Greek Texts & Translations

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.

The Messenians, beaten back and again attempting to pierce the massed troops of the Acarnanians at another point, would meet with the same result. Wherever they attacked, they threw the enemy into confusion and drove them a short distance, but as the Acarnanians again streamed eagerly to this point, they were driven back against their will. The battle was evenly contested until evening, but when at nightfall the Acarnanians received reinforcements from their cities, the blockade of the Messenians was formed.

They had no fear of the wall being taken by assault, either by the Acarnanians scaling it or by themselves being forced to abandon their posts. But in the eighth month all their provisions alike had been consumed.

They shouted to the Acarnanians from the wall in mockery that their supplies would not fail them until the tenth year of the siege, but they themselves sallied out of Oeniadae at the time of the first sleep. Their escape became known to the Acarnanians and they were compelled to fight, losing some three hundred and killing still more of the enemy. But the greater part of them got through the Acarnanians, and reaching the territory of the Aetollans, who were their friends, arrived safely at Naupactus.

When the Athenian reverse at Aegospotami took place, the Lacedaemonians, having command of the sea, then drove the Messenians from Naupactus; they went to their kinsmen in Sicily and to Rhegium, but the majority came to Libya and to the Euesperitae there, who had suffered severely in war with barbarian neighbors and were inviting any Greek to join them. So the majority of the Messenians went to them, their leader being Comon, who had commanded them in Sphacteria.

A year before the victory of the Thebans at Leuctra, heaven foretold their return to Peloponnese to the Messenians. It is said that in Messene on the Straits the priest of Heracles saw a vision in a dream: it seemed that Heracles Manticlus was bidden by Zeus as a guest to Ithome. Also among the Euesperitae Comon dreamt that he lay with his dead mother, but that afterwards she came to life again. He hoped that as the Athenians had recovered their seapower, they would be restored to Naupactus. But the dream really indicated the recovery of Messene.

Not long afterwards the Lacedaemonians suffered at Leuctra the disaster that had long been due. For at the end of the oracle given to Aristodemus, who reigned over the Messenians, are the words: Act as fate wills, destruction comes on this man before that,
signifying that he and the Messenians must suffer evil at the present, but that hereafter destruction would overtake Lacedaemon.

Then after their victory at Leuctra the Thebans sent messengers to Italy, Sicily and to the Euesperitae, and summoned the Messenians to Peloponnese from every other quarter where they might be, and they, with longing for their country and through the hatred which had ever remained with them for the Lacedaemonians, assembled quicker than could have been expected.