Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
It was the duty of the pilots, as they steered between the islands, and turned the Capes of Malea and Tænarium, to preserve the just order and regular intervals of such a multitude of ships: as the wind was fair and moderate, their labors were not unsuccessful, and the troops were safely disembarked at Methone on the Messenian coast, to repose themselves for a while after the fatigues of the sea.
They held Pylos, which was garrisoned by Messenian troops, and served as an open door, through which they could carry havoc over the whole western district of Laconia; and the occupation of Cythera, which was effected in the following year, gave them increased facility for harassing the commerce of Sparta, and making descents on her eastern coast.
It is not within the plan of my undertaking to retail at length the legendary and for the most part fabulous accounts of the first and second Messenian wars.
Of these wars the two waged against Messenia were the most celebrated and the most important. They were both long protracted and obstinately contested. They both ended in the victory of Sparta, and in the subjugation of Messenia. These facts are beyond dispute; but of the details we have no trustworthy narrative. The FIRST MESSENIAN WAR lasted from B.C. 743 to 724.
They rode into the Messenian territory, met Deinokrates near the hill of Evander, and put him to flight.
Here, fortified alike by art and nature, they sustained a siege of eleven years. But with the eleventh the term of their resistance was completed. The slave of a Spartan of rank had succeeded in engaging the affections of a Messenian woman who dwelt without the walls of the mountain fortress.
A Messenian exile, named Melanthus, accepted it, slew his antagonist by a stratagem, and, deposing the cowardly Athenian, obtained the sovereignty of Athens.
In the Messenian territory, the Bishop of Modon, having made his guard of Janissaries drunk, cut the whole of them to pieces; and then encamping on the heights of Navarin, his lordship blockaded that fortress.
As soon as day broke, the rest of the army landed, that is to say, all the crews of rather more than seventy ships, except the lowest rank of oars, with the arms they carried, eight hundred archers, and as many targeteers, the Messenian reinforcements, and all the other troops on duty round Pylos, except the garrison on the fort.
For many years afterwards the war-songs of Tyrtæus remained highly popular at Sparta, and some of them have come down to our own days. As for the actual history of this war, most of what we know seems to have been written by Tyrtæus, who was thus not only the poet but the historian of the Messenian wars. We have told how Sparta came to have an aristocratic government, under the laws of Lycurgus.
Word Of The Day