94 Conquest
Carneia eight years before, is thought to have played an especially prominent
role—was occasioned by Sparta’s defeat,^71 and it is easy to see how such a pio-
neering effort, resulting in a festival unique to Lacedaemon, might be con-
nected with other innovations of a political, social, and military nature, simi-
larly peculiar to Sparta, which were meant to have practical consequences.
But if Hysiae did not do the trick, there was one other event that occurred
in this period that would have shaken from dogmatic slumber any people
similarly situated. Two generations after Theopompus had brought the First
Messenian War to a successful conclusion, the Messenians threw off their
tributary status and staged a revolt, the Second Messenian War began, and
the Argives, the Arcadians, and others within the Peloponnesus once again
jumped in with glee to lend the rebels help.^72
We do not know what occasioned this revolt. But, given its timing, it is
easy to guess. When Tyrtaeus, who was a contemporary, spoke of a war fought
by “the fathers of our fathers,” he is likely to have said precisely what he
meant—that the grandsons of the young men finally victorious in the First
Messenian War had to confront the revolt that took place in his own day. This
would suggest that Pausanias may have been in error when he dated its out-
break to 685, just thirty-nine years after the date he gave for the end of Sparta’s
original war of conquest.^73
Elsewhere, Pausanias tells a tale suggesting a slightly later date for the
Second Messenian War. The revolt purportedly centered on Andania at the
entrance to the Soulima valley. Its initial stage lasted three years and came
to an abrupt end when the Spartans bribed the Arcadian general Aristocrates,
king of Orchomenos, and his treachery occasioned the Messenians’ defeat at
the Battle of the Great Trench. So the geographer reports. Kallisthenes, Poly-
bius, and Plutarch agree, and Tyrtaeus, who described the battle, is quite likely
to have been their chief source. In the aftermath, Pausanias adds, Aristomenes,
the Messenian leader, retreated with his men to Mount Eira near the Neda
River on the Arcadian borders. From there, he and his adherents conducted
a guerrilla war for another eleven years, and the last holdouts fled from Mes-
senia 287 years before Epaminondas’ liberation of the region in 370.^74 This
would mean that this particular struggle went on for fourteen years from 671
to 657.
Chronologically, the latter set of dates dovetails with another story told by
Pausanias, which may well deserve credit, for it seems to have had its origins