Description of Greece

​When they returned, at first there was nothing to fear from the Lacedaemonians; for the Lacedaemonians, held by fear of the Thebans, tolerated both the resettlement of Messene and the gathering of the Arcadians into one city. But when the Phocian war, also called the Sacred War, withdrew the Thebans from the Peloponnese, the Lacedaemonians took heart again and could no longer keep their hands off the Messenians.

​The Messenians themselves, together with the Argives and Arcadians, held out in the war and begged the Athenians to help them; the Athenians said they would never invade Laconia with them, but promised that they themselves would also be present to help if the Lacedaemonians began war and marched against Messenia. Finally, the Messenians became allies of Philip, the son of Amyntas, and the Macedonians, and they say that this prevented them from taking part in the struggle that befell the Greeks at Chaeronea; yet they did not wish to take up arms against the Greeks either.

​But when Alexander died and the Greeks then undertook their second war against the Macedonians, the Messenians also took part in the war, just as I showed before in my Attic history. But they did not fight against the Galatians together with the Greeks, since Cleonymus and the Lacedaemonians were unwilling to make a treaty with them.

​Not long after, the Messenians held Elis, employing both skill and daring together. For in the most ancient times, the Eleans were the best governed of the Peloponnesians; but when Philip, the son of Amyntas, did mischief to Greece in all the other ways that have been mentioned, and corrupted the powerful men of the Eleans with money, the Eleans then for the first time fell into faction and, as they say, resorted to arms.

​After this, they were destined to become still more easily hostile to one another, since indeed their counsels were divided also on account of the Lacedaemonians, and they went on to a civil war. Learning of these things, the Lacedaemonians prepared to assist those of the Eleans who favored their cause. And while they were being drawn up by divisions and distributed into companies, a thousand chosen men of the Messenians arrived at Elis beforehand, having Laconian devices on their shields.

​When those of the Eleans who were well-disposed to the Spartans saw the shields, they hoped that an allied force had arrived for them and received the men inside the wall; but the Messenians, having entered in the manner described, drove out those who favored the Lacedaemonians, and turned the city over to their own faction.

​Indeed, this device belongs to Homer, and the Messenians appear to have imitated it at the proper time, since Homer in the Iliad made Patroclus put on the armor of Achilles, and said that an impression was created among the barbarians that Achilles was advancing, and that their front ranks were thrown into confusion. Other stratagems also have been devised by Homer: that two spies from the Greeks, instead of one, went in the night to the Trojans, and that later a man, in word a deserter but in deed to busy himself with their secrets, entered Ilium.

​Moreover, those among the Trojans who because of youth or old age were not of the right age to fight, these he ordered to guard the wall, while those of age were encamped against the Greeks; and of the Greeks, those who had wounds armed the fighting force in his description, so that they themselves should not be altogether idle. Thus, the works of Homer became useful to men for all things.