The Historians' History of the World 03

The fortified mountain of Ira 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 Aristocrates the Arcadian; it was there that they had concentrated their whole force, as in the former war at Ithome, abandoning the rest of the country. Under the conduct of Aristomenes, assisted by the prophet Theoclus, they maintained this strong position for eleven years. At length, they were compelled to abandon it; but, as in the case of Ithome, the final determining circumstances are represented to have been, not any superiority of bravery or organisation on the part of the Lacedæmonians, but treacherous betrayal and stratagem, seconding the fatal decree of the gods. Unable to maintain Ira longer, Aristomenes, 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, Damagetus, the ancestor of the noble Rhodian family, called the Diagorids, celebrated for its numerous Olympic victories.

Such are the main features of what Pausanias calls the Second Messenian War, or of what ought rather to be called the Aristomeneïs of the poet Rhianus. That after the foundation of Messene, and the recall of the exiles by Epaminondas, favour and credence was found for many tales respecting the prowess of the ancient hero whom they invoked 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, how “Aristomenes pursued the flying Lacedæmonians down to the mid-plain of Stenyclarus, 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.

THE POET TYRTÆUS

[ca. 668-648 B.C.]

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—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.b “At the same time,” Pausanias writes, “the Lacedæmonians received an oracle from Delphos, which commanded them to make use of an Athenian for their counsellor. Hence, when by ambassadors they had informed the Athenians of the oracle, and at the same time required an Athenian as their adviser, the Athenians were by no means willing to comply: for they considered, that the Lacedæmonians could not without great danger to the Athenians take possession of the best part of Peloponnesus; and at the same time, they were unwilling to disobey the commands of the god.

View of Delphi, Seat of the Delphian Oracle

“At last they adopted the following expedient: There was at Athens a certain teacher of grammar, whose name was Tyrtæus, who appeared to possess the smallest degree of intellect, and who was lame in one of his feet. This man they sent to Sparta, who at one time instructed the principal persons in what was necessary for them to do, and at another time instructed the common people by singing elegies to them, in which the praise of valour was contained, and verses called anapæsti.”c

[ca. 660-610 B.C.]