Conquest 95
in the family lore of a well-known aristocratic clan located far afield. Accord-
ing to it, Aristomenes, the figure who had led the Messenian revolt, managed
to escape to Arcadia after its collapse. Not long thereafter, his third daughter
married Damagetus, king of Ialysos in Rhodes, and from these two the Di-
agoridae, renowned in subsequent centuries for their victories in the games at
Olympia, Nemea, Isthmia, and Delphi, traced their descent. After conducting
his daughter to Rhodes and overseeing her wedding, Aristomenes is said to
have died and to have been buried there—before he could undertake a trip he
intended to make to Sardis for the sake of securing support for the Messenian
cause from the Lydian monarch Ardys son of Gyges, who did not succeed to
the throne until 652.^75
Of course, there is no reason to attribute to Pausanias and the sources that
he drew on any great chronological precision, and the fanciful character of
much of the story he relates concerning the feats of Aristomenes demonstrates
that, over the generations, the tale told within the Messenian diaspora con-
cerning their hero grew dramatically in the telling. But it does not prove the
story false in its basic outlines—for there are various ways in which the saga is
likely to have been conveyed to posterity.^76
In the course of his narrative, Pausanias adds a number of details pertinent
to this question. First, he reports that Hagnagora, the sister of Aristomenes,
was married to Tharyx, a notable from Phigaleia, which occupies a tongue of
land in southwest Arcadia wedged between Triphylia and Messenia and is sit-
uated just north of the river Neda quite close to Aristomenes’ base at Mount
Eira. Then, he tells us that in 659—presumably in connection with their war
against Aristomenes—the Lacedaemonians seized Tharyx’ hometown; that, a
short time thereafter, with the help of a contingent from Oresthasion to the
east, the citizens of Phigaleia recovered their pólıs; and that, in the agora, the
latter built a memorial to those from Oresthasion who had rallied to their
support. This is of significance because there is excellent reason to suppose
that the descendants of Tharyx were still prominent in the mid-fourth century
when the Messenians recovered their liberty, and it is perfectly plausible to
suppose that they and their compatriots kept alive a memory of the travails of
Phigaleia, the aid lent their community by the citizens of Oresthasion, and the
exploits of their kinsman Aristomenes.^77
The story was no doubt cherished elsewhere as well. The Messenians who
found refuge abroad retained a powerful sense of themselves as a nation in