offering, and on a second message to the oracle, discloses the place where she had concealed the deposit. (150) This story reappears in a wholly different form, in the version of it adopted by Ephorus. According to this version, Periander made a vow that he would dedicate a statue of gold, if he gained the victory in the chariot-race at Olympia. Having been successful, he was in want of gold for the sacred offering; and he procured it, by stripping the women of their golden ornaments, when they were assembled at a festival. (151) Another account of the origin of the golden statue of the Cypselida is cited from the work of a certain Agaclytus, upon Olympia. This writer stated that it was dedicated by Cypselus, who defrayed the expenses of it by a property-tax of ten per cent. continued for ten years. Didymus however affirmed that it was dedicated by Periander, not by Cypselus; and that his object was to check the luxury and repress the self-reliance of the Corinthians. These variations of the same story, mixed up with the explanation of a celebrated sacred offering, are infallible marks of a legendary origin. The marvellous story of Arion and the Dolphin is likewise connected with Periander. Arion is described as having passed the chief part of his life at the court of Periander, and as having returned to him from Tænarum after his miraculous preservation by the dolphin.(152) It can scarcely be doubted that this story was suggested by a statue of a man sitting on a dolphin which was dedicated by Arion at Tænarum.(153) (150) Herod. v. 92. (151) Diog. Laert. i. 96. (152) Photius and Suidas in Kveðið☎v áváðŋua. It is stated that under this statue there was inscribed the following couplet, which we must suppose to have been placed there after the fall of the Cypselidæ : αὐτὸς ἐγὼ χρυσους σφυρήλατος εἰμι κολοσσός See Fragm. Hist. Gr. vol. iv. : p. 288. The story of Cypselus levying a property-tax of ten per cent. for ten years, and thus fulfilling a vow that, if he became despot of Corinth, he would consecrate the entire property of the people to Jupiter, is also told in Pseud-Aristot. Oecon. ii. 2, but without reference to the golden statue or to any other offering. A treasury of Cypselus at Delphi is mentioned by Herod. i. 14. (153) Herod. i. 24, describes this as the offering of Arion, but he does The despotic dynasty of the Orthagoride at Sicyon was nearly contemporary with that of the Cypselide at Corinth. It lasted from about 670 to 570 B.C., and consisted of three rulers, Orthagoras, Myron, and Cleisthenes. Of the two first, no detailed accounts are preserved;(154) of the last some stories are related by Herodotus, illustrative of his enmity to Argos. The narrative of his proceeding respecting the Sicyonian tribes, and of his imposing opprobrious names upon three of them, derived from the swine and the ass, may be founded on fact; but all such stories explanatory of proper names are suspicious, unless they can be traced to contemporary testimony.(155) not say that Arion is himself represented: καὶ ̓Αρίονός ἐστι ἀνάθημα χαλκέον οὐ μέγα ἐπὶ Ταινάρῳ, ἐπὶ δελφῖνος ἐπεὼν ἄνθρωπος. Paus. ii. 25. § 7, speaks of it as the brazen statue of Arion on a dolphin.__Compare Ælian, Hist. An. xii. 45. Gellius, xvi. 19, repeats the story of Herodotus. Bianor, a Greek poet of the age of Augustus, makes the dolphin bring Arion, not to Tænarum, but to Corinth; Anth. Pal. ix. 308; See Lorentz, de Orig. Vet. Tarent. P. 16-21. (Berlin, 1827.) Col. Mure remarks that if Herodotus did think fit to devote any considerable share of his text to the affairs of Corinth, we had a right to expect that he would give a preference to those possessing real importance. But instead of this, while a very liberal allowance of his text has been given to the history of Corinth, or rather of Periander, it has been allotted all but exclusively to popular and for the most part scandalous and fabulous anecdotes; Hist. of Gr. Lit. vol. iv. p. 392. Periander died in 585 B.C., just a century before the birth of Herodotus, after having been master of Corinth, according to Aristotle, for forty-four years. It is by no means certain that in his lifetime the memory of the genuine history of Corinth during the years 629-585 B.C. was preserved, or that the stories then current concerning that period were not all of the same legendary character as those which he has reported. Herodotus has preserved scarcely any authentic history for the same period at Athens and Sparta. Col. Mure afterwards says that the historian's notices of Periander of Corinth present anomalies justifying the belief that it embodies, not so much the result of his own impartial research as the calumnies of the then popular party in the Corinthian state, in whose traditions he had been led, from whatever cause, to repose too implicit a confidence ;' ib. p. 497. It seems however more probable that they were stories which had been modified by popular tradition, without any determinate political influence. (154) An anachronism in Pausanias respecting Tartessian brass in the thesaurus of Myron at Olympia is pointed out by Mr. Grote, vol. iii. p. 44, note. (155) Herod. v. 67, cf. vi. 126. Herodotus states that the names imposed by Cleisthenes remained in use for sixty years after his death, when the Sicyonians changed them to the names of the Doric tribes, Hylleis, Pamphyli, and Dymanatæ. If the names had been considered insulting, Aristotle gives to the Orthagoridæ generally the character of popular rulers; he says that they observed the laws of their country, and made themselves beloved by personal attentions to the citizens. He mentions an anecdote of Cleisthenes having rewarded a person who decided against him in some disputed question as to a victory at public games; this story was, it seems, connected with a sitting statue extant in his time in the market-place at Sicyon.(156) We are quite ignorant as to Aristotle's means of information respecting the history of Sicyon during this early period. § 15 We find no detailed accounts in Lacedæmonian history above the kings Leon and Hegesicles, who lived about 600 B.C., until we reach the time of the Messenian wars. Of these ancient wars there is no mention in Herodotus, (157) and they are not alluded to by Thucydides. The earliest extant writer who speaks of the war by which Sparta subjugated Messenia, is Isocrates, who in his Archidamus, composed soon after the battle of Leuctra, and the restoration of the Messenians by Epaminondas, represents it in the following manner.(15) His account is, that the Messenians assassinated their king and founder, Cresphontes, the Heraclid; that his sons came to Sparta, as suppliants, offering their country as the price of assistance; that the Spartans consulted the oracle of Delphi, which advised them to accept the gift and avenge the wrongs of the sons of the murdered king; and that they thereupon laid siege to Messene, and, after a long contest, succeeded in con they would probably have been changed as soon as the despotism was overthrown. According to this statement, the suppression of the Cleisthenean names took place about 510 B.C. (156) Pol. v. 12. (157) The only mention of a Messenian war in Herodotus is the cursory allusion in ix. 35, which is to the war called the Third Messenian War. (464454 B.c.) Here πρὸς Ἰσθμῷ for πρὸς Ἰθώμῃ is probably an ancient corruption; see Müller. Dor. i. 9, § 10, note. It has been already remarked that the ancient MSS. more often err in proper names than in other parts of the text. (158) See Archidam. § 23-4, 33-4, ed. Bekker. The Archidamus was completed in 366 B.C. The battle of Leuctra was in 371, and the restoration of Messenia in 369 B.C. quering the country. (159) According to this view of the conquest of Messenia, it must have taken place soon after the return of the Heraclidæ, in 1104 B.C. Aristotle likewise speaks of the Messenian war as prior to Lycurgus:(160) he probably conceived it as falling under the early kings. Ephorus, however, the contemporary of Isocrates, who appears to have related this war in his history, placed its commencement at the time which was assumed by later writers; namely, soon after the reign of Teleclus, the eighth king of Sparta from Eurysthenes, (161) and therefore nine generations after the date supposed by Isocrates. A detailed narrative of the wars by which Sparta subjugated Messenia is extant in the work of Pausanias, who wrote in the time of the Antonines. According to his statement, there were two Messenian wars: the first of which lasted twenty years, from 743 to 723 B.C.; while the second, which was intended to repress an attempt at independence, began after an interval of thirty-eight years, and lasted seventeen years from 685 to 668 B.C.(162) Pausanias describes himself as having derived his narrative from two principal sources; the prose history of the first war, by Myron of Priene, and the epic poem of Rhianus of (159) Archidamus proceeds to say that their title to the Messenian territory is as good as their title to the Laconian territory; namely, the gift of the Heraclidæ, the declaration of the Delphic oracle, and conquest; § 25-6, 35-7. According to Pausan. iv. 3, § 4, 5, iv. 5, § 1, Cresphontes courted the people, and was in consequence put to death, together with his sons, by the aristocratic party. His son pytus, who was in Arcadia, alone escaped, and was afterwards restored to the throne by the Arcadians, by the Lacedæmonians under Eurysthenes and Procles, and by the Argives under Simus the son of Temenus. Apollod. ii. 8, § 5, says that Cresphontes and two of his sons were killed by the Messenians, but he represents Epytus as returning secretly, and recovering his kingdom by the murder of the usurper Polyphontes. (160) Pol. ii. 9. Mr. Clinton's alteration of this passage, in order to make it harmonize with Pausanias, is not admissible; F. H. vol. i. p. 143, note. It (161) Fragm. 53, ed. Didot. Niebuhr, ib. p. 172, thinks that Ephorus gave a true, though perhaps a brief, history of the Messenian wars. does not however appear that Ephorus could have had access to any materials from which a true history of these wars could be written. (162) Concerning the chronology of the Messenian wars, see Clinton, F. H. vol. i. p. 250-7. Some accounts made an interval of eighty or ninety years between the two wars. Crete, on the second. (163) Rhianus is stated to have lived at the end of the third century, B.C., and Myron probably belonged to the same age. (164) These writers doubtless composed their works under the influence of the feelings produced by the restoration of Messenia. After the Messenians had recovered their independence, the ancient wars in which they had been subjugated by Sparta were invested with a halo of patriotism, and became a theme for authors who wished to strike upon this new chord of sympathy. When Herodotus wrote, their history had been forgotten, and there was no national feeling to create a légendary interest in their favour; but after the time of Epaminondas, a new Messenian sentiment had grown up, and the revival of Messenian independence produced the same demand for an account of the Messenian wars, as the greatness of Rome produced for a history of the period of its kings, and of the first centuries of the Republic. The narrative of Pausanias shows out of how small a stock of authentic information the ancients were able to fabricate a detailed history. The Messenian wars, however early their time, must indeed be considered as historical; for the poems of Tyrtæus, in which they were mentioned, were extant in antiquity, and Tyrtæus was contemporary with the second war, and was divided only by a generation from the first. He describes the first war as having been carried on by the grandfathers of the living generation;(165) a period quite within accurate memory. A few allusions in Tyrtæus, and some popular stories, floating among the Messenians, were probably the entire materials from which the works, followed by Pausanias, were constructed. His narrative of the Messenian wars is a mere political romance, composed of imaginary (163) iv. 6. The Messenian wars appear to have been fully related in the lost seventh book of Diodorus; see vii. 7, 8, 12-14. (164) See Fragm. Hist. Gr. vol. iv. p. 460. (165) αμφ' αὐτὴν δ ̓ ἐμαχοντ ̓ ἐννεακαίδεκ ̓ ἔτη νωλεμέως, αἰεὶ ταλασίφρονα θυμὸν ἔχοντες, αἰχμηταὶ, πατέρων ἡμετέρων πατέρες. Fragm. 4, Schneidewin. The city of Messene, besieged by the Spartans, is signified in these verses. |