superior force, a fact alluded to by Tyrtæus. Meanwhile Sparta was assisted by the Corinthians,[641] perhaps by the [pg 167] Lepreatans,[642] and even by some ships of the Samians;[643] but chiefly by Tyrtæus of Aphidnæ, whom an absurd and distorted fable has turned into a lame Athenian schoolmaster. The fact of Sparta seeking a warlike minstrel in Aphidnæ, may be accounted for from its ancient connexions with this borough in Attica, which is said to have been in the hands of the Dioscuri. Whether or not Aphidnæ at that time belonged to Attica, and was subject to Athens, is a question we shall leave undecided; but there does not seem to be any reason for inferring with Strabo, from the passage of Tyrtæus itself, that the whole tradition was false, and that Tyrtæus was a Lacedæmonian by birth,[644] though he doubtless became so by adoption. It is to be regretted that we have very little information concerning the war carried on by Sparta with the rest of [pg 168] the Peloponnesians;[645] but the Messenians at a later period withdrew from Andania towards Eira, which is a mountain-fortress on the Neda, the border-stream towards Arcadia, near the sea-coast. When obliged to retire from this stronghold, they were received first by the Arcadians, their ancient and faithful allies (who, according to the tradition, gave them their daughters in marriage[646]); afterwards the exiles sought an asylum with their kinsmen at Rhegium. Aristomenes himself (if he was not put to death by the Spartans) is said to have died at Rhodes, in the house of the noble family of the Eratidæ.[647]