112 Politics and Geopolitics
years—for, even if the peoples living on or near the Stenyklaros plain initially
had little, if any sense of common ethnic identity before the struggle began, as
some scholars of a postmodern bent are now inclined to imagine, two decades
of intermittent warfare in which they managed to join together and fend off
for a time the Spartan juggernaut will surely have forged one for them, and a
similar argument can be made regarding the seventh-century Messenian re-
volt, which lasted for a considerable stretch of time as well.^36 There is, more-
over, no reason to discount the reports that the Argives and the Arcadians
backed the residents of the Stenyklaros plain in resisting Spartan attacks
during the First Messenian War, for we know that they lent support to the
Messenians two generations later at the time of their revolt. That the Messe-
nian helots of the sixth, fifth, and fourth centuries had an heroic past on which
to look back we need not doubt.
How the Spartans managed, in either of these two struggles, to overcome
the obstacle posed by Arcadia and Argos we do not know with certitude. It
must, however, have been quite a feat, and in the aftermath, the Spartans must
have given considerable thought to permanently solving the problem posed by
the Arcadians. As I have already remarked, we have it on very good authority—
that of Tyrtaeus—that the Argives and the Arcadians were once again involved
in the fighting occasioned by the Messenian revolt. Pausanias the geographer,
our principal source, clearly drew heavily on Tyrtaeus when he composed his
narrative. We should not be quick to dismiss his claim that Sparta’s ultimate
defeat of the Messenians at the Battle of the Great Trench was made possible
by the absence of the Argives on this occasion and by the treachery of Aristo-
crates, king of Arcadian Orchomenos. Moreover, Pausanias’ account of Sparta’s
conquest of Phigaleia on the Neda River in southwestern Arcadia around 659
and of the role played by the citizens of Oresthasion in bringing about her
subsequent loss of the town makes perfect political and geopolitical sense in
this context. As we have seen, Aristomenes’ sister is said to have married a
notable from Phigaleia, and Pausanias reports that—while, initially, the focus
of the revolt in Messenia was Andania in the north of that land near the en-
trance to the Soulima valley—after the Battle of the Great Trench the Messe-
nian leader and his compatriots continued the struggle for many long years,
fighting a guerrilla war from a base at Eira near the Neda River on the border
between Messenia and Arcadia at a location quite close to Phigaleia.
Pausanias’ narrative suggests that Sparta’s pacification of Messenia took
place in stages over a great many years. We even hear of fighting near Pylos on