Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 22, 2025
However as the Messenian frontier patrol of five hundred men suddenly came up, the defeated body rallied again, and Philopœmen, fearing to be surrounded, and wishing to be careful of the lives of his men, retired into mountainous ground, himself protecting the rear, making frequent charges, and drawing the whole attack of the enemy upon himself.
VI. And now, in the eighth year of the Messenian war, piety succeeded where pride and revenge had failed, and the Spartans permitted other objects to divide their attention with the siege of Ithome. It was one of the finest characteristics of that singular people, their veneration for antiquity.
This they fortified; and, occupying also the neighbouring lands, declared open war upon their lords. As the Messenians were the more worthy enemy, so the general insurrection is known by the name of the Third Messenian War.
There was a temple on the boundary of Messenia and Laconia, where the people of both countries used to assemble on certain days to offer up sacrifices to the gods. The Messenian lads, seeing the beauty of the Spartan girls, and longing to have such strong, handsome, and intelligent wives, once carried off a few of them into their own country, and refused to give them up again.
For they falling into sedition, and Aratus being just too late with his succors, Philip, who got into the city one day before him, at once blew up the flame of contention amongst them, asking privately, on the one hand, the Messenian generals, if they had not laws whereby to suppress the insolence of the common people, and on the other, the leaders of the people, whether they had not hands to help themselves against their oppressors.
Passing over Simonides of Amorgos, who is chiefly celebrated for a very ungallant but ingenious and smooth satire on women, and over Tyrtae'us, whose animating and patriotic odes, as we have seen, proved the safety of Sparta in one of the Messenian wars, we come to the first truly lyric poet of Greece Alcman originally a Lydian slave in a Spartan family, but emancipated by his master on account of his genius.
Its principal river, the Pami'sus, rising in the mountains of Arcadia, flows southward to the Messenian Gulf through a beautiful plain, the lower portion of which was so celebrated for its fertility that it was called Maca'ria, or "the blessed;" and even to this day it is covered with plantations of the vine, the fig, and the mulberry, and is "as rich in cultivation as can be well imagined."
And in the first place, he privately injured the younger Aratus in his wife, which was not known of a good while, because he was lodged and entertained at their house; then he began to be more rough and untractable in the domestic politics of Greece, and showed plainly that he was wishing to shake himself loose of Aratus. This the Messenian affairs first gave occasion to suspect.
The personal history of Tyrtaeus, and his warlike songs which roused the fainting courage of the Spartans during the second Messenian war, have already been mentioned. Alcman was originally a Lydian slave in a Spartan family, and was emancipated by his master. He lived shortly after the second Messenian war.
Here he boldly entered the temple of Athené of the Brazen House and hung up his shield there as a mark of defiance to his enemies, placing on it an inscription which said that Aristomenes presented it as an offering from Spartan spoil. The Messenian maidens crowned their hero with garlands, and danced around him, singing a war strain in honor of his victories over his foes.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking