FIRST AND SECOND MESSENIAN WARS.
That there were two long contests between the Lacedæmonians and
Messenians, and that in both the former were completely victorious,
is a fact sufficiently attested. And if we could trust the statements
in Pausanias,—our chief and almost only authority on the subject,—we
should be in a situation to recount the history of both these wars
in considerable detail. But unfortunately, the incidents narrated
in that writer have been gathered from sources which are, even by
his own admission, undeserving of credit,—from Rhianus, the poet of
Bênê in Krete, who had composed an epic poem on Aristomenês and the
second Messenian war, about B. C. 220,—and from Myrôn of Priênê, a
prose author whose date is not exactly known, but belonging to the
Alexandrine age, and not earlier than the third century before the
Christian era. From Rhianus, we have no right to expect trustworthy
information, while the accuracy of Myrôn is much depreciated by
Pausanias himself,—on some points even too much, as will presently be
shown. But apart from the mental habits either of the prose writer
or the poet, it does not seem that any good means of knowledge were
open to either of them, except the poems of Tyrtæus, which we are
by no means sure that they ever consulted. The account of the two
wars, extracted from these two authors by Pausanias, is a string of
_tableaux_, several of them, indeed, highly poetical, but destitute
of historical coherence or sufficiency: and O. Müller has justly
observed, that “absolutely no reason is given in them for the
subjection of Messenia.”[726] They are accounts unworthy of being
transcribed in detail into the pages of genuine history, nor can we
pretend to do anything more than verify a few leading facts of the
war.
[726] History of the Dorians, i. 7, 10 (note). It seems
that Diodorus had given a history of the Messenian wars in
considerable detail, if we may judge from a fragment of the
last seventh book, containing the debate between Kleonnis and
Aristomenês. Very probably it was taken from Ephorus,—though this
we do not know.
For the statements of Pausanias respecting Myrôn and Rhianus,
see iv. 6. Besides Myrôn and Rhianus, however, he seems to
have received oral statements from contemporary Messenians and
Lacedæmonians; at least on some occasions he states and contrasts
the two contradictory stories (iv. 4, 4; iv. 5, 1).
The poet Tyrtæus was himself engaged on the side of the Spartans
in the second war, and it is from him that we learn the few
indisputable facts respecting both the first and the second. If
the Messenians had never been reëstablished in Peloponnesus, we
should probably never have heard any farther details respecting
these early contests. That reëstablishment, together with the first
foundation of the city called Messênê on Mount Ithomê, was among the
capital wounds inflicted on Sparta by Epameinondas, in the year B.
C. 369,—between three hundred and two hundred and fifty years after
the conclusion of the second Messenian war. The descendants of the
old Messenians, who had remained for so long a period without any
fixed position in Greece, were incorporated in the new city, together
with various Helots and miscellaneous settlers who had no claim to
a similar genealogy. The gods and heroes of the Messenian race were
reverentially invoked at this great ceremony, especially the great
hero Aristomenês;[727] and the site of Mount Ithomê, the ardor of the
newly established citizens, the hatred and apprehension of Sparta,
operating as a powerful stimulus to the creation and multiplication
of what are called _traditions_, sufficed to expand the few facts
known respecting the struggles of the old Messenians into a variety
of details. In almost all these stories we discover a coloring
unfavorable to Sparta, contrasting forcibly with the account given
by Isokratês, in his Discourse called Archidamus, wherein we read
the view which a Spartan might take of the ancient conquests of his
forefathers. But a clear proof that these Messenian stories had no
real basis of tradition, is shown in the contradictory statements
respecting the principal Hero Aristomenês; for some place him in the
first, others in the second, of the two wars. Diodôrus and Myrôn both
placed him in the first; Rhianus, in the second. Though Pausanias
gives it as his opinion that the account of the latter is preferable,
and that Aristomenês really belongs to the second Messenian war, it
appears to me that the one statement is as much worthy of belief as
the other, and that there is no sufficient evidence for deciding
between them,—a conclusion which is substantially the same with
that of Wesseling, who thinks that there were two persons named
Aristomenês, one in the first and one in the second war.[728] This
inextricable confusion respecting the greatest name in Messenian
antiquity, shows how little any genuine stream of tradition can here
be recognized.
[727] Pausan. iv. 27, 2-3: Diodor. xv. 77.
[728] See Diodor. Fragm. lib. viii. vol. iv. p. 30: in his brief
summary of Messenian events (xv. 66), he represents it as a
matter on which authors differed, whether Aristomenes belonged to
the first or second war. Clemens Alexand. (Prot. p. 36) places
him in the _first_, the same as Myrôn, by mentioning him as
having killed Theopompus.
Wesseling observes (ad Diod. _l. c._), “Duo fuerunt Aristomenes,
uterque in Messeniorum contra Spartanos bello illustrissimus,
alter posteriore, priore alter bello.”
Unless this duplication of homonymous persons can be shown to
be probable, by some collateral evidence, I consider it only as
tantamount to a confession, that the difficulty is insoluble.
Pausanias is reserved in his manner of giving judgment,—ὁ μέντοι
Ἀριστομένης ~δόξῃ γε ἐμῇ~ γέγονεν ἐπὶ τοῦ πολέμου τοῦ ὑστέρου
(iv. 6). Müller (Dorians, i. 7, 9) goes much too far when he
affirms that the statement of Myrôn was “in the teeth of all
tradition.” Müller states incorrectly the citation from Plutarch,
Agis, c. 21 (see his Note _h_). Plutarch there says nothing
about _Tyrtæus_: he says that the Messenians affirmed that their
hero Aristomenês had _killed_ the Spartan king Theopompus,
whereas the Lacedæmonians said, that he had only _wounded_ the
king. According to _both_ accounts, then, it would appear that
Aristomenês belonged to the _first_ Messenian war, _not to the
second_.
Pausanias states the first Messenian war as beginning in B. C. 743
and lasting till B. C. 724,—the second, as beginning in B. C. 685
and lasting till B. C. 668. Neither of these dates rest upon any
assignable positive authority; but the time assigned to the first
war seems probable, while that of the second is apparently too
early. Tyrtæus authenticates both the duration of the first war,
twenty years, and the eminent services rendered in it by the Spartan
king Theopompus.[729] He says, moreover, speaking during the second
war, “the fathers of our fathers conquered Messênê;” thus loosely
indicating the relative dates of the two.
[729] Tyrtæus, Fragm. 6, Gaisford. But Tyrtæus ought not to be
understood to affirm distinctly (as Pausanias, Mr. Clinton, and
Müller, all think) that Theopompus survived and put a close to
the war: his language might consist with the supposition that
Theopompus had been slain in the war,—Ὃν δία (Theopompus),
Μεσσήνην εἴλομεν εὐρύχορον.
For we surely might be authorized in saying—“It was through
Epameinondas that the Spartans were conquered and humbled; or it
was through Lord Nelson that the French fleet was destroyed in
the last war,” though both of them perished in the accomplishment.
Tyrtæus, therefore, does not contradict the assertion, that
Theopompus was slain by Aristomenês, nor can he be cited as a
witness to prove that Aristomenês did not live during the _first_
Messenian war; which is the purpose for which Pausanias quotes
him (iv. 6).
The Spartans (as we learn from Isokratês, whose words date from a
time when the city of Messênê was only a recent foundation) professed
to have seized the territory, partly in revenge for the impiety of
the Messenians in killing their own king, the Herakleid Kresphontês,
whose relative had appealed to Sparta for aid,—partly by sentence
of the Delphian oracle. Such were the causes which had induced
them first to invade the country, and they had conquered it after
a struggle of twenty years.[730] The Lacedæmonian explanations, as
given in Pausanias, seem for the most part to be counter-statements
arranged after the time when the Messenian version, evidently the
interesting and popular account, had become circulated.
[730] Isokratês (Archidamus), Or. vi. pp. 121-122.
It has already been stated that the Lacedæmonians and Messenians
had a joint border temple and sacrifice in honor of Artemis
Limnatis, dating from the earliest times of their establishment in
Peloponnesus. The site of this temple, near the upper course of the
river Nedon, in the mountainous territory north-east of Kalamata,
but west of the highest ridge of Taygetus, has recently been exactly
verified,—and it seems in these early days to have belonged to
Sparta. That the quarrel began at one of these border sacrifices
was the statement of both parties, Lacedæmonians and Messenians.
According to the latter, the Lacedæmonian king Têleklus laid a
snare for the Messenians, by dressing up some youthful Spartans as
virgins, and giving them daggers; whereupon a contest ensued, in
which the Spartans were worsted and Têleklus slain. That Têleklus
was slain at the temple by the Messenians, was also the account of
the Spartans,—but they affirmed that he was slain in attempting to
defend some young Lacedæmonian maidens, who were sacrificing at the
temple, against outrageous violence from the Messenian youth.[731]
In spite of the death of this king, however, the war did not
actually break out until some little time after, when Alkamenês
and Theopompus were kings at Sparta, and Antiochus and Androklês,
sons of Phintas, kings of Messenia. The immediate cause of it was a
private altercation between the Messenian Polycharês (victor at the
fourth Olympiad, B. C. 764) and the Spartan Euæphnus. Polycharês,
having been grossly injured by Euæphnus, and his claim for redress
having been rejected at Sparta, took revenge by aggressions upon
other Lacedæmonians; the Messenians refused to give him up, though
one of the two kings, Androklês, strongly insisted upon doing so, and
maintained his opinion so earnestly against the opposite sense of
the majority and of his brother Antiochus, that a tumult arose, and
he was slain. The Lacedæmonians, now resolving upon war, struck the
first blow without any formal declaration, by surprising the border
town of Ampheia, and putting its defenders to the sword. They farther
overran the Messenian territory, and attacked some other towns, but
without success. Euphaês, who had now succeeded his father Antiochus
as king of Messenia, summoned the forces of the country and carried
on the war against them with energy and boldness. For the first
four years of the war, the Lacedæmonians made no progress, and even
incurred the ridicule of the old men of their nation as faint-hearted
warriors: in the fifth year, however, they undertook a more vigorous
invasion, under their two kings, Theopompus and Polydôrus, who were
met by Euphaês with the full force of the Messenians. A desperate
battle ensued, in which it does not seem that either side gained
much advantage: nevertheless, the Messenians found themselves so
much enfeebled by it, that they were forced to take refuge on the
fortified mountain of Ithômê, abandoning the rest of the country.
In their distress, they sent to solicit counsel and protection from
Delphi, but their messenger brought back the appalling answer that
a virgin, of the royal race of Æpytus, must be sacrificed for their
salvation: in the tragic scene which ensues, Aristodêmus puts to
death his own daughter, yet without satisfying the exigencies of the
oracle. The war still continued, and in the thirteenth year of it
another hard-fought battle took place, in which the brave Euphaês
was slain, but the result was again indecisive. Aristodêmus, being
elected king in his place, prosecuted the war strenuously: the
fifth year of his reign is signalized by a third general battle,
wherein the Corinthians assist the Spartans, and the Arcadians and
Sikyonians are on the side of Messenia; the victory is here decisive
on the side of Aristodêmus, and the Lacedæmonians are driven, back
into their own territory.[732] It was now their turn to send envoys
and ask advice from the Delphian oracle; while 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 Aristodêmus,
agonized with the thought that he has slain his own daughter without
saving his country, puts an end to his own life.[733] In the
twentieth year of the war, the Messenians abandoned Ithômê, which
the Lacedæmonians razed to the ground: the rest of the country being
speedily conquered, such of the inhabitants as did not flee either to
Arcadia or to Eleusis, were reduced to complete submission.
[731] Strabo (vi. p. 257) gives a similar account of the
sacrilege and murderous conduct of the Messenian youth at the
temple of Artemis Limnatis. His version, substantially agreeing
with that of the Lacedæmonians, seems to be borrowed from
Antiochus, the contemporary of Thucydidês, and is therefore
earlier than the foundation of Messênê by Epameinondas, from
which event the philo-Messenian statements take their rise.
Antiochus, writing during the plenitude of Lacedæmonian power,
would naturally look upon the Messenians as irretrievably
prostrate, and the impiety here narrated would in his mind be the
natural cause why the divine judgments overtook them. Ephorus
gives a similar account (ap. Strabo. vi. p. 280).
Compare Herakleidês Ponticus (ad calcem Cragii De Rep. Laced. p.
528) and Justin, iii. 4.
The possession of this temple of Artemis Limnatis,—and of the
Ager Dentheliates, the district in which it was situated,—was
a subject of constant dispute between the Lacedæmonians and
Messenians after the foundation of the city of Messênê, even down
to the time of the Roman emperor Tiberius (Tacit. Annal. iv. 43).
See Stephan. Byz. v. Δελθάνιοι; Pausan. iii. 2, 6; iv. 4, 2; iv.
31, 3. Strabo, viii. p. 362.
From the situation of the temple of Artemis Limnatis, and the
description of the Ager Dentheliates, see Professor Ross, Reisen
im Peloponnes, i. pp. 5-11. He discovered two boundary-stones
with inscriptions, dating from the time of the early Roman
emperors, marking the confines of Lacedæmon and Messênê; both
on the line of the highest ridge of Taygetus, where the waters
separate east and west, and considerably to the eastward of
the temple of Artemis Limnatis, so that at that time the Ager
Dentheliates was considered a part of Messenia.
I now find that Colonel Leake (Peloponnesiaca, p. 181) regards
these Inscriptions, discovered by Professor Ross, as not proving
that the temple of Artemis Limnatis was situated near the spot
where they were found. His authority weighs much with me on such
a point, though the arguments which he here employs do not seem
to me conclusive.
[732] It is, perhaps, to this occasion that the story of
the Epeunakti, in Theopompus, referred (ap. Athenæ. vi. p.
271),—Helots adopted into the sleeping-place of their masters,
who had been slain in the war, and who were subsequently
enfranchised.
The story of the Partheniæ, obscure and unintelligible as it is,
belongs to the foundation of the colony of Taras, or Tarentum
(Strabo, vi. p. 279).
[733] See Plutarch, De Superstitione, p. 168.
Such is the abridgment of what Pausanias[734] 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 Ithômê, is attested by Tyrtæus beyond all doubt, as
well as the harsh treatment of the conquered. “Like asses, worn down
by heavy burdens,”[735] 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.
[734] See Pausan. iv. 6-14.
An elaborate discussion is to be seen in Manso’s Sparta, on the
authorities whom Pausanias has followed in his History of the
Messenian Wars, 18te Beilage, tom. ii. p. 264.
“It would evidently be folly (he observes, p. 270), to suppose
that in the history of the Messenian wars, as Pausanias lays them
before us, we possess the _true_ history of these events.”
[735] Tyrtæus, Fragm. 5, 6 (Schneidewin).
C. F. Hermann conceives the treatment of the Messenians after
the first war, as mild, in comparison with what it became after
the second (Lehrbuch der Griech. Staatsalterthümer, sect.
31), a supposition which the emphatic words of Tyrtæus render
inadmissible.
Had we possessed the account of the first Messenian war as given
by Myrôn and Diodorus, it would evidently have been very different
from the above, because they included Aristomenês in it, and to him
the leading parts would be assigned. As the narrative now stands in
Pausanias, we are not introduced to that great Messenian hero,—the
Achilles of the epic of Rhianus,[736]—until the second war, in which
his gigantic proportions stand prominently forward. He is the great
champion of his country in the three battles which are represented as
taking place during this war: the first, with indecisive result, at
Deræ; the second, a signal victory on the part of the Messenians, at
the Boar’s Grave; the third, an equally signal defeat, in consequence
of the traitorous flight of Aristokratês, king of the Arcadian
Orchomenus, who, ostensibly embracing the alliance of the Messenians,
had received bribes from Sparta. Thrice did Aristomenês sacrifice
to Zeus Ithomatês the sacrifice called Hekatomphonia,[737] reserved
for those who had slain with their own hands a hundred enemies in
battle. At the head of a chosen band, he carried his incursions more
than once into the heart of the Lacedæmonian territory, surprised
Amyklæ and Pharis, and even penetrated by night into the unfortified
precinct of Sparta itself, where he suspended his shield, as a token
of defiance, in the temple of Athênê Chalkiœkus. Thrice was he taken
prisoner, but on two occasions marvellously escaped before he could
be conveyed to Sparta: the third occasion was more fatal, and he was
cast by order of the Spartans into the Keadas, a deep, rocky cavity
in Mount Taygetus, into which it was their habit to precipitate
criminals. But even in this emergency the divine aid[738] was
not withheld from him. While the fifty Messenians who shared his
punishment, were all killed by the shock, he alone was both supported
by the gods so as to reach the bottom unhurt, and enabled to find an
unexpected means of escape. For when, abandoning all hope, he had
wrapped himself up in his cloak to die, he perceived a fox creeping
about among the dead bodies: waiting until the animal approached him,
he grasped its tail, defending himself from its bites as well as
he could by means of his cloak; and being thus enabled to find the
aperture by which the fox had entered, enlarged it sufficiently for
crawling out himself. To the surprise both of friends and enemies,
he again appeared, alive and vigorous, at Eira. That fortified
mountain 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 Aristokratês, the Arcadian; it was there that
they had concentrated their whole force, as in the former war at
Ithômê, abandoning the rest of the country. Under the conduct of
Aristomenês, assisted by the prophet Theoklus, they maintained this
strong position for eleven years. At length, they were compelled to
abandon it; but, as in the case of Ithômê, the final determining
circumstances are represented to have been, not any superiority
of bravery or organization on the part of the Lacedæmonians, but
treacherous betrayal and stratagem, seconding the fatal decree of the
gods. Unable to maintain Eira longer, Aristomenês, 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, Damagêtus,
the ancestor of the noble Rhodian family, called the Diagorids,
celebrated for its numerous Olympic victories.
[736] This is the express comparison introduced by Pausanias, iv.
5, 2.
[737] Plutarch, Sept. Sapient. Convivium, p. 159.
[738] Pausan. iv. 18, 4. Ἀριστομένην δὲ ἔς τε τὰ ἄλλα θεῶν τις,
καὶ δὴ καὶ τότε ἐφύλασσεν.
Plutarch (De Herodot. Malignitat. p. 856) states that Herodotus
had mentioned Aristomenês as having been made prisoner by the
Lacedæmonians, but Plutarch must here have been deceived by his
memory, for Herodotus does not mention Aristomenês.
Such are the main features of what Pausanias calls[739] the second
Messenian war, or of what ought rather to be called the Aristomeneïs
of the poet Rhianus. That after the foundation of Messênê, and the
recall of the exiles by Epameinondas. favor and credence was found
for many tales respecting the prowess of the ancient hero whom they
invoked[740] 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,[741] how “Aristomenês pursued the flying
Lacedæmonians down to the mid-plain of Stenyklêrus, 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.[742]
[739] The narrative in Pausanias, iv. 15-24.
According to an incidental notice in Herodotus, the Samians
affirmed that they had aided Lacedæmon in war against Messênê,—at
what period we do not know (Herodot. iii. 56).
[740] Τοὺς δὲ Μεσσηνίους οἶδα αὐτὸς ἐπὶ ταῖς σπονδαῖς Ἀριστομένην
Νικομηδους καλοῦντας (Pausan. ii. 14, 5). The practice still
continued in his time.
Compare, also, Pausan. iv. 27, 3; iv. 32, 3-4.
[741] Pausanias heard the song himself (iv. 16, 4)—Ἐπέλεγον ᾆσμα
τὸ καὶ ἐς ἡμᾶς ἔτι ᾀδόμενον:—
Ἔς τε μέσον πεδίον Στενυκλήριον ἔς τ᾽ ὄρος ἄκρον
Εἵπετ᾽ Ἀριστομένης τοῖς Λακεδαιμονίοις.
According to one story, the Lacedæmonians were said to have got
possession of the person of Aristomenês, and killed him: they
found in him a hairy heart (Steph. Byz. v. Ἀνδανία).
[742] Pausan. iv. 15, 1.
Perhaps Leotychides was king during the last revolt of the
Helots, or Messenians, in 464 B. C., which is called the
third Messenian war. He seems to have been then in exile, in
consequence of his venality during the Thessalian expedition,—but
not yet dead (Herodot. vi. 72). Of the reality of what Mr.
Clinton calls the _third_ Messenian war, in 490 B. C., I see no
adequate proof (see Fast. Hell. vol. i. p. 257).
The poem of Rhianus was entitled Μεσσηνιακά. He also composed
Θεσσαλικὰ, Ἠλιακὰ, Ἀχαϊκά. See the Fragments,—they are very
few,—in Düntzer’s Collection, pp. 67-77.
He seems to have mentioned Nikoteleia, the mother of Aristomenês
(Fr. ii. p. 73): compare Pausan. iv. 14, 5.
I may remark, that Pausanias, throughout his account of the
second Messenian war, names king Anaxander as leading the
Lacedæmonian troops; but he has no authority for so doing, as we
see by iv. 15, 1. It is a pure calculation of his own, from the
πατέρων πατέρες of Tyrtæus.
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,—I mean, 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. The Athenians complied by sending Tyrtæus, whom Pausanias and
Justin represent as a lame man and a schoolmaster, despatched with
a view of nominally obeying the oracle, and yet rendering no real
assistance.[743] This seems to be a coloring put upon the story by
later writers, but the intervention of the Athenians in the matter,
in any way, deserves little credit.[744] It seems more probable that
the legendary connection of the Dioskuri with Aphidnæ, celebrated
at or near that time by the poet Alkman, brought about, through
the Delphian oracle, the presence of the Aphidnæan poet at Sparta.
Respecting the lameness of Tyrtæus, we can say nothing: but that he
was a schoolmaster (if we are constrained to employ an unsuitable
term) is highly probable,—for in that day, minstrels, who composed
and sung poems, were the only persons from whom the youth received
any mental training. Moreover, his sway over the youthful mind is
particularly noted in the compliment paid to him, in after-days,
by king Leonidas: “Tyrtæus was an adept in tickling the souls of
youth.”[745] We see enough to satisfy us that he was by birth a
stranger, though he became a Spartan by the subsequent recompense of
citizenship conferred upon him,—that he was sent through the Delphian
oracle,—that he was an impressive and efficacious minstrel, and that
he had, moreover, sagacity enough to employ his talents for present
purposes and diverse needs; being able, not merely to reanimate the
languishing courage of the baffled warrior, but also to soothe the
discontents of the mutinous. That his strains, which long maintained
undiminished popularity among the Spartans,[746] contributed much
to determine the ultimate issue of this war, there is no reason to
doubt; nor is his name the only one to attest the susceptibility of
the Spartan mind in that day towards music and poetry. The first
establishment of the Karneian festival, with its musical competition,
at Sparta, falls during the period assigned by Pausanias to the
second Messenian war: the Lesbian harper, Terpander, who gained the
first recorded prize at this solemnity, is affirmed to have been sent
for by the Spartans pursuant to a mandate from the Delphian oracle,
and to have been the means of appeasing a sedition. In like manner,
the Kretan Thalêtas was invited thither during a pestilence, which
his art, as it is pretended, contributed to heal (about 620 B. C.);
and Alkman, Xenokritus, Polymnastus, and Sakadas, all foreigners by
birth, found favorable reception, and acquired popularity, by their
music and poetry. With the exception of Sakadas, who is a little
later, all these names fall in the same century as Tyrtæus, between
660 B. C.-610 B. C. The fashion which the Spartan music continued
for a long time to maintain, is ascribed chiefly to the genius of
Terpander.[747]
[743] Pausan. iv. 15, 3; Justin. iii, 5, 4. Compare Plato, Legg.
ii. p. 630, Diodor. xv. 66; Lycurg. cont. Leokrat. p. 162.
Philochorus and Kallisthenês also represented him as a native of
Aphidnæ in Attica, which Strabo controverts upon slender grounds
(viii. p. 362); Philochor. Fr. 56 (Didot).
[744] Plutarch, Theseus, c. 33; Pausan. i. 41, 5; Welcker,
Alkman. Fragm. p. 20.
[745] Plutarch, Kleomen. c. 2. Ἀγαθὸς νέων ψυχὰς αἰκάλλειν.
[746] Philochorus, Frag. 56, ed. Didot; Lycurgus cont. Leokrat.
p. 163.
[747] See Plutarch, De Musicâ, pp. 1134, 1142, 1146.
The training in which a Spartan passed his life consisted of
exercises warlike, social, and religious, blended together. While
the individual, strengthened by gymnastics, went through his
painful lessons of fatigue, endurance, and aggression,—the citizens
collectively were kept in the constant habit of simultaneous and
regulated movement in the warlike march, in the religious dance, and
in the social procession. Music and song, being constantly employed
to direct the measure and keep alive the spirit[748] of these
multitudinous movements, became associated with the most powerful
feelings which the habitual self-suppression of a Spartan permitted
to arise, and especially with those sympathies which are communicated
at once to an assembled crowd; indeed, the musician and the minstrel
were the only persons who ever addressed themselves to the feelings
of a Lacedæmonian assembly. Moreover, the simple music of that early
day, though destitute of artistical merit, and superseded afterwards
by more complicated combinations, had, nevertheless, a pronounced
ethical character; it wrought much more powerfully on the impulses
and resolutions of the hearers, though it tickled the ear less
gratefully, than the scientific compositions of after-days. Farther,
each particular style of music had its own appropriate mental
effect,—the Phrygian mode imparted a wild and maddening stimulus; the
Dorian mode created a settled and deliberate resolution, exempt alike
from the desponding and from the impetuous sentiments.[749] What is
called the Dorian mode, seems to be in reality the old native Greek
mode, as contradistinguished from the Phrygian and Lydian,—these
being the three primitive modes, subdivided and combined only
in later times, with which the first Grecian musicians became
conversant. It probably acquired its title of Dorian from the musical
celebrity of Sparta and Argos, during the seventh and sixth centuries
before the Christian era; but it belonged as much to the Arcadians
and Achæans as to the Spartans and Argeians. And the marked ethical
effects, produced both by the Dorian and the Phrygian modes in
ancient times, are facts perfectly well-attested, however difficult
they may be to explain upon any general theory of music.
[748] Thucyd. v. 69; Xenoph. Rep. Laced. c. 13.
[749] See the treatise of Plutarch, De Musicâ, passim, especially
c. 17, p. 1136, etc.; 33, p. 1143. Plato, Republ. iii. p. 399;
Aristot. Polit. viii. 6, 5-8.
The excellent treatise De Metris Pindari, prefixed by M. Boeckh
to his edition of Pindar, is full of instruction upon this as
well as upon all other points connected with the Grecian music
(see lib. iii. c. 8, p. 238).
That the impression produced by Tyrtæus at Sparta, therefore, with
his martial music, and emphatic exhortations to bravery in the
field, as well as union at home, should have been very considerable,
is perfectly consistent with the character both of the age and
of the people; especially, as he is represented to have appeared
pursuant to the injunction of the Delphian oracle. From the scanty
fragments remaining to us of his elegies and anapæsts, however, we
can satisfy ourselves only of two facts: first, that the war was
long, obstinately contested, and dangerous to Sparta as well as
to the Messenians; next, that other parties in Peloponnesus took
part on both sides, especially on the side of the Messenians. So
frequent and harassing were the aggressions of the latter upon the
Spartan territory, that a large portion of the border land was left
uncultivated: scarcity ensued, and the proprietors of the deserted
farms, driven to despair, pressed for a redivision of the landed
property in the state. It was in appeasing these discontents that the
poem of Tyrtæus, called Eunomia, “Legal order,” was found signally
beneficial.[750] It seems certain that a considerable portion of
the Arcadians, together with the Pisatæ and the Triphylians, took
part with the Messenians; there are also some statements numbering
the Eleians among their allies, but this appears not probable. The
state of the case rather seems to have been, that the old quarrel
between the Eleians and the Pisatæ, respecting the right to preside
at the Olympic games, which had already burst forth during the
preceding century, in the reign of the Argeian Pheidôn, still
continued. Unwilling dependents of Elis, the Pisatæ and Triphylians
took part with the subject Messenians, while the masters at Elis
and Sparta made common cause, as they had before done against
Pheidôn.[751] Pantaleôn, king of Pisa, revolting from Elis, acted
as commander of his countrymen in coöperation with the Messenians;
and he is farther noted for having, at the period of the 34th
Olympiad (644 B. C.), marched a body of troops to Olympia, and thus
dispossessed the Eleians, on that occasion, of the presidency: that
particular festival,—as well as the 8th Olympiad, in which Pheidôn
interfered,—and the 104th Olympiad, in which the Arcadians marched
in,—were always marked on the Eleian register as non-Olympiads, or
informal celebrations. We may reasonably connect this temporary
triumph of the Pisatans with the Messenian war, inasmuch as they
were no match for the Eleians single-handed, while the fraternity
of Sparta with Elis is in perfect harmony with the scheme of
Peloponnesian politics which we have observed as prevalent even
before and during the days of Pheidôn.[752] The second Messenian war
will thus stand as beginning somewhere about the 33d Olympiad, or 648
B. C., between seventy and eighty years after the close of the first,
and lasting, according to Pausanias, seventeen years; according to
Plutarch, more than twenty years.[753]
[750] Aristot. Polit. v. 7, 1; Pausan. iv. 18, 2.
[751] Pausan. vi. 12, 2; Strabo viii. p. 355, where the Νέστορος
ἀπόγονοι mean the Pylians of Tryphylia.
[752] Respecting the position of the Eleians and Pisatæ during
the second Messenian war, there is confusion in the different
statements: as they cannot all be reconciled, we are compelled to
make a choice.
That the Eleians were allies of Sparta, and the Pisatans of
Messenia, and that the contests of Sparta and Messenia were
mixed up with those of Elis and Pisa about the agonothesia of
the Olympic games, is conformable to one distinct statement of
Strabo (viii. pp. 355, 358), and to the passage in Phavorinus v.
Αὐγείας, and is, moreover, indirectly sustained by the view given
in Pausanias respecting the relations between Elis and Pisa (vi.
22, 2), whereby it clearly appears that the agonothesia was a
matter of standing dispute between the two, until the Pisatans
were finally crushed by the Eleians in the time of Pyrrhus, son
of Pantaleôn. Farther, this same view is really conformable to
another passage in Strabo, which, as now printed, appears to
contradict it, but which is recognized by Müller and others as
needing correction, though the correction which they propose
seems to me not the best. The passage (viii. p. 362) stands thus:
Πλεονάκις δ᾽ ἐπολέμησαν (Messenians and Lacedæmonians) διὰ τὰς
ἀποστάσεις τῶν Μεσσηνίων. Τὴν μὲν οὖν πρώτην κατάκτησιν αὐτῶν
φησὶ Τυρταῖος ἐν τοῖς ποιήμασι κατὰ τοὺς τῶν πατέρων πατέρας
γενέσθαι· τὴν δὲ δευτέραν, καθ᾽ ἣν ἑλόμενοι συμμάχους ~Ἠλείους~
καὶ Ἀργείους καὶ Πισατὰς ἀπέστησαν, Ἀρκάδων μὲν Ἀριστοκράτην τὸν
Ὀρχομένου βασιλάα παρεχομένων στρατηγὸν, Πισατῶν δὲ Πανταλεόντα
τὸν Ὀμφαλίωνος· ἡνίκα φησὶν αὐτὸς στρατηγῆσαι τὸν πόλεμον
τοῖς Λακεδαιμονίοις, etc. Here it is obvious that, in the
enumeration of allies, the Arcadians ought to have been included;
accordingly, both O. Müller and Mr. Clinton (ad annum 672 B. C.)
agree in altering the passage thus: they insert the words ~καὶ
Ἄρκαδας~ after the word ~Ἠλείους~, so that _both Eleians and
Pisatans_ appear as allies of Messenia at once. I submit that
this is improbable in itself, and inconsistent with the passage
of Strabo previously noticed: the proper way of altering the
passage is, in my judgment, to substitute the word ~Ἄρκαδας~
in _place_ of the word ~Ἠλείους~, which makes the two passages
of Strabo consistent with each other, and hardly does greater
violence to the text.
As opposed to the view here adopted, there is, undoubtedly, the
passage of Pausanias (iv. 15, 4) which numbers the Eleians among
the allies of Messenia, and takes no notice of the Pisatæ. The
affirmation of Julius Africanus (ap. Eusebium Chronic. i. p.
145, that the Pisatæ revolted from Elis in the 30th Olympiad,
and celebrated the Olympic games themselves until Ol. 52, for
twenty-two successive ceremonies) is in contradiction,—first,
with Pausanias (vi. 22, 2), which appears to me a clear and
valuable statement, from its particular reference to the _three_
non-Olympiads,—secondly, with Pausanias (v. 9, 4), when the
Eleians in the 50th Olympiad determine the number of Hellanodikæ.
I agree with Corsini (Fasti Attici, t. iii. p. 47) in setting
aside the passage of Julius Africanus: Mr. Clinton (F. H. p.
253) is displeased with Corsini for this suspicion, but he
himself virtually does the same thing; for, in order to reconcile
Jul. Africanus with Pansanias, he introduces a supposition
quite different from what is asserted by either of them; _i.
e._ a joint agonothesia by Eleians and Pisatans together.
This hypothesis of Mr. Clinton appears to me gratuitous and
inadmissible: Africanus himself meant to state something quite
different, and I imagine him to have been misled by an erroneous
authority. See Mr. Clinton, F. H. ad. ann. 660 B. C. to 580 B. C.
[753] Plutarch, De Serâ Num. Vind. p. 548; Pausan. iv. 15, 1; iv.
17, 3; iv. 23, 2.
The date of the second Messenian war, and the interval between
the second and the first, are points respecting which also there
is irreconcilable discrepancy of statement; we can only choose
the most probable: see the passages collected and canvassed in O.
Müller (Dorians, i. 7, 11, and in Mr. Clinton, Fast. Hellen. vol.
i. Appendix 2, p. 257).
According to Pausanias, the second war lasted from B. C. 685-668,
and there was an interval between the first and the second war of
thirty-nine years. Justin (iii. 5) reckons an interval of eighty
years; Eusebius, an interval of ninety years. The main evidence
is the passage of Tyrtæus, wherein that poet, speaking during the
second war, says, “The fathers of our fathers conquered Messênê.”
Mr. Clinton adheres very nearly to the view of Pausanias; he
supposes that the real date is only six years lower (679-662).
But I agree with Clavier (Histoire des Premiers Temps de la
Grèce, t. ii. p. 233) and O. Müller (_l. c._) in thinking that an
interval of thirty-nine years is too short to suit the phrase of
_fathers’ fathers_. Speaking in the present year (1846), it would
not be held proper to say, “The fathers of our fathers carried on
the war between 1793 and the peace of Amiens:” we should rather
say, “The fathers of our fathers carried on the American war and
the Seven Years’ war.” An age is _marked_ by its mature and even
elderly members,—by those between thirty-five and fifty-five
years of age.
Agreeing as I do here with O. Müller, against Mr. Clinton, I also
agree with him in thinking that the best mark which we possess of
the date of the second Messenian war is the statement respecting
Pantaleôn: the 34th Olympiad, which Pantaleôn celebrated,
probably fell within the time of the war; which would thus be
brought down much later than the time assigned by Pausanias, yet
not so far down as that named by Eusebius and Justin: the exact
year of its commencement, however, we have no means of fixing.
Krebs, in his discussions on the Fragments of the lost Books of
Diodorus, thinks that that historian placed the beginning of the
second Messenian war in the 35th Olympiad (B. C. 640) (Krebs,
Lectiones Diodoreæ, pp. 254-260).
Many of the Messenians who abandoned their country after this
second conquest are said to have found shelter and sympathy among
the Arcadians, who admitted them to a new home and gave them their
daughters in marriage; and who, moreover, punished severely the
treason of Aristokratês, king of Orchomenus, in abandoning the
Messenians at the battle of the Trench. That perfidious leader was
put to death, and his race dethroned, while the crime as well as the
punishment was farther commemorated by an inscription, which was to
be seen near the altar of Zeus Lykæus, in Arcadia. The inscription
doubtless existed in the days of Kallisthenês, in the generation
after the restoration of Messênê. But whether it had any existence
prior to that event, or what degree of truth there may be in the
story of Aristokratês, we are unable to determine:[754] the son of
Aristokratês, named Aristodêmus, is alleged in another authority
to have reigned afterwards at Orchomenus.[755] That which stands
strongly marked is, the sympathy of Arcadians and Messenians against
Sparta,—a sentiment which was in its full vigor at the time of the
restoration of Messênê.
[754] Diodor. xv. 66; Polyb. iv. 33, who quotes Kallisthenês;
Paus. viii. 5, 8. Neither the Inscription, as cited by Polybius,
nor the allusion in Plutarch (De Serâ Numin. Vindictâ, p. 548),
appear to fit the narrative of Pausanias, for both of them imply
secret and long-concealed treason, tardily brought to light by
the interposition of the gods; whereas, Pausanias describes the
treason of Aristokratês, at the battle of the Trench, as palpable
and flagrant.
[755] Herakleid. Pontic. ap. Diog. Laërt. i. 94.
The second Messenian war was thus terminated by the complete
subjugation of the Messenians. Such of them as remained in the
country were reduced to a servitude probably not less hard than that
which Tyrtæus described them as having endured between the first war
and the second. In aftertimes, the whole territory which figures
on the map as Messenia,—south of the river Nedon, and westward of
the summit of Taygetus,—appears as subject to Sparta, and as forming
the western portion of Laconia; distributed, in what proportion we
know not, between Periœkic towns and Helot villages. By what steps,
or after what degree of farther resistance, the Spartans conquered
this country, we have no information; but we are told that they made
over Asinê to the expelled Dryopes from the Argolic peninsula and
Mothônê to the fugitives from Nauplia.[756] Nor do we hear of any
serious revolt from Sparta in this territory until one hundred and
fifty years afterwards,[757] subsequent to the Persian invasion,—a
revolt which Sparta, after serious efforts, succeeded in crushing.
So that the territory remained in her power until her defeat at
Leuktra, which led to the foundation of Messênê by Epameinondas.
The fertility of the plains,—especially of the central portion near
the river Pamisus, so much extolled by observers, modern as well as
ancient,—rendered it an acquisition highly valuable. At some time or
other, it must of course have been formally partitioned among the
Spartans, but it is probable that different and successive allotments
were made, according as the various portions of territory, both to
the east and to the west of Taygetus, were conquered. Of all this we
have no information.[758]
[756] Pausan. iv. 24, 2; iv. 34, 6; iv. 35, 2.
[757] Thucyd. i. 101.
[758] Pausanias says, τὴν μὲν ἄλλην Μεσσηνίαν, πλὴν τῆς Ἀσιναίων,
αὐτοὶ διελάγχανον, etc. (iv. 24, 2.)
In an apophthegm ascribed to king Polydorus, leader of the
Spartans during the first Messenian war, he is asked, whether
he is really taking arms against his brethren, to which he
replies, “No; I am only marching to the unallotted portion of
the territory.” (Plutarch, Apophthegm. Lakonic. p. 231.)—ἐπὶ τὴν
ἀκλήρωτον χώραν.
Imperfectly as these two Messenian wars are known to us, we may
see enough to warrant us in making two remarks. Both were tedious,
protracted, and painful, showing how slowly the results of war were
then gathered, and adding one additional illustration to prove how
much the rapid and instantaneous conquest of Laconia and Messenia by
the Dorians, which the Herakleid legend sets forth, is contradicted
by historical analogy. Both were characterized by a similar defensive
proceeding on the part of the Messenians,—the occupation of a
mountain difficult of access, and the fortification of it for the
special purpose and resistance,—Ithômê (which is said to have had
already a small town upon it) in the first war, Eira in the second.
It is reasonable to infer from hence, that neither their principal
town Stenyklêrus, nor any other town in their country, was strongly
fortified, so as to be calculated to stand a siege; that there were
no walled towns among them analogous to Mykenæ and Tiryns on the
eastern portion of Peloponnesus; and that, perhaps, what were called
towns were, like Sparta itself, clusters of unfortified villages.
The subsequent state of Helotism into which they were reduced is in
consistency with this dispersed village residence during their period
of freedom.
The relations of Pisa and Elis form a suitable counterpart and sequel
to those of Messenia and Sparta. Unwilling subjects themselves,
the Pisatans had lent their aid to the Messenians,—and their king,
Pantaleôn, one of the leaders of this combined force, had gained
so great a temporary success, as to dispossess the Eleians of the
agonothesia or administration of the games for one Olympic ceremony,
in the 34th Olympiad. Though again reduced to their condition of
subjects, they manifested dispositions to renew their revolt at the
48th Olympiad, under Damophôn, the son of Pantaleôn, and the Eleians
marched into their country to put them down, but were persuaded to
retire by protestations of submission. At length, shortly afterwards,
under Pyrrhus, the brother of Damophôn, a serious revolt broke
out. The inhabitants of Dyspentium, and the other villages in the
Pisatid, assisted by those of Makistus, Skillus, and the other towns
in Triphylia, took up arms to throw off the yoke of Elis; but their
strength was inadequate to the undertaking. They were completely
conquered; Dyspontium was dismantled, and the inhabitants of it
obliged to flee the country, from whence most of them emigrated to
the colonies of Epidamnus and Apollonia, in Epirus. The inhabitants
of Makistus and Skillus were also chased from their abodes, while
the territory became more thoroughly subject to Elis than it had
been before. These incidents seem to have occurred about the 50th
Olympiad, or B. C. 580; and the dominion of Elis over her Periœkic
territory was thus as well assured as that of Sparta.[759] The
separate denominations both of Pisa and Triphylia became more and
more merged in the sovereign name of Elis: the town of Lepreum alone,
in Triphylia, seems to have maintained a separate name and a sort of
half-autonomy down to the time of the Peloponnesian war, not without
perpetual struggles against the Eleians.[760] But towards the period
of the Peloponnesian war, the political interests of Lacedæmon had
become considerably changed, and it was to her advantage to maintain
the independence of the subordinate states against the superior:
accordingly, we find her at that time upholding the autonomy of
Lepreum. From what cause the devastation of the Triphylian towns by
Elis, which Herodotus mentions as having happened in his time, arose,
we do not know; the fact seems to indicate a continual yearning for
their original independence, which was still commemorated, down
to a much later period, by the ancient Amphiktyony, at Samikum,
in Triphylia, in honor of Poseidôn,—a common religious festival
frequented by all the Triphylian towns and celebrated by the
inhabitants of Makistus, who sent round proclamation of a formal
truce for the holy period.[761] The Lacedæmonians, after the close
of the Peloponnesian war, had left them undisputed heads of Greece,
formally upheld the independence of the Triphylian towns against
Elis, and seem to have countenanced their endeavors to attach
themselves to the Arcadian aggregate, which, however, was never fully
accomplished. Their dependence on Elis became loose and uncertain,
but was never wholly shaken off.[762]
[759] Pausan. vi. 22, 2; v. 6, 3; v. 10, 2; Strabo, viii. pp.
355-357.
The temple in honor of Zeus at Olympia, was first erected by the
Eleians, out of the spoils of this expedition (Pausan. v. 10, 2).
[760] Thucyd. v. 31. Even Lepreum is characterized as Eleian,
however (Aristoph. Aves, 149): compare also Steph. Byz. v.
Τριφυλία, ἡ Ἦλις.
Even in the 6th Olympiad, an inhabitant of Dyspontium is
proclaimed as victor at the stadium, under the denomination
of “_an Eleian from Dyspontium_;” proclaimed by the Eleians
of course,—the like in the 27th Olympiad: see Stephan. Byz.
v. Δυσπόντιον which shows that the inhabitants of the Pisatid
cannot have rendered themselves independent of Elis in the 26th
Olympiad, as Strabo alleges (viii. p. 355).
[761] Herodot. iv. 149; Strabo, viii. p. 343.
[762] Diodor. xiv. 17; xv. 77; Xenoph. Hellen. iii. 2, 23, 26.
It was about this period, probably, that the idea of the local
eponymous, Triphylus, son of Arkas, was first introduced (Polyb.
iv. 77).