Delphi Complete Works of Pausanias

by Pausanias

  [4.5.8] Not many months later Antiochus died and his son Euphaes succeeded to the kingdom. The Lacedaemonians, without sending a herald to declare war on the Messenians or renouncing their friendship beforehand, had made their preparations secretly and with all the concealment possible; they first took an oath that neither the length of the war, should it not be decided soon, nor their disasters, however great they might be, would deter them until they won the land of Messenia by the sword.

  [4.5.9] After taking this oath, they attacked Ampheia by night, appointing Alcamenes the son of Teleclus leader of the force. Ampheia is a small town in Messenia near the Laconian border, of no great size, but situated on a high hill and possessing copious springs of water. It seemed generally a suitable base for the whole war. The gates being open and the town not garrisoned, they took it and killed the Messenians captured there, some still in their beds and others who had taken refuge at the sanctuaries and altars of the gods when they realized what had happened. Those who escaped were few.

  [4.5.10] This was the first attack which the Lacedaemonians made on the Messenians, in the second year of the ninth Olympiad, when Xenodocus of Messenia won the short foot-race. In Athens there were not as yet the archons appointed annually by lot for at first the people deprived the descendants of Melanthus, called Medontidae, of most of their power, transforming the kingship into a constitutional office; afterwards they limited their tenure of office to ten years. At the time of the seizure of Ampheia, Aesimides the son of Aeschylus was holding his fifth year office at Athens.

  [4.6.1] VI. Before I wrote the history of the war and all the sufferings and actions that heaven prepared in it for both sides, I wished to reach a decision regarding the age of a certain Messenian. This war was fought between the Lacedaemonians with their allies and the Messenians with their supporters, but received its name not from the invaders like the Persian and Peloponnesian wars, but was called Messenian from their disasters, just as the name Trojan war, rather than Greek, came to be universally applied to the war at Troy. An account of this war of the Messenians has been given by Rhianus of Bene in his epic, and by Myron of Priene. Myron’s history is in prose.

  [4.6.2] Neither writer achieved a complete and continuous account of the whole war from its beginning to the end, but only of the part which each selected: Myron narrated the capture of Ampheia and subsequent events down to the death of Aristodemus; Rhianus did not touch this first war at all. He described the events that in time befell the Messenians after their revolt from the Lacedaemonians, not indeed the whole of them, but those subsequent to the battle which they fought at the Great Trench, as it is called.

  [4.6.3] The Messenian, Aristomenes, on whose account I have made my whole mention of Rhianus and Myron, was the man who first and foremost raised the name of Messene to renown. He was introduced by Myron into his history, while to Rhianus in his epic Aristomenes is as great a man as is the Achilles of the Iliad to Homer. As their statements differ so widely, it remained for me to adopt one or other of the accounts, but not both together, and Rhianus appeared to me to have given the more probable account as to the age of Aristomenes.

  [4.6.4] One may realize in others of his works that Myron gives no heed to the question of his statements seeming to lack truth and credibility, and particularly in this Messenian history. For he has made Aristomenes kill Theopompus, the king of the Lacedaemonians, shortly before the death of Aristodemus but we know that Theopompus was not killed either in battle or in any other way before the war was concluded.

  [4.6.5] It was this Theopompus who put an end to the war, and my evidence is the lines of Tyrtaeus, which say:–

  To our king beloved of the gods, Theopompus, through whom we took Messene with wide dancing-grounds. Tyrtaeus, unknown location.

  Aristomenes then in my view belongs to the time of the second war, and I will relate his history when I come to this.

  [4.6.6] The Messenians, when they heard of the events at Ampheia from the actual survivors from the captured town, mustered in Stenyclerus from their cities. When the people had gathered in the assembly, first the leading men and finally the king exhorted them not to be panic-stricken at the sack of Ampheia, or to suppose that the issue of the whole war had already been decided thereby, or to be afraid of the power of the Lacedaemonians as superior to their own. For the Lacedaemonians had longer practice in warfare, but they themselves had a stronger necessity to show themselves brave men, and greater goodwill would be shown by the gods to men defending their country, who were not the authors of injustice.

  [4.7.1] VII. With these words Euphaes dismissed the gathering, and henceforward kept all the Messenians under arms, compelling the untrained to learn the art of war and the trained men to undergo a more rigorous discipline than before. The Lacedaemonians carried out raids into Messenia, but did no harm to the country, regarding it as their own, nor did they cut down trees or demolish buildings, but they drove off any cattle that they met with, and carried off the corn and other produce.

  [4.7.2] They made assaults on the towns but captured none, as they were fortified with walls and carefully garrisoned. They withdrew with loss and without effecting anything, and finally gave up attempting the towns. The Messenians also ravaged the Laconian coast and all the cultivated land round Taygetos.

  [4.7.3] Three years after the capture of Ampheia, being eager to put to use the spirit of the Messenians, now at the height of their passion against the Lacedaemonians, and considering too that they had undergone sufficient training, Euphaes ordered an advance. He bade the slaves also accompany him, bringing wood and all else that was required for the making of an entrenched camp. The Lacedaemonians heard from their garrison at Ampheia that the Messenians were marching out, so they also came out to battle.

  [4.7.4] There was a place in Messenia which was in other ways suitable for an engagement, but had a deep ravine in front of it. Here Euphaes drew up the Messenians and appointed Cleonnis general; the cavalry and light-armed, together amounting to less than 500, were commanded by Pytharatus and Antander.

  [4.7.5] As the two forces were about to engage, the ravine which divided them prevented the heavy-armed from coming to close quarters, though they approached one another eagerly and with a recklessness born of hate. The cavalry and light-armed engaged above the ravine, but as they were equally matched in numbers and skill, for this reason the fight was indecisive.

  [4.7.6] While they were involved, Euphaes ordered the slaves to fortify with a palisade first the rear of his force and afterwards both flanks, and when the battle had been broken off at nightfall, they fortified his front also on the ravine. So at daybreak the Lacedaemonians realized the forethought of Euphaes. They had no means of fighting the Messenians unless they came out from the stockade, and despaired of forming a siege, for which they were unprepared in all things alike.

  [4.7.7] They then returned home; but a year later, when the older men reviled them and taunted them both with cowardice and disregard of their oath, they made a second expedition openly against the Messenians. Both kings were in command, Theopompus the son of Nicander and Polydorus the son of Alcamenes, Alcamenes being no longer alive. The Messenians encamped opposite them, and when the Spartans endeavored to join battle, went out to meet them.

  [4.7.8] The Lacedaemonian commander on the left wing was Polydorus, and Theopompus on the right. The center was held by Euryleon, now a Lacedaemonian, but of Theban origin of the house of Cadmus, fourth in descent from Aegeus the son of Oeolycus, son of Theras, son of Autesion. On the side of the Messenians Antander and Euphaes were posted opposite the Lacedaemonian right; the other wing, opposite Polydorus, was held by Pytharatus, with Cleonnis in the center.

  [4.7.9] As they were about to engage, the kings came forward to encourage their men. The words of encouragement addressed by Theopompus to the Lacedaemonians were few, according to their native custom. He reminded them of their oath against the Messenians, and said how noble was their ambition, to prove themselves to have
done a deed more glorious than their fathers, who subdued the neighboring peoples, and to have won a more fortunate land. Euphaes spoke at greater length than the Spartan, but no more than he saw the occasion admitted.

  [4.7.10] He declared that the contest would be not only for land and possessions, but he knew well what would overtake them if defeated. Their wives and children would be carried off as slaves, and death unaccompanied by outrage would be the mildest fate for their grown men their sanctuaries would be despoiled and their ancestral homes burnt. His words were not supposition, the fate of the men captured at Ampheia was evidence that all could see.

  [4.7.11] Better a noble death than such evils; it was far easier for them, while still undefeated and equally matched in courage, to outdo their adversaries in zeal than to repair their losses when once they had lost heart.

  [4.8.1] VIII. Such were the words of Euphaes. When the leaders on either side gave the signal, the Messenians charged the Lacedaemonians recklessly like men eager for death in their wrath, each one of them eager to be the first to join battle. The Lacedaemonians also advanced to meet them eagerly, but were careful not to break their ranks.

  [4.8.2] When they were about to come to close quarters, they threatened one another by brandishing their arms and with fierce looks, and fell to recriminations, these calling the Messenians already their slaves, no freer than the Helots; the others answering that they were impious in their undertaking, who for the sake of gain attacked their kinsmen and outraged all the ancestral gods of the Dorians, and Heracles above all. And now with their taunts they come to deeds, mass thrusting against mass, especially on the Lacedaemonian side, and man attacking man.

  [4.8.3] The Lacedaemonians were far superior both in tactics and training, and also in numbers, for they had with them the neighboring peoples already reduced and serving in their ranks, and the Dryopes of Asine, who a generation earlier had been driven out of their own country by the Argives and had come as suppliants to Lacedaemon, were forced to serve in the army. Against the Messenian light-armed they employed Cretan archers as mercenaries.

  [4.8.4] The Messenians were inspired alike by desperation and readiness to face death, regarding all their sufferings as necessary rather than terrible to men who honored their country, and exaggerating their achievements and the consequences to the Lacedaemonians. Some of them leapt forth from the ranks, displaying glorious deeds of valor, in others fatally wounded and scarce breathing the frenzy of despair still reigned.

  [4.8.5] They encouraged one another, the living and unwounded urging the stricken before their last moment came to sell their lives as dearly as they could and accept their fate with joy. And the wounded, when they felt their strength ebbing and breath failing, urged the unwounded to prove themselves no less valorous than they and not to render their death of no avail to their fatherland.

  [4.8.6] The Lacedaemonians refrained from exhorting one another, and were less inclined than the Messenians to engage in striking deeds of valor. As they were versed in warfare from boyhood, they employed a deeper formation and hoped that the Messenians would not endure the contest for so long as they, or sustain the toil of battle or wounds.

  [4.8.7] These were the differences in both sets of combatants in action and in feeling; but on both sides alike the conquered made no appeals or promises of ransom, perhaps in their enmity despairing of getting quarter, but mainly because they scorned to disgrace their previous achievements. The victorious refrained alike from boasting and from taunts, neither side having yet sure hopes of victory. The most remarkable was the death of those who tried to strip any of the fallen. For if they exposed any part of their bodies, they were struck with javelins or were struck down while intent on their present occupation, or were killed by those whom they were plundering who still lived.

  [4.8.8] The kings fought in a manner that deserves mention. Theopompus rushed wildly forward to slay Euphaes himself. Euphaes, seeing him advancing, said to Antander that the action of Theopompus was no different from the attempt of his ancestor Polyneices; for Polyneices led an army from Argos against his fatherland, and slaying his brother with his own hand was slain by him. Theopompus was ready to involve the race of the Heracleidae in pollution as great as that of the house of Laius and Oedipus, but he would not leave the field unscathed. With these words he too advanced.

  [4.8.9] Thereupon the battle, though the combatants had wearied, everywhere broke out again in full force. Their strength was renewed and recklessness of death heightened on both sides, so that it might have been thought that they were engaging for the first time. Finally Euphaes and his men in a frenzy of despair that was near to madness (for picked Messenian troops formed the whole of the king’s bodyguard), overpowering the enemy by their valor, drove back Theopompus himself and routed the Lacedaemonian troops opposed to them.

  [4.8.10] But the other Messenian wing was in difficulties, for the general Pytharatus had been killed, and the men, without a commander, were fighting in a disorganized and confused manner, though not without heart. Polydorus did not pursue the Messenians when they gave way, nor Euphaes’ men the Lacedaemonians. It seemed better to him and his men to support the defeated wing; they did not, however, engage with Polydorus’ force, for darkness had already descended on the field;

  [4.8.11] moreover, the Lacedaemonians were prevented from following the retiring force further not least by their ignorance of the country. Also it was an ancient practice with them not to carry out a pursuit too quickly, as they were more careful about maintaining their formation than about slaying the flying. In the center, where Euryleon was commanding the Lacedaemonians, and Cleonnis on the Messenian side, the contest was undecided; the coming of night separated them here also.

  [4.8.12] This battle was fought principally or entirely by the heavy-armed troops on both sides. The mounted men were few and achieved nothing worth mention; for the Peloponnesians were not good horsemen then. The Messenian light-armed and the Cretans on the Lacedaemonian side did not engage at all; for on both sides according to the ancient practice they were posted in reserve to their own infantry.

  [4.8.13] The following day neither side was minded to begin battle or to be the first to set up a trophy, but as the day advanced they made proposals for taking up the dead; when this was agreed on both sides, they proceeded to bury them.

  [4.9.1] IX. But after the battle the affairs of the Messenians began to get serious. They were exhausted by the expenditure of money devoted to the garrisoning of the towns, and their slaves were deserting to the Lacedaemonians. They were visited also by disease, which caused alarm, as resembling plague, although it did not attack all. In these circumstances they resolved to desert all their numerous towns inland and to settle on Mount Ithome.

  [4.9.2] A small town existed here, which they say Homer mentions in the Catalogue:

  Stepped Ithome. Hom. Il. 2.729

  To this town they withdrew, extending the old circuit to form a sufficient protection for them all. The place was strong in other respects, for Ithome falls short of none of the mountains within the Isthmus in height and at this point was most difficult to climb.

  [4.9.3] They also resolved to send an envoy to Delphi, and despatched Tisis the son of Alcis, a man of the highest reputation, considered to be fully versed in divination. While he was returning from Delphi men from the Lacedaemonian garrison at Ampheia laid an ambush for him. Though trapped, he did not submit to be made a prisoner, but stood his ground to resist in spite of the wounds he received, until a voice was heard from an unseen quarter, “Let the bearer of the oracle go free.”

  [4.9.4] Tisis, reaching Ithome with all speed, delivered the oracle to the king, and soon afterwards died of his wounds. Euphaes assembled the Messenians and made known the oracle:

  Ye shall sacrifice a pure maiden to the gods below, appointed by lot of the blood of the sons of Aepytus, and slay her by night. But if that ye cannot do, offer a maiden from another house, if the father gives her freely for the slaughter.
>
  [4.9.5] When the god declared this, all the maidens of the house of the Aepytidae forthwith cast lots, and the lot fell on the daughter of Lyciscus. But Epebolus the seer forbade them to offer her, for she was not the daughter of Lyciscus, but the woman who was married to Lyciscus being unable to bear a child had palmed off the girl as hers. While Epebolus was making this declaration, Lyciscus took the girl away and deserted to Sparta.

  [4.9.6] The Messenians were in despair when they saw that Lyciscus had fled; thereupon Aristodemus, a son of the house of the Aepytidae, of higher standing than Lyciscus both in reputation and in war, freely offered his daughter for the sacrifice. But human affairs and human purpose above all are obscured by fate, just as the mud of a river hides a pebble; for when Aristodemus was striving his utmost to save Messene, fate set this obstacle in his path.

  [4.9.7] A Messenian, whose name is not recorded, was in love with the daughter of’ Aristodemus, and was already about to make her his wife. He at first disputed the rights of Aristodemus over the girl for Aristodemus, since he had betrothed her to himself had no further rights over the girl, but he to whom she was betrothed had greater rights than the father. Next, when he saw that this was of no avail, he had recourse to a shameless plea, that the girl was with child by him.

  [4.9.8] At last he drove Aristodemus to such a fury of passion that lie killed his daughter; then cutting her open he showed that she was not pregnant. Epebolus, who was present, ordered another man to come forward and offer his daughter, for the daughter of Aristodemus was of no avail to them dead; for the father had murdered her, not offered her to the gods whom the Pythia ordained.