106 Politics and Geopolitics
the renewed sense of civic purpose implicit in the audacious project that the
Lacedaemonians then undertook, that one must consider the geopolitical and
diplomatic dimension of the grand strategy they worked out in the wake of
their suppression of the seventh-century Messenian revolt.
Messenia
In 499, a Milesian notable made his way to Sparta, intent on persuading
the Lacedaemonians to support an uprising in Ionia that he had instigated
against a power then dominant in Anatolia and elsewhere in western Asia. In
pursuing this end, Herodotus reports, this figure tried to persuade the Agiad
king Cleomenes son of Anaxandridas that an invasion of Asia would secure
for Lacedaemon wealth on a scale almost unimaginable. “It is requisite,” he
asserted, “that you put aside your battles with the Messenians (with whom you
are equally matched) over territory narrowly confined, which is neither espe-
cially extensive nor serviceable; and you must also put aside your battles with
the Arcadians and the Argives, who possess none of the gold and silver for
which men with eagerness fight to the death.”^24
We do not know whether Herodotus accurately described the interchange
between the two men. It is conceivable that, many years later, he managed
to interview Cleomenes’ daughter Gorgo, who, as a youngster, figures prom-
inently in the tale. It is also conceivable (but not at all likely) that he invented
the dialogue himself. Either way, however, the story is telling. For, at the very
least, it indicates what Greeks in the mid-to-late fifth century thought they
knew about the focus of Spartan policy in and before the sixth century—and
what they thought they knew is, of course, quite likely to be true.
When one ponders the implications of Sparta’s involvement in Messenia,
it is with the geographical challenge that one must begin.^25 It cannot have been
easy to get a hoplite army from Sparta to Messenia. Mount Taygetus, which
lies between the two, was then and is now a formidable obstacle. Today, of
course, there is a modern road that runs from Sparta to Kalamata on the Mes-
senian Gulf by way of the Langadha pass. In antiquity, there was a steep road,
which the Spartans had rendered fit for carts, that took this route. An individ-
ual or small group might with effort have passed this way or by the path that
lies a short way to the south, and either may have been the route that Homer
charted for Odysseus’ son Telemachus when he sent him in the company of
Nestor’s son Peisistratus from Pylos via Pherae by chariot to Menelaus at Lace-