Greek Texts & Translations

When he said this, as many as three hundred of the Arcadians were ready to share his enterprise. For the time they delayed their departure, as the victims were unfavorable, but on the following day they learnt that the Lacedaemonians had been forewarned of their secret, and that they themselves had been a second time betrayed by Aristocrates. For Aristocrates had at once written the designs of Aristomenes in a letter, and having entrusted it to the slave whom he knew to be most loyal, sent him to Anaxander in Sparta.

As the slave was returning, he was intercepted by some of the Arcadians, who had formerly been at variance with Aristocrates and regarded him then with some suspicion. Having intercepted the slave they brought him before the Arcadians and made known to the people the answer from Lacedaemon. Anaxander was writing that his retreat from the Great Trench formerly had not gone unrewarded on the part of the Lacedaemonians and that he would receive an additional recompense for his information on the present occasion.

When this was declared to all, the Arcadians themselves stoned Aristocrates and urged the Messenians to join them. They looked to Aristomenes. But he was weeping, with his eyes fixed on the ground. So the Arcadians stoned Aristocrates to death and flung him beyond their borders without burial, and set up a tablet in the precinct of Zeus Lycaeus with the words: Truly time hath declared justice upon an unjust king and with the help of Zeus hath easily declared the betrayer of Messene. Hard it is for a man forsworn to hide from God. Hail, king Zeus, and keep Arcadia safe.

But he said that while he lived, he would make war on the Lacedaemonians, as he knew well that trouble would always be brewing for Sparta through him, but he gave them Gorgus and Manticlus as leaders. Euergetidas too had retired to Mount Lycaeus with the rest of the Messenians. From there, when he saw that Aristomenes' plan to seize Sparta had failed, he persuaded some fifty of the Messenians to go back with him to Eira and attack the Lacedaemonians,

and coming upon them while they were still plundering, he turned their celebrations of victory to grief. He then met his doom there, but Aristomenes ordered all the Messenians who wished to take part in the colony to join the leaders at Cyllene. And all took part except those debarred by age or lack of funds for journeying abroad. These remained here with the Arcadians.

Eira was taken, and the second war between the Lacedaemonians and Messenians completed in the archonship of Autosthenes at Athens, and in the first year of the twenty-eighth Olympiad, ^note when Chionis the Laconian was victorious.

When the Messenians assembled at Cyllene, they resolved to winter there for that season, the Eleians providing a market and funds. With the spring they began to debate where they should go. It was the view of Gorgus that they should occupy Zacynthos off Cephallenia, becoming islanders instead of mainlanders, and raid the coasts of Laconia with their ships and ravage the land. But Manticlus bade them forget Messene and their hatred of the Lacedaemonians, and sail to Sardinia and win an island which was of the largest extent and greatest fertility.

Meantime Anaxilas sent to the Messenians and summoned them to Italy. He was tyrant of Rhegium, third in descent from Alcidamidas, who had left Messene for Rhegium after the death of king Aristodemus and the capture of Ithome. So now this Anaxilas summoned the Messenians. When they came, he said that the people of Zancle were at war with him, and that they possessed a prosperous land and city well placed in Sicily; and these he said he was ready to give them and help them to conquer. When they accepted the proposal, Anaxilas then transported them to Sicily.