Description of Greece

​Thereafter—for destiny was already inclining toward the capture of the Messenians—the god foretold to them the future. For the statue of Artemis, being itself of bronze as well as its weapons, let go of its shield; and when Aristodemus was about to sacrifice the victims to Ithomaian Zeus, the rams, of their own accord, having violently dashed their horns against the altar, died from the blow. A third other thing happened to them: the dogs, gathering together in the same place every night, howled, and finally departed in a pack toward the camp of the Lacedaemonians.

​These things indeed troubled Aristodemus, and a vision of a dream that followed was of this sort. It seemed to him, as he was about to go out to battle and was armed, that the entrails of the victims lay before him on a table, and that his daughter appeared to him wearing a black garment and showing both her breast and her belly ripped open, and having appeared, she threw away the things from the table, took away his weapons, and instead of these, placed a golden crown upon him and threw a white cloak around him.

​While Aristodemus was despondent in other respects and believed that the dream foretold the end of his life—because the Messenians conducted the funerals of distinguished citizens crowned and wrapped in white cloaks—someone reported that Ophioneus the seer no longer saw but had suddenly become blind, just as he had been from the beginning. Then indeed they also understood the oracle, that the Pythia meant the eyes of Ophioneus as the two that emerged from the ambush and returned again to destiny.

​Thereupon Aristodemus, reflecting upon his family affairs, how he had become the slayer of his daughter to no avail, and seeing no hope of safety still remaining for his country, slew himself upon his child’s tomb, having, as far as human calculation went, saved the Messenians, though fortune brought both his deeds and his plans to nothing. He died after having reigned six years and a few months into the seventh.

​The Messenians were inclined to despair of their affairs, so that they even set out to send a supplication to the Lacedaemonians; so greatly did the death of Aristodemus dismay them. And their spirit indeed restrained them from doing this; and having gathered into an assembly, they chose no king, but elected Damis as general with absolute power. And he, having chosen Cleonnis and Phyleus as his colleagues, prepared to join battle even under the present circumstances; for they were compelled by the siege and, not least, by the famine, and the fear arising from it lest they should perish beforehand from want.

​In courage indeed and daring deeds, the affairs of the Messenians were not lacking even then; but all their generals died, as well as those of the others who were most worthy of mention. After this, they held out for about five months at most, and around the end of the year they abandoned Ithome, having waged war for twenty years in all, just as has been written in verse by Tyrtaeus: “And in the twentieth year they, leaving their rich fields, fled from the great mountains of Ithome. “ ​This war reached its end in the first year of the fourteenth Olympiad, in which Dasmon of Corinth won the stade-race, while at Athens the Medontidae still held their decennial rule, and the fourth year of the rule of Hippomenes had been completed.