Description of Greece

​When Alcamenes died, Polydorus the son of Alcamenes succeeded to the kingdom, and the Lacedaemonians sent a colony to Italy, both to Croton and to the Locrians near the Zephyrian promontory, and the so-called Messenian war reached its height especially during the reign of Polydorus. But the Lacedaemonians and the Messenians do not give the same causes for the war.

​Therefore, the things said by them, and what kind of end this war had, the subsequent parts of my narrative will show; but in the present we will mention only this much of them, namely that in the former war against the Messenians, Theopompus the son of Nicander, being the king of the other house, led the Lacedaemonians for the most part. And when the war against Messene had been fought to an end and Messenia was already won by the spear for the Lacedaemonians, Polydorus, who was in high repute in Sparta and was most of all in favor with the Lacedaemonian people—for he displayed no violent deed or insolent speech to anyone, and in his judgments he guarded justice not without humanity—and while Polydorus already had a glorious ​name throughout all Greece, Polemarchus, a man of a not undistinguished house in Lacedaemon, but of a rather rash disposition as he showed by his action, murdered Polydorus. And when he was dead, many and noteworthy honors were bestowed upon him by the Lacedaemonians. However, there is also a tomb of Polemarchus in Sparta, whether because he had previously been considered a good man, or because his relatives buried him secretly.

​Under the reign of Eurycrates, the son of Polydorus, the Messenians indeed submitted to being subjects of the Lacedaemonians, and nothing of a revolutionary nature came to them from the Argive people; but under Anaxander, the son of Eurycrates—for fate was already driving the Messenians outside the whole of the Peloponnese—the Messenians revolted from the Lacedaemonians. And for a time they held out in war; but when they were conquered, they departed from the Peloponnese under a truce, while those of them who were left behind in the land became slaves of the Lacedaemonians, except for those who held the towns on the sea.

​Now the things that happened during the war, which the Messenians waged after revolting from the Lacedaemonians, it was not opportune for me to set forth in the present treatise; but the son of Anaxander was Eurycrates, and the son of Eurycrates the second was Leon. Under their reigns, the Lacedaemonians suffered defeats for the most part in the war against the Tegeans. But under Anaxandridas, the son of Leon, they became superior to the Tegeans in the war; and they became so in this way. A Lacedaemonian man, Lichas by name, came to Tegea;

​and at that time the cities happened to be observing a truce. When Lichas arrived, they were searching for the bones of Orestes; and the Spartans were searching for them in accordance with an oracle. So Lichas understood that they were lying in the house of a smith, and he understood it in this way: whatever he saw in the smith’s shop, he compared it with the oracle from Delphi, likening the bellows of the smith to winds, because they too sent forth a violent blast, the hammer to “stroke”, and the anvil as “counter-stroke” to it, and the iron naturally to “grief” for man, because they were already using iron for battles; whereas for the times of those called heroes, the god would have said that bronze was a grief to man.

​And to the Athenians later an oracle similar to that given to the Lacedaemonians concerning the bones of Orestes was delivered, when they were bringing back Theseus from Scyros to Athens, stating that otherwise they could not capture Scyros; and Cimon, the son of Miltiades, found the bones of Theseus, he too having employed wisdom, and not long after he captured Scyros.

​And that in the times of the heroes their weapons were likewise all of bronze, is witnessed for me both by the verses of Homer which refer to the battle-axe of Peisander and to the arrow of Meriones. And my argument is also confirmed by other evidence, namely the spear of Achilles dedicated in the sanctuary of Athena at Phaselis, and the sword of Memnon in the temple of Asclepius at Nicomedia; for the spearhead and the butt-spike of the former, and the sword through its entirety, are made of bronze.

​Now these things indeed we know to be so. But Anaxandridas, the son of Leon, was the only Lacedaemonian who had two wives at the same time and maintained two households at the same time. For it happened that the wife who previously lived with him, though excellent in other respects, did not bear children. And when the ephors ordered him to send her away, he would by no means promise this, but he yielded to them so far as to take another wife in addition to her. And the one who came in afterwards bore a child Cleomenes, and the former wife, who had not conceived up to that time, after Cleomenes was already born, gave birth to Dorieus, and afterwards Leonidas, and after them Cleombrotus.

​When Anaxandridas died, the Lacedaemonians, although they considered Dorieus to be superior both in intellect and in matters of war, rejected him unwillingly, and gave the rule to Cleomenes in accordance with the laws of seniority.