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And no wonder, that Messenians and certain Peloponnesians should act contrary to what their reason approves; but you, who understand yourselves, and by us orators are told, how you are plotted against, how you are inclosed! you, I fear, to escape present exertion, will come to ruin ere you are aware. So doth the moment's case and indulgence prevail over distant advantage.
Think of some of the remains of the Greek art of that Victory, for instance, which the Messenians set on the temple at Olympia in 421 B.C. She stood on a block of stone on the temple, but the block was painted blue, so that, as the spectator came up, he saw the temple and the angle of its roof, and then a gap of blue sky and the goddess just alighting on the summit of the temple.
The Argives and the Arcadians of Megalopolis were in league with Messenia, but Sparta had her allies in the Peloponnesus, and even Athens was suspected of favoring her cause. It does not appear that any open hostilities had taken place; but about this time the fears of the Messenians induced them to solicit the alliance of Philip.
Some time after this, the Lacedaemonians sent a second time to desire succor of the Athenians against the Messenians and Helots, who had seized upon Ithome. But when they came, fearing their boldness and gallantry, of all that came to their assistance, they sent them only back, alleging that they were designing innovations.
Demosthenes, an active Athenian officer, who was on board the fleet, thought it an eligible spot on which to establish some of the Messenians from Naupactus, since it was a strong position, from which they might annoy the Lacedaemonians, and excite revolt among their Helot kinsmen.
And plundering the land of Patrae and Dyme in their way, they invaded Messene and ravaged it; at which Aratus being indignant, and finding that Timoxenus, then general, was hesitating and letting the time go by, being now on the point of laying down his office, in which he himself was chosen to succeed him, he anticipated the proper term by five days, that he might bring relief to the Messenians.
The Messenians had formerly lived under a dynasty of their own kings; but for the last three centuries their land had been in the possession of the Lacedaemonians, and they had been fugitives upon the face of the earth. The restoration of these exiles, dispersed in various Hellenic colonies, to their former rights, would plant a bitterly hostile neighbour on the very borders of Laconia.
There were two wars with the Messenians, both full of stories of daring and disaster, but it is the second of these with which we are specially concerned, that in which the hero Aristomenes won his fame. We shall not ask our readers to believe all that is told about this ancient champion. Much of it is very doubtful.
But finding them armed and well prepared, they retired into the towns and openly made war with them, gaining over a number of the Laconians of the country districts; while at the same time the Messenians, also, made an attack upon the Spartans, who therefore despatched Periclidas to Athens to solicit succor, of whom Aristophanes says in mockery that he came and
Many of the vanquished Messenians escaped from their country to Arcadia and Argolis. Some of them fled farther, and founded Rhegium in Lower Italy.
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