CHAP. VIII. individuals in the employment of their time, uniform rules for all the stages and transactions of life; - this artificial state of society was a necessary consequence B. c. 884. of its forced posture, and required no extraordinary genius to prescribe the form which it should as sume. CHAP. B. C. 776. CHAPTER IX. Wars of Argos and THE MESSENIAN WARS AND AFFAIRS OF SPARTA DOWN Wars of Sparta with Argos and Arcadia. - State of Messenia. - — Rise of a new distinction among the citizens of Sparta. - Enlargement of the power of the Ephors. Comparison between the Ephors and the Roman Tribunes. Mode of election and authority of the Ephors. Pheidon, King of Argos. — Beginning of the second Messenian War.- Aristomenes and Tyrtaus. Victories of Aristomenes. The Messenians fortify Eira. Wonderful exploits and escape of AristoSurprise of Eira. End of the second Messenian War. Messenian Exiles; Death of Aristomenes. - War between Sparta and Tegea; Conquest of Cynuria; Othryades. Growing power and reputation of Sparta. menes. - TOWARD the first olympiad (B. c. 776), Laconia was Sparta with subdued and tranquil; the Spartans were united by the institutions of Lycurgus, and their. warlike youth ready, and perhaps impatient, for new enterprises. Until the fall of Amycle, and the other conquests of Teleclus, had secured the submission of Laconia, they were probably too much occupied at home to enter into any wars with their neighbours, which might require a long-continued exertion of their strength. We find them indeed very early engaged in contests on the side of Arcadia and Argos: but these were not CHAP. IX. very vigorously prosecuted, or attended with very important results. An expedition of Sous, son of Procles, against Cleitor, in Arcadia, in which he is B. C. 776. said to have delivered his army from jeopardy by a stratagem, stands unexplained as an isolated fact. Jealousy soon sprang up between Sparta and Argos, and disturbed the harmony which the family compact should have secured. In the reign of Echestratus, son of Agis, the Spartans had made themselves masters of Cynuria, where a remnant of the old Ionian population had preserved its independence. Having thus become neighbours, they soon became enemies of the Argives. The quarrel broke out in the reign of Prytanis, son of Eurypon; and his successors, Charilaus and Nicander, made inroads on the Argive territory: the Dryopes of Asiné were induced to aid the Spartans, whose subjects had been excited to revolt by the Argives; but the Asinaans were shortly after punished with the loss of their city, and were forced to take refuge in Laconia.1 The same Charilaus who invaded Argolis, carried his arms into Arcadia-deceived, it is said, by an oracle, which seemed to promise the conquest of Tegea. Herodotus saw there the fetters which the Spartans had brought with them for the Tegeans, and in which, when they were defeated, the prisoners were forced to till the enemy's land. For many generations they continued to war against Tegea, but always with like ill success. Messenia. An easier and more inviting conquest now offered State of itself to them on another side. They had perhaps long observed with inward discontent, how much fairer the land which, by chance or fraud, had fallen to the share of Cresphontes, was than their own. Under circumstances different from those by which the Spartans had been formed, the Messenians had Paus. iii. 2. 3. and 7. 4. CHAP. IX. become a different people. The Achæans of Messenia are said to have submitted without reluctance to B. C. 776. their new sovereigns; and the Heracleid kings appear to have adopted a wise and liberal system of government. Cresphontes either did not share the prejudices of his Dorians, or he rose above them. He fixed his residence indeed in a new capital, which he founded in the plain of Stenyclerus, a central position far from Andania and Pylus, the ancient seats of the Messenian kings, but he divided the country into five districts, and designed that their chief cities should enjoy equal rights with Stenyclerus: the Dorians however shrank from all intermixture with the old inhabitants, and compelled their king to collect them in the capital, and to reduce all the other towns to the rank of dependent villages. But, though thwarted in his first plan, he seems not to have abandoned his generous policy; and the favour he showed to the lower class of his subjects,by which we are probably to understand the old Messenians, is said to have provoked a conspiracy among the rich (the Dorian oligarchy), by which he was cut off with his whole family, except one son. The survivor, Epytus, whose mother, Meropé, was the daughter of Cypselus, king of Arcadia, or of some Arcadian canton, escaped into the dominions of his grandfather. At a riper age, with the assistance of the other Heracleid kings 1, he recovered his hereditary throne, and punished the murderers of his father, whose example he seems to have followed with better success; for the honours and boons with which he is said to have won the nobles and the commonalty of Messenia probably consisted in the abolition of the distinctions that had separated them Isocrates, The Spartans seem to have had a legend, that the sons of Cresphontes ceded the sovereignty of Messenia to them, as the price of their assistance. Archid. p. 120. IX. the Mes from the rebellious Dorians. The successors of CHAP. Æpytus, who reverenced him as the founder of their dynasty, inherited his maxims: at least the principal B. c. 776. acts ascribed to them indicate a desire to conciliate Policy of the affections of the whole people, and to soothe all senian hostile feelings. We find them dedicating temples, kings. and instituting rites, in honour of the old Messenian gods and heroes, apparently for the purpose of effacing national distinctions by a common worship. A like motive may have led one of them to direct the attention of his subjects toward the sea, by works and buildings at the port of Methoné. In a subsequent reign, we hear that the Messenians sent a chorus of men, with a sacrifice, across the sea to Delos: the hymn with which they approached the altar of Apollo was preserved to after-ages, and was regarded as the only genuine work that remained of the Corinthian poet Eumelus. Thus the country prospered; the arts of peace flourished: but the more united the nation, the less did any one class aim at excelling in the use of arms; and hence perhaps, in military skill and discipline, the Messenians were inferior to the people of Lycurgus. rel between Messenia. When two neighbouring states are disposed to war, First quarthey are never long at a loss for provocations or reasons Sparta and to justify it. Sparta did not draw the sword till she had injuries and insults to allege, which cried aloud for vengeance. The Messenians, on the other hand, held Sparta to have been the aggressor in the quarrel, and believed that she was impelled by no motive but her restless ambition. At a place called Limnæ (the pools), on the western skirts of Taygetus, was a temple of Artemis Limnatis, which, standing on the confines of the two nations, was a common sanctuary for both, and open to no other people, even of the Dorian race. In the reign of Teleclus, the seventh from Agis, the Spartans sent a company of virgins to celebrate a fes |