A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology

or ARTUS (Ἄρτας Thue.; Ἄρτος, Demetr. and Suidas), a prince of the Messapians in the time of the Peloponnesian war. Thucydides (7.33) relates that Demosthenes in his passage to Sicily (B. C. 413) obtained from him a force of 150 dartmen, and renewed with him an old-existing friendly connexion. This connexion with Athens is explained by the long enmity, which, shortly before, was at its height, between the Messapians and the Lacedaemonian Tarentum. (Comp. Niebuhr, i. p. 148.) The visit of Demosthenes is, probably, what the comic poet Demetrius alluded to in the lines quoted from his " Sicily" by Athenaeus (iii. p. 108), who tells us further, that Polemon wrote a book about him. Possibly, however, as Polemon and Demetrius both flourished about 300 B. C., this may be a second Artas. The name is

found also in Hesychius, who quotes from the lines of Demetrius, and in Suidas, who refers to Polemon.

[A.H.C]