Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/453

 SUBJUGATION OF THE MKSSEXIA:^. 437 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 Aristokrates, king of Orcho- menus, 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 com- memorated by an inscription, which was to be seen near the altar of Zeus Lykseus, in Arcadia. The inscription doubtless existed in the days of Kallisthenes, in the generation after the restoration of Messene. But whether it had any existence prior to that event, or what degree of truth there may be in the story of Aristokrates, we are unable to determine :' the son of Aristo- krates. named Aristodemus, is alleged in another authority to have reigned afterwards at Orchomenus. 2 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 Messene. 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 Tyrtaeus described them as having endured be< tween the first war and the second. In after-times, the whole Agreeing as I do here with O. Muller, 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 statemen ) respecting Pantaloon : the 34th Olym- piad, which Pantaleon celebrated, piobably 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 clown as that named by Eusebius and Justin : the cjcact 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 (n. c. 640) (Krebs, Lectiones Diodorese, pp. 254-260). 1 Diodor. xv 66 ; Polyb. iv. 33, who quotes Kallisthenes ; Pans. viii. 5, 8. Neither the Inscription, as cited by Polybius, nor the allusion in Plutarch (De Sera Numin. Vindicta, 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 Aristokrates, at the battle of the Trench, as palpable and flagrant
 * Herakleid. Pontic. ap Diog. LaGrt. i. 94.