Pausanias Analysis

Aigila is a place in Lakonia, where there stands a sanctuary sacred to Demeter. Here Aristomenes and his men, knowing that women were celebrating a festival and intending to defend themselves, met resistance from the women, who must have been inspired by the goddess herself. Many of the Messenians received wounds from the knives with which the women were sacrificing the animals, and also from the spits used for roasting and skewering meat. Aristomenes himself, struck with torches, was captured alive. Even so, he managed to escape back to Messenia that very night. The priestess of Demeter, Archidameia, was the reason he was released; she freed him not for money, but because she had previously been in love with him. Nevertheless, she claimed that Aristomenes had loosened his bonds and fled after overhearing a conversation.

In the third year of the war, when battle was about to occur at the place called the Great Trench, the Arcadians from all their cities had come to help the Messenians. Aristocrates son of Hicetas of Trapezus, who was king of the Arcadians and at this time their general, was bribed with money by the Lacedaemonians, who thus corrupted him. The Lacedaemonians were, as far as we know, the first to give gifts to a hostile leader, and they were the first to establish the practice of purchasing victory in war.

But until the Lacedaemonians committed unlawful deeds in the Messenian war, and before the treachery of Aristocrates the Arcadian, those engaged in the fighting were distinguished both by valor and by fortunes sent from the god. Afterwards, the Lacedaemonians are shown again, at the time when they attacked the ships of the Athenians at Aegospotami, to have bribed others among the Athenian generals, and Adeimantus in particular.

Yet in due time the Lacedaemonians themselves also experienced the so-called "punishment of Neoptolemus." Neoptolemus, son of Achilles, had slain Priam upon the altar of Zeus Herkeios, and afterwards he himself was likewise slain at Delphi at the altar of Apollo. Due to this occurrence, the suffering of one who endures a fate similar to that he has previously inflicted is called the "punishment of Neoptolemus."

Thus the Lacedaemonians, precisely at the time when they flourished greatly, having subdued the naval power of the Athenians, while Agesilaus had already secured control over most of Asia, could not succeed in entirely overthrowing the empire of the Medes. Instead, the Barbarian outmaneuvered them by employing their own invention against them, dispatching money to Corinth, Argos, Athens, and Thebes. Indeed, the war known as the Corinthian was kindled by these very funds, compelling Agesilaus himself to abandon his achievements in Asia.

But for the Lacedaemonians, this stratagem against the Messenians the divinity was already preparing to turn into a disaster. Aristocrates, after receiving money from Sparta, for the moment kept secret from the Arcadians the treachery he planned against them. But when the battle was about to begin, he suddenly alarmed them, saying that they were caught in a difficult position, that retreat would be impossible if they were defeated, and claiming also that the sacrifices had not proved favorable for them. Thus, he commanded that when he himself should give the signal, everyone should immediately take to flight.

But when the Lacedaemonians joined battle and the Messenians were directing their attention to them, at this moment Aristocrates, as soon as the battle had commenced, withdrew the Arcadians. Thus the left wing and the centre of the Messenians were left isolated; for the Arcadians had occupied both positions, since both the Eleans were absent from the battle, as likewise were the Argives and Sicyonians. Aristocrates also committed another treachery: he directed his flight straight through the ranks of the Messenians.

Faced with circumstances they had not expected, they became panic-stricken and, at the same time, were confounded by the Arcadians' withdrawal from their side, so that most of them even forgot the weapons in their hands. Instead of charging upon the Lacedaemonians, they found themselves watching, as the Arcadians were already fleeing. Some of them begged them to remain, while others hurled insults at them, accusing them of betrayal and injustice.

When the Messenians became isolated, the encircling of them was no difficult task for the Lacedaemonians, and they gained a victory that was both exceedingly easy and without trouble of any kind. Aristomenes and those with him maintained their resistance and made an effort to repel the Spartans who pressed them hardest, but as they were few, their actions brought little benefit. Of the Messenians, such a great number of common people perished that those who had at first thought they might reverse their fate, becoming masters over the Lacedaemonians instead of slaves, now lost even any hope of survival itself. Among the leaders who died were Androcles and Phintas, and especially Phanas, who fought with exceptional distinction and who had previously gained an Olympic victory in the long race.

After the battle Aristomenes gathered together the Messenians who had escaped and persuaded most of the inhabitants of Andania and any other towns in the interior country to abandon them, settling instead upon the mountain called Eira. When the Messenians had collected in this place, the Lacedaemonians immediately took up a position against them, thinking they would soon reduce them by siege. Nevertheless, despite the disaster at the trench, the Messenians held out while continually defending themselves for eleven years.

That the duration of the siege was indeed long is indicated also by the following verses composed by Rhianus concerning the Lacedaemonians: "Around the folds of the silvery mountain they campaigned for two and twenty seasons, winters and grass-times all together." For he counted winters and summers, calling "grass-times" the green corn or the crop slightly before harvest.