Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/403

 TARENTUil. 38? Taventura, a colony from Sparta founded after the first Messe- nian war, seemingly about 707 B. c. The cekist Phalanthus, said to have been an Herakleid, was placed at the head of a body of Spartan emigrants, consisting principally of some citizens called Epeunaktae, and of the youth called Parthenue, who had been disgraced by their countrymen on account of their origin, and were on the point of breaking out into rebellion. It was out of the Messenian war that this emigration is stated to have arisen, in a manner analogous to that which has been stated respecting the Epizephyrian Lokrians. The Lacedaemonians, before entering Messeuia to carry on the war, had made a vow not to return until they should have completed the conquest ; a vow in which it appears that some of them declined to take part, standing altogether aloof from the expedition. When the absent soldiers returned after many years of absence consumed in the war, they found a numerous progeny which had been born to their wives and daughters during the interval, from intercourse with those (Epeunaktaj) who had stayed at home. The Epeu- naktas were punished by being degraded to the rank and servi- tude of Helots ; the children thus born, called Parthenire, 1 were also cut off from all the rights of citizenship, and held in dis- honor. But the parties punished were numerous enough to make themselves formidable, and a conspiracy was planned among them, intended to break out at the great religious festival of the Hyacinthia, in the temple of the Amyklrean Apollo. Palaiithus was the secret chief of the conspirators, who agreed to com- mence their attack upon the authorities at the moment when he should put on his helmet. The leader, however, never intending that the scheme should be executed, betrayed it beforehand, stip- ulating for the safety of all those implicated in it. At the com- mencement of the festival, when the multitude were already assembled, a herald was directed to proclaim aloud, that Phalan- thus would not on that day put on his helmet, a proclamation 1 Parthenise, i.e. children of virgins: the description given by Varro of the Illyrian virgines illustrates this phrase: " Quas virgines ibi appellant, non- nunquam anuorum xx, quibus mos eorum non dcnejravit, ante nuptias uj Buccumberent quibus vellent, et incomitatis ut vagari liceret, et libcros habert? (Varro, DC Re Eustica, ii, 10, 9.)