Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/444

 428 HISTORY OF GREECE. Spartan poet, " they were compelled to make over to their mas. ters an entire half of the produce of their fields, and to come in the garb of woe to Sparta, themselves and their wives, as mourn, ers 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. Had we possessed the account of the first Messenian war as given by Myron and Diodorus, it would evidently have been very different from the above, because they included Aristome- nes 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 Rhi- anus, l 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 Derae ; 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 Aristokrates, king of the Arcadian Orchomenus, who, ostensibly embracing the alliance of the MPS- senians, had received bribes from Sparta. Thrice did Aris- tomenes sacrifice to Zeus Ithomates the sacrifice called Heka- tomphonia, 2 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 Lacedaemonian territory, surprised Amykloe 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 Athene Chalkioekus. Thrice was he taken pris- oner, 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 der Gricch. StaatsalterthUmer, sect. 31), a suonosiiion which the emphatic words of Tyrtseus render inadmissible. 1 This is the express comparison introduced hv Pausani.is. iv. 5. 2.
 * riutarch, Sept. Sapient. Convivium. p. 159.