Description of Greece

Anaxilas defeated the Zanclaeans, when they put to sea to oppose him, and the Messenians did the like by land, and the Zanclaeans, blockaded on land by the Messenians and from the sea by the fleet of the Rhegines, when their wall was carried, fled for refuge to the altars of the gods and to the temples. Anaxilas, however, advised the Messenians to put to death the suppliant Zanclaeans and to enslave the rest together with the women and children.

But Gorgus and Manticlus besought Anaxilas not to compel them, the victims of unholy treatment at the hands of kinsmen, to do the like to men of Greek race. After this they made the Zanclaeans rise from the altars, and exchanging pledges with them, dwelt together in common. They changed the name of the city from Zancle to Messene.

This event took place in the twenty-ninth Olympiad,[*](B.C. 664) when Chionis the Laconian was victorious for the second time. Miltiades was archon at Athens. Manticlus founded the temple of Heracles for the Messenians; the temple of the god is outside the walls and he is called Heracles Manticlus, just as Ammon in Libya and Belus in Babylon are named, the latter from an Egyptian, Belus the son of Libya, Ammon from the shepherd-founder. Thus the exiled Messenians reached the end of their wanderings.

After declining the leadership of the men setting forth to found a colony, Aristomenes gave his sister Hagnagora in marriage to Tharyx at Phigalia, and his daughters, both the eldest and the next in age, to Damothoidas of Lepreum and Theopompus of Heraea. He himself went to Delphi to enquire of the god. The reply that was given to Aristomenes is not recorded,

but when Damagetus the Rhodian, who reigned at Ialysos, came to Apollo and asked whence he should take a wife, the Pythia bade him take a daughter of the bravest of the Greeks. As Aristomenes had a third daughter, he married her, considering that Aristomenes was by far the bravest of the Greeks of that age. Aristomenes, coming to Rhodes with his daughter, purposed to go up from there to Sardis to Ardys the son of Gyges, and to Ecbatana of the Medes to king Phraortes.

But ere that he was overtaken by illness and death, for no further misfortune was to befall the Lacedaemonians at the hands of Aristomenes. On his death Damagetus and the Rhodians built him a splendid tomb and paid honor to him thenceforward. I omit what is recorded of the Diagoridae in Rhodes, as they are called, a line sprung from Diagoras the son of Damagetus, son of Dorieus, who was the son of Damagetus and of the daughter of Aristomenes, lest it should seem to be irrelevant.

Now the Lacedaemonians, gaining possession of Messenia, divided it all among themselves, except the land belonging to the people of Asine; but they gave Mothone to the men of Nauplia, who had recently been driven from their town by the Argives.

The Messenians who were captured in the country, reduced by force to the position of serfs, were later moved to revolt from the Lacedaemonians in the seventy-ninth Olympiad,[*](B.C. 464) when Xenophon the Corinthian was victorious. Archimedes was archon at Athens. The occasion which they found for the revolt was this. Certain Lacedaemonians who had been condemned to death on some charge fled as suppliants to Taenarum but the board of ephors dragged them from the altar there and put them to death.

As the Spartans paid no heed to their being suppliants, the wrath of Poseidon came upon them, and the god razed all their city to the ground. At this disaster all the serfs who were of Messenian origin seceded to Mount Ithome. Against them the Lacedaemonians, amongst other allies, called to their assistance Cimon the son of Miltiades, their patron in Athens, and an Athenian force. But when the Athenians arrived, they seem to have regarded them with suspicion that they were likely to promote revolution, and as a result of this suspicion to have soon dismissed them from Ithome.

The Athenians, realizing the feelings of the Lacedaemonians towards them, made friends therefore with the Argives, and gave Naupactus to the Messenians besieged in Ithome, when they were allowed to depart under a truce. They had taken Naupactus from the Locrians adjoining Aetolia, called the Ozolian. The retirement of the Messenians from Ithome was secured by the strength of the place; also the Pythia announced to the Lacedaemonians that assuredly they would be punished if they committed a crime against the suppliant of Zeus of Ithome. For this reason then they were allowed to go from Peloponnese under a truce.