Pausanias Analysis

From this time onward their hatred against the Lacedaemonians persisted, and they demonstrated their hostility most strongly during the war which broke out between the Peloponnesians and the Athenians; for they offered Naupactus as a base to operate against the Peloponnese, and Messenian slingers from Naupactus assisted in cutting off the Spartans who had been trapped on the island of Sphacteria.

When the disaster at Aegospotami befell the Athenians, the Spartans, having now supremacy at sea, expelled also the Messenians from Naupactus. These Messenians were sent partly to their kin in Sicily and partly to Rhegium, but most of them reached Libya, particularly Euesperitae in Libya. For the people of Euesperitae, severely harassed in war by the neighboring barbarians, called upon every Greek to come and settle together with them. To these people, therefore, most of the Messenians withdrew. Their leader was Comon, who had previously commanded them at Sphacteria.

A year before the success of the Thebans at Leuctra, the deity had already indicated to the Messenians their return to the Peloponnese. At Messene near the strait, the priest of Heracles, they say, beheld a vision in a dream: it seemed to Mantiklos (for this was the priest's name) that Heracles had been summoned as a guest to Ithome by Zeus. At Euesperitae, again, Comon dreamed that he lay with his dead mother, and while he slept beside her she returned to life again. Comon expected that, once the Athenians acquired naval supremacy, the Messenians would return to Naupactus, but the dream in fact foreshadowed the revival of Messene itself.

Not long afterward occurred the disaster of the Lacedaemonians at Leuctra, an event long overdue. For its origin goes back to Aristodemus, who had reigned over the Messenians, and at his death an oracle had foretold: "Act as fate ordains; ruin comes upon various men at various times." At that time, accordingly, destruction was fated for Aristodemus himself and for the Messenians, but at a later period it was to overtake even Lacedaemon.

Then at this time, after the Thebans had been victorious at Leuctra, they sent messengers to Italy and Sicily, and also to the Euesperitae in Libya. They summoned the Messenians from everywhere—if any were anywhere—to return to the Peloponnese. The Messenians gathered together more swiftly than one might have expected, owing both to longing for their native land and to the hatred toward the Lacedaemonians that had always remained with them.

But Epaminondas saw clearly that it was not otherwise easy to found a city capable of resisting the Lacedaemonians; nor could he find an appropriate place in the region for settlement. The Messenians declared they would not re-inhabit Andania and Oichalia, because their past misfortunes had occurred while they lived there. Then, as he was at a loss, they say that a figure of an aged man, resembling a priestly interpreter of sacred rites, stood by him at night and said: "It is granted to you by me that you shall prevail over whomever you attack in warfare. And even should you depart from this life as mortal men do, I will ensure, O Theban, that your name shall never be without fame or honour. As for you, restore to the Messenians their native land and cities, since the wrath of the Dioscuri toward them has now ceased."

These words he spoke to Epaminondas; but to Epiteles, the son of Aeschines—whom the Argives had chosen as their general to resettle Messene—the dream gave the following message: it bid this man, wherever on Ithome he found a growing ivy and myrtle, to dig between them and rescue the old woman, who lay exhausted and close to fainting, imprisoned in a bronze chamber. Therefore Epiteles, as soon as day dawned, went to the appointed place and began digging; he quickly chanced upon a bronze water-urn, and then immediately went to Epaminondas.

He recounted the dream he had received, and instructed the other man, after removing that very lid, to examine what was inside. Having offered sacrifice and prayed to the deity who had appeared to him in the dream, the latter opened the vessel; once opened, he found a very thinly beaten sheet of tin, rolled up like a scroll. Inscribed thereupon was the rite of the Great Gods, which had been entrusted there by Aristomenes. The one who appeared to Epiteles and Epaminondas while they were sleeping is said to have been Caucon, who had come from Athens to Andania, near Triopian Messene.