Greek Texts & Translations

destroyed Messene, and the Thebans, and subsequently Philip, the son of Amyntas, restored it. The citadels however continued unoccupied. 9

The temple of Diana in Limnae (in the Marshes), where the Messenians are supposed to have violated the virgins who came there to offer sacrifice, is on the confines of Laconia and Messenia, where the inhabitants of both countries usually celebrated a common festival, and performed sacrifices; but after the violation of the virgins, the Messenians did not make any reparation, and war, it is said, ensued. The Limnaean temple of Diana at Sparta is said to have its name from the Limnae here. 10

There were frequent wars (between the Lacedaemonians and Messenians) on account of the revolts of the Messenians. Tyrtaeus mentions, in his poems, that their first subjugation was in the time of their grandfathers; ^note the second, when in conjunction with their allies the Eleians [Arcadians], Argives, and Pisatae, they revolted; the leader of the Arcadians was Aristocrates, king of Orchomenus, and of the Pisatae, Pantaleon, son of Omphalion. In this war, Tyrtaeus says, he himself commanded the Lacedaemonian army, for in his elegiac poem, entitled Eunomia, he says he came from Erineum; for Jupiter himself, the son of Saturn, and husband of Juno with the beautiful crown, gave this city to the Heracleidae, with whom we left the windy Erineum, and arrived at the spacious island of Pelops. Wherefore we must either invalidate the authority of the elegiac verses, or we must disbelieve Philochorus, and Callisthenes, and many other writers, who say that he came from Athens, or Aphidnae, at the request of the Lacedaemonians, whom an oracle had enjoined to receive a commander from the Athenians.

The second war then occurred in the time of Tyrtaeus. But they mention a third, and even a fourth war, in which the Messenians were destroyed. ^note