Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/441

 HOSTILITIES COMMENCED BY THE SPARTANS. 425 to have belonged to Sparta. That the quarrel began at one of these border sacrifices was the statement of both parties, Lacedae- monians and Messenians. According to the latter, the Lacedae- monian king Teleklus 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 Teleklus slain. That Teleklus 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 Lacedaemonian maidens, who were sacrificing at the temple, against outrageous violence from the Messenian youth. 1 In spite of the ieath of this king, however, the war did not actually break out 1 Strabo (vi. p. 257) gives a similar account of the sacrilege and murder- ous conduct of the Messenian youth at the temple of Artemis Limnatis. His version, substantially agreeing with that of the Lacedaemonians, seems to be borrowed from Antiochus, the contemporary of Thucydides, and is therefore earlier than the foundation of Messene by Epameinondas, from which event the philo-Messenian statements take their rise. Antiochus, writ- ing during the plenitude of Lacedaemonian power, would naturally look upon the Messenians as irretrievably prostrate, and the impiety here nar- rated 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 Herakleides 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 con stant dispute between the Lacedaemonians and Messenians after the founda- tion of the city of Messene, even down to the time of the Roman emperor Tiberius (Tacit. Annal. iv. 43). See Stephan. Byz. v. Atf.duvioi ; 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 Lacedcemon and Messene ; 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. Hii authority weighs much with me on such a point, though the arguments which he here employs do not seem to me conclusive.