After this battle the affairs of the Messenians were in a calamitous situation. For, in the first place, through the great sums of money which they had expended in fortifying their cities, they had no longer the means of supplying their army. In the next place, their slaves had fled to the Lacedæmonians. And lastly, a disease resembling a pestilence, though it did not infest all their country, greatly embarrassed their affairs. In consequence, therefore, of consulting about their present situation, they thought proper to abandon all those cities which had the most inland situation, and to betake themselves to the mountain Ithome. In this mountain there was a city of no great magnitude, which, they say, is mentioned by Homer in his catalogue:
“And those that in the steep Ithome dwell.”
In this city, therefore, fixing their residence, they enlarged the ancient enclosure, so that it might be sufficient to defend the whole of its inhabitants. This place was in other respects well fortified: for Ithome is not inferior to any of the mountains within the isthmus in magnitude; and besides this, is most difficult of access.
When they were settled in this mountain, they determined to send to Delphos, and consult the oracle concerning the event of the war. Tisis, therefore, the son of Alcis, was employed on this errand; a man who, in nobility of birth, was not inferior to any one, and who was particularly given to divination. This Tisis, on his return from Delphos, was attacked by a band of Lacedæmonians belonging to the guard of Amphea, but defended himself so valiantly that they were not able to take him. It is certain, however, that they did not desist from wounding him, till a voice was heard, from an invisible cause, “Dismiss the bearer of the oracle.” And Tisis, indeed, as soon as he returned to his own people, repeated the oracle to the king, and not long after died of his wounds. But Euphaes, collecting the Messenians together, recited the oracle, which was as follows: “Sacrifice a pure virgin, who is allotted a descent from the blood of the Æpytidæ, to the infernal demons, by cutting her throat in the night: but if the virgin who is led to the altar descends from any other family, let her voluntarily offer herself to be sacrificed.” Such then being the declaration of the god, immediately all the virgins descended from the Æpytidæ awaited the decision of lots: when the lot fell upon the daughter of Lyciscus, the prophet Epebolus told them that it was not proper that she should be sacrificed, because she was not the genuine daughter of Lyciscus: but that the wife of Lyciscus, in consequence of her barrenness, had falsely pretended that this was her daughter.
The Futile Sacrifice of the Daughter of Aristodemus
[ca. 750-725 B.C.]
In the meantime, while the prophet was thus dissuading the people, Lyciscus privately took away the virgin and fled to Sparta. But the Messenians being greatly dejected as soon as they perceived that Lyciscus had fled, Aristodemus, a man descended from the Æpytidæ, and who was most illustrious in warlike concerns and other respects, offered his own daughter as a voluntary sacrifice. Destiny, however, no less absorbs the alacrity of mankind, than the mud of a river the pebbles which it contains. For the following circumstance became a hindrance to Aristodemus, who was then desirous of saving Messene by sacrificing his daughter: A Messenian citizen whose name is not transmitted to us happened to be in love with the daughter of Aristodemus, and was just on the point of making her his wife. This man from the first entered into a dispute with Aristodemus, asserting that the virgin was no longer in the power of her father, as she had been promised to him in marriage, but that all authority over her belonged to him as her intended husband. However, finding that this plea was ineffectual, he made use of a shameful lie in order to accomplish his purpose, and affirmed that he had lain with the girl, and that she was now with child by him. But in the end, Aristodemus was so exasperated by this lie, that he slew his daughter, and having cut open her womb, plainly evinced that she was not with child.
Upon this, Epebolus, who was present, exhorted them to sacrifice the daughter of some other person, because the daughter of Aristodemus, in consequence of having been slain by her father in a rage, could not be the sacrifice to those dæmons which the oracle commanded. In consequence of the prophet thus addressing the people, they immediately rushed forth in order to slay the suitor of the dead virgin, as he had been the means of Aristodemus becoming defiled with the blood of his offspring, and had rendered the hope of their preservation dubious. But this man was a particular friend of Euphaes; and in consequence of this, Euphaes persuaded the Messenians that the oracle was accomplished in the death of the virgin, and that they ought to be satisfied with what Aristodemus had accomplished. All the Æpytidæ, therefore, were of the opinion of Euphaes, because each was anxious to be liberated from the fear of sacrificing his daughter. In consequence of this, the advice of the king was generally received, and the assembly dissolved. And after this they turned their attentions to the sacrifices and festival of the gods.[c]
The war still continued, and in the thirteenth year of it another hard-fought battle took place, in which the brave Euphaes was slain, but the result was again indecisive. Aristodemus, being elected king in his place, prosecuted the war strenuously: the fifth year of his reign is signalised by a third general battle, wherein the Corinthians assist the Spartans, and the Arcadians and Sicyonians are on the side of Messenia; the victory is here decisive on the side of Aristodemus, and the Lacedæmonians are driven back into their own territory. It was now their turn to send envoys and ask advice from the Delphian oracle; and 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 Aristodemus, agonised with the thought that he has slain his own daughter without saving his country, puts an end to his own life. In the twentieth year of the war, the Messenians abandoned Ithome, which the Lacedæmonians razed to the ground: the rest of the country was speedily conquered, and such of the inhabitants as did not flee either to Arcadia or to Eleusis, were reduced to complete submission.
Such is the abridgement of what Pausanias 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 Ithome, are attested by Tyrtæus, and beyond all doubt, as well as the harsh treatment of the conquered. “Like asses worn down by heavy burthens” (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.