Greek Texts & Translations

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, ^note 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.

They neglected no human invention in the matter of siege-craft, tried to carry the town by raising scaling-ladders, mined the walls, and by bringing up such engines as could be made ready at short notice proceeded with the destruction of the fortifications. The inhabitants, fearing that if the city were taken they would be put to death and their wives and children enslaved, elected to withdraw on terms.

The Messenians held the town and occupied the country for about a year. In the following year the Acarnanians collected a force from all their towns and discussed an attack on Naupactus. They rejected this, as they saw that their line of march would be through the Aetolians, who were always their enemies; moreover they suspected that the men of Naupactus possessed a fleet, which was the fact; and while they commanded the sea, it was impossible to achieve anything of importance with a land force.

So they changed their plans and at once turned on the Messenians in Oeniadae and prepared to besiege them, for they never supposed that men so few in number would show such desperate courage as to fight against the full levy of the Acarnanians. The Messenians had previously prepared food and all else that was requisite, expecting to stand a long siege.

But they were determined before the siege was formed to fight a battle in the open, and being Messenians, who had not been surpassed in valor even by Lacedaemonians, but in fortune only, were determined not to be dismayed at the horde which had come from Acarnania. They recalled the achievement of the Athenians at Marathon, how thirty myriad Persians had been destroyed by men not numbering ten thousand.

So they joined battle with the Acarnanians, and the course of the battle is said to have been thus. The enemy, being far superior in numbers, had no difficulty in surrounding the Messenians, except where prevented by the gates in the Messenian rear and by the zealous help of their men posted on the wall. Here they could not be surrounded, hut the Acarnanians enveloped both their flanks and shot volleys at them from all sides.

The Messenians, in close formation, whenever they charged the Acarnanians in a body, threw the enemy at that point into confusion, killing and wounding many of them, but they could not effect a complete rout. For wherever the Acarnanians saw a part of their own line being broken by the Messenians they went to the support of their harassed troops at this point and checked the Messenians, overwhelming them by numbers.