whatever may have been their extent, fell back to Sparta. Her territory had thus reached its utmost limits: but power founded on wrong, and used without mercy, is never secure. A new generation sprang up in Messenia, which, while it groaned under a degrading yoke, remembered nothing of the evils of the war which their fathers had waged, but heard of their heroic deeds. The Messenians who had been exempted, by the policy or the generosity of Sparta, from the servile condition to which their countrymen were reduced, felt the exception to be ignominious, as the price of slavish submission. Many born in exile were eager to recover their patrimonies. When all hearts were full, all spirits roused to expect the signal for revolt, the destined champion appeared: -a second Aristodemus arose in Aristomenes.

His birth was noble, like that of the elder hero; for he also sprang from the race of Æpytus: it was even thought to have been half divine, like that of Hercules and Theseus. In strength and courage he surpassed Aristodemus, and no fearful remembrance weighed upon his soul. From Andania, his birth-place, he cheered the hopes of the exiles, fanned the indignation of the oppressed people, and drew promises of aid from foreign cities. Argos and Arcadia were more than ever hostile to Sparta, and Elis too was ready to assist in the deliverance of Messenia. In the thirtyninth year after the capture of Ithomé, the fourth of the twenty-third Olympiad, (B. c. 685) the second Messenian war began.

1

The first battle was fought before any succours had come from abroad: the victory was not clear on either side; yet the valour of Aristomenes struck fear into his enemies, and inspired his countrymen with confidence. They offered him the crown, but he declined the regal title, and contented himself with the labours and dangers of the supreme command. To prove himself worthy of it, and to open the war with a happy omen, he crossed the mountains, came But see Clinton Fast. i. p. 256. Ꭺ Ꭺ Ꮞ

down at night on the plain of Sparta, and fixed a shield which he had taken in the battle against the temple of Athene, surnamed Chalciocus (of the brazen house); an inscription declared that Aristomenes had dedicated it from Spartan spoils.

The

The Spartans saw that they had no common enemy to contend with, and they sent to Delphi for advice. The god bade them seek an Athenian counsellor. No dealings, friendly or hostile, had passed between Attica and Laconia from the ancient times, when the twin sons of Jupiter were said to have carried back their sister Helen, after storming the Attic town of Aphidnæ. From the same place an ally and a counsellor now came to the aid of Sparta; for, according to the most credible accounts, this was the birth-place of Tyrtæus. legendary character of Tyrtæus is almost as marvellous as that of Aristomenes. It is however perfectly certain, both that the hero fought, and that the poet sang: for a few fragments of his poetry remain, full of the spirit with which he warmed his hearers. But the popular tradition in later ages was, that the Athenians, divided between their reverence for the Delphic god and their reluctance to further the cause of Sparta, thought they could not better effect their purpose than by selecting a lame man, who taught letters in the village of Aphidnæ, for the counsellor whom they were requested to send. The truth has evidently been distorted; though it is impossible to restore its genuine features with certainty. The only fact in the story which there is no reason to doubt, is that Tyrtæus came from Aphidnæ to Sparta. But the oracle may have grown, as usual, out of the event: and Tyrtæus was probably neither lame nor a schoolmaster. He taught indeed, but verses, like Pindar or Simonides: and perhaps the unequal lines of the couplets to which he married his fiery thoughts, may have suggested the thought of a personal defect: or it may have been simply the form in which tradition expressed the fact, that he served the Spartans with his mind more than with

his body. The motive that led him to devote his muse to their cause is still more doubtful: we can only suspect, that it was connected with the above-mentioned mythical legend, concerning the invasion of the Laconian twins. We know that in the later times of Greece, political relations were sometimes contracted on grounds not more solid: Aphidnus, the hero who was thought to have given his name to the birth-place of Tyrtæus, had, it was said, adopted the brothers of Helen as his sons: Aphidnæ may have regarded their country with feelings of kindred, and may have sent Tyrtæus, whether as warrior or as bard, to raise his arm or his voice in behalf of the Spartans.

They were also joined by auxiliaries from Corinth, and from Lepreum, which gladly assisted the enemies of Elis. The Messenians, on the other hand, were reinforced by their exiled countrymen, who brought with them the ministers of the Eleusinian rites, and by their allies from Sicyon and Argos, Arcadia and Elis: for the issue of the contest was to determine which state should have the mastery in Peloponnesus. A great battle was fought in the plain of Steny clerus, at a place called, from an ancient legend, the Boar's Pillar. The Messenian priests and Tyrtæus kept aloof from the fight, and only animated the combatants by their voice. But Aristomenes, at the head of a little band of the bravest Messenian youths, successively broke each division of the Spartan forces, till all were scattered in disorderly flight. He pursued the routed foe with impetuous ardour, and forgot the warning of the soothsayer, Theoclus, who had enjoined him not to pass a tree which he pointed out to him in the plain, where the Twins, as he said, were sitting; doubtless to protect the retreat of their contrymen. The hero passed the limit, and dropped his shield: it was carried away by an invisible hand, and while he searched for it the fugitives escaped. But Messenia was freed for a time from the presence of her enemy; and when Aristomenes returned to Andania, the women, as they strewed

fillets and flowers on his head, sang, in strains that were remembered and repeated for a thousand years, how he had chased the Lacedæmonians over the Steny clerian plain, and up to the top of the mountains. The lost shield too adorned with the device of a spread eagle, he recovered shortly after, when, by the direction of Apollo, he descended into the cavern of Trophonius at Lebadea. On his return from this journey, he took a threatening, instead of a defensive posture; and hanging like a dark cloud over the trembling Spartans, fell with the suddenness of lightning on their towns and villages. With his chosen companions he surprised and plundered Phare, put to flight the Spartan king Anaxander when he came to its relief, and was only stopped in the pursuit by an accidental wound. When this was healed, he meditated an attack on Sparta itself: but Helen and the tutelary Twins interposed, and in a dream admonished him to drop his design. He however laid

a successful ambush for the Spartan virgins, who were celebrating the worship of Diana with festive dances at Caryæ, a town among the hills near the sources of the Eurotas, and carried them over the border. Generous as brave, he protected them from the violence of his young followers, and restored them, though not without a heavy ransom, to their kinsmen. At Ægila he made a similar attempt with different fortune; for the first time he fell into the hands of an enemy; he was surrounded by the women, who were celebrating the rites of Demeter, stunned by their blazing torches, and fettered: but in the night he snapt the cords that bound him, or they were loosened by the compassion of the priestess, and he returned safe to Messenia.

In the third year of the war Sparta again prepared for battle: but now distrustful of her own strength, she stooped to seek victory from unworthy arts. The Messenians were joined on this occasion by no allies but the Arcadians, who were commanded by Aristocrates, son of Hicatas; king, some say, of Arcadia, but more probably of Orchomenus. He was seduced

by Spartan bribes, drew off his men in the heat of the battle, and, after throwing the Messenian ranks into disorder by his retreat, left them exposed on all sides to superior numbers. Even the valour of Aristomenes and his little band could not save the day. After a great slaughter, in which many of the noblest Messenians perished, he collected the fugitives, a feeble and disheartened remnant, in Andania. All looked to him for counsel he advised them to do as their ancestors had done; to collect all the remaining strength of Messenia in a mountain citadel, where they could defy the attacks of a Spartan army; not however in Ithome (which was perhaps in the enemy's power), but in mount Eira, at the foot of which the Neda separates Messenia from Triphylia. Here therefore they fortified themselves; while the Spartans, masters of the whole country, except Pylus and Methone, and the adjacent coast, lay at the foot of Eira, hoping soon to reduce it by force or famine.

While they were reckoning on a speedy surrender, Aristomenes was planning new attacks. He increased his band to the number of three hundred, forced or turned the Spartan lines, and swept the vales of Messenia and Laconia without distinction, for, except a few little nooks, both alike were Sparta's, and returned, laden with spoil, to Eira. The Spartans, thus compelled to feed the enemy whom they wished to starve, resolved to turn Messenia and the Laconian border into a desert, and forbad their citizens to till their lands in all this region, until the war should be ended. But this ordinance, when enforced, produced a general scarcity, and the owners of the land murmured at their loss. Civil broils would have ensued, but Tyrtæus, who, after the disaster of the Boar's Pillar, had roused the sinking courage of the Spartans by his stirring strains, now touched a different chord, and allayed their angry passions, by celebrating the blessings of concord and obedience to the laws.

Emboldened by his success, Aristomenes aimed at a