Book 8
4.10
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;The first war dates from the year B. C. 743, and continued 20 years. The second, beginning from 682 B. C., lasted 14 years; the third concluded in the year 456 B. C., with the capture of Ithome, which was the citadel or fort of Messene. Diod. Sic. lib. xv. c. 66. 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.
