Kitap 4
26.1
Afterwards, as at all times, they were stirred by their hatred against the Lacedaemonians, and provided the most striking example of their hostility towards them in the war which took place between the Peloponnesians and the Athenians. For they offered Naupactus as a base against Peloponnese, and Messenian slingers from Naupactus helped to capture the Spartans cut off in Sphacteria.
26.2
When the Athenian reverse at Aegospotami took place, the Lacedaemonians, having command of the sea, then drove the Messenians from Naupactus; they went to their kinsmen in Sicily and to Rhegium, but the majority came to Libya and to the Euesperitae there, who had suffered severely in war with barbarian neighbors and were inviting any Greek to join them. So the majority of the Messenians went to them, their leader being Comon, who had commanded them in Sphacteria.
26.3
A year before the victory of the Thebans at Leuctra, heaven foretold their return to Peloponnese to the Messenians. It is said that in Messene on the Straits the priest of Heracles saw a vision in a dream: it seemed that Heracles Manticlus was bidden by Zeus as a guest to Ithome. Also among the Euesperitae Comon dreamt that he lay with his dead mother, but that afterwards she came to life again. He hoped that as the Athenians had recovered their seapower, they would be restored to Naupactus. But the dream really indicated the recovery of Messene.
26.4
Not long afterwards the Lacedaemonians suffered at Leuctra the disaster that had long been due. For at the end of the oracle given to Aristodemus, who reigned over the Messenians, are the words:Act as fate wills, destruction comes on this man before that,signifying that he and the Messenians must suffer evil at the present, but that hereafter destruction would overtake Lacedaemon.
