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a monument inscribed with a record of his crime and

of his punishment.

CHAP.
IX.

After this disappointment, fifty of the exiles, with B.C. 668. a kinsman of Aristomenes at their head, secretly crossed the border, fell upon the Spartans, who were still plundering Eira, and died, sword in hand, in the land of their fathers.

second

Thus, in the first year of the twenty-eighth olym- End of the piad (B. c. 668), ended the second Messenian war. As Messenian many of the Messenians as remained in the country war. became helots; but probably few freemen submitted to this lot. Those of Pylus and Methone, seeing no hope of retaining their independence after the fall of Eira, betook themselves to their ships, and sailed to Cyllene, the Elean port. Methone was given by the Spartans to the Nauplians, whom Argos had expelled from their own town: arrived in Elis, the Messenians sent to Aristomenes, and desired him to lead them to a new country. He however could not yet abandon the task he had chosen for his life-to wage ceaseless war with Sparta; but he appointed his two sons, Gorgus and Manticlus, to be the founders of the intended colony. The question was to what land they should steer their course. One of their leaders proposed that they should seize Zacynthus, and from its ports infest the coasts of their conquerors. Manticlus bad them drop the thoughts of revenge and continual war, and sail to the great island of Sardinia, a rich and easy conquest. Neither advice prevailed: one band however, under the two sons of Aristomenes, sought the city of Rhegium, on the straits that separate Italy from Sicily. There they found some of their kinsmen, who had settled there at the end of the former war. At a later period, in the 71st olympiad, one of their countrymen, named Anaxilaus, raised himself to the supreme power in Rhegium: with his aid they made themselves masters of the town of

CHAP.

IX.

Zancle, on the opposite side of the straits, which a band of Samian exiles had already wrested from its B. C. 668. rightful owners. They named it Messene: it is still called Messina; and flourished there till many were induced to leave it for a new Messene in their ancient land.

Messenian exiles; Death of Aristomenes.

Many however of the exiles remained in Greece, waiting for an opportunity of vengeance, which came, though long delayed. Aristomenes himself died in peace, at Rhodes, in the house of his son-in-law, Damagetus, who had been directed by the Delphic oracle to ally himself to the best of the Greeks. The Rhodians honoured him with a noble monument, and with the sacred rites due to a hero: his posterity were long the most illustrious family in the island. This tradition at least seems less fabulous than one which, founded perhaps on a poetical epithet, related that the Spartans had opened his body and found in it a hairy heart.

The yoke appeared now to be fixed on the neck of Messenia for ever; and henceforward Sparta continued to rise toward undisputed pre-eminence in Peloponnesus, and in all Greece. She rewarded her friends, humbled her rivals, and punished her enemies. Soon after the close of the war she stept in to decide a quarrel that had subsisted for more than a century, if not ever since the return of the Heracleids, between Elis and Pisa. The latter state had more than once successfully asserted, not only its independence, but its claim to the right of presiding at the sacred games which were celebrated on its territory; first, as we have seen, with the aid of Pheidon in the eighth olympiad, and again in the 34th, when it was governed by a native prince, named Pantaleon. Pantaleon had also led succours to the Messenians in the second war; and it is probable that, by so doing, he determined his enemies the Eleans to abandon the Messenian cause,

and to ally themselves with Sparta. She requited their services by reducing the whole country that separated the Hollow Elis from Messenia, under subjection to them. Pisa was still ruled by her native kings, but they were now vassals of Elis; and Demophon, son of Pantaleon, was compelled to soothe the jealousy of the sovereign state by the most abject submission. His successor, Pyrrhus, excited some of the Triphylian and other subject towns to revolt; but the struggle ended in the complete subjugation of all the insurgents.

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Conquest

The old contest with Tegea, from which Sparta had war behitherto reaped only shame and loss, was at length Sparta and terminated in her favour. Toward the middle of the Tegea; 6th century before our era, in the reigns of Ariston of Cynuria, and Anaxandridas, an oracle bad the Spartans, if they Othryades. would prevail in the war, bring the bones of Orestes, son of Agamemnon, to Sparta. Another mysterious answer directed them to search for the relics at Tegea. Some gigantic remains were accordingly dug up there and carried away. Tegea had now lost her palladium; the arms of her enemy prospered; and she sank into the rank of a dependent ally of Sparta, distinguished only by the privilege of occupying one of the wings in the armies of her confederate. The rivalry of Argos was not so easily subdued: she still could not brook the loss of Cynuria: the growth of the Spartan power rendered this little tract valuable as a barrier against its inroads. But about the same time that Tegea yielded, Sparta accomplished this conquest by an effort which made the name of Othryades immortal. He was celebrated in the songs of the Spartan youth as the hero who alone, of three hundred Spartans, survived the battle which they fought with as many Argives, to decide the dispute about Cynuria, and, while the two remaining champions of Argos hastened home with the tidings of victory, raised a trophy which he

CHAP.
IX.

B. C. 668.

Growing

power and

reputation

of Sparta.

inscribed with his blood, and then fell on his sword, that he might share the fate of his comrades. The fame of Sparta spread so far, that Croesus, the great king of Lydia, when he was directed by the Delphic oracle to make the most powerful of the Greeks his friends, sent his ambassadors with gifts to court her alliance. And Sparta was not slow to accept the Lydian gold, and willingly entered into a strict league with Croesus: she would perhaps even have assisted him with her arms when he was threatened by Cyrus; but his sudden ruin frustrated her intentions, and the conflict in which she seemed on the eve of engaging with Persia was put off to another season.

CHAPTER X.

NATIONAL INSTITUTIONS AND FORMS OF GOVERNMENT.

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Causes which tended to keep the Greeks asunder. - Origin of
partial Associations among the Greek Tribes. - Amphicty-
onies. Amphictyonic Congress at Calaurea. - Amphic-
tyonic Meetings at Delphi and Thermopyla. - Tribes which
composed the League. -Changes in the composition of the
League. Effect of the Dorian conquests on the state of the
League. Mode of representation in the Amphictyonic
Council. · Functions of the Council. First Sacred War
begins. The Delphic Oracle. - Olympic Festival. -
Presidence of the Olympic Games. - Athletic Contests. —
Nemean and Isthmian Games. Effects of the Olympic
Festival as an instrument of national union.
Its effects
on the diffusion of knowledge and the cultivation of the Arts.
Effects on the national character and habits. The
Games considered as Spectacles. - Difference in the Forms
of Government a cause of disunion among the Greeks.
Causes which led to the abolition of Royalty. - Definitions
of various Forms of Government. Origin of Oligarchy.
Means by which Oligarchies maintained their power.
Timocracy; Polity; symnetes. Causes which led to
the ruin of Oligarchies. Origin of Tyranny. Policy of
the Tyrants. Causes of the short duration of the tyran-
nical dynasties. - Interference of Sparta in their overthrow.
Definition of Democracy. - Different Forms of Demo-
cracy in practice. Corruption of Democracy; Ochlo-
cracy. Forms of Government in Arcadia. - Tegea,
Mantinea, Heraa. Elis.
Argos. - Epi-
daurus and Ægina. Corinth; the Bacchiads. Cypselus
overthrows the Bacchiads.- Character of Periander.
End of his Dynasty. - Sicyon; Dynasty of Andreas..
Myron and Cleisthenes. - Megara; subject to Corinth.
Theagenes Tyrant of Megara. - Violence of civil discord at
Megara. Theognis the aristocratical poet. — Bœotia;
Legislation of Philolaus at Thebes. - Baotian Confederacy.
Locrian Tribes. Phocis; Delphi; Eubœa.
War between Chalcis and Eretria. - Political division of
Thessaly.-Distinction of Classes among the Thessalians.
Office of Tagus. - Factions of Larissa.

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Achaia.

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THE series of migrations and conquests by which the
Thessalians, Boeotians, and Dorians became masters of

CHAP.
X.

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