the foe, and by
his gestures and the shaking of his spear announced his intention to
force a passage, and effect escape. Unwilling yet more to exasperate
men urged to despair, the Spartans made way for the rest of the
besieged. So fell Ira! (probably B. C. 662). [150] The brave
Messenians escaped to Mount Lyceum in Arcadia, and afterward the
greater part, invited by Anaxilaus, their own countryman, prince of
the Dorian colony at Rhegium in Italy, conquered with him the
Zanclaeans of Sicily, and named the conquered town Messene. It still
preserves the name [151]. But Aristomenes, retaining indomitable
hatred to Sparta, refused to join the colony. Yet hoping a day of
retribution, he went to Delphi. What counsel he there received is
unrecorded. But the deity ordained to Damagetes, prince of Jalysus in
Rhodes, to marry the daughter of the best man of Greece. Such a man
the prince esteemed the hero of the Messenians, and wedded the third
daughter of Aristomenes. Still bent on designs against the destroyers
of his country, the patriot warrior repaired to Rhodes, where death
delivered the Spartans from the terror of his revenge. A monument was
raised to his memory, and that memory, distinguished by public
honours, long made the boast of the Messenians, whether those in
distant exile, or those subjected to the Spartan yoke. Thus ended the
second Messenian war. Such of the Messenians as had not abandoned
their country were reduced to Helotism. The Spartan territory
extended, and the Spartan power secured, that haughty state rose
slowly to pre-eminence over the rest of Greece; and preserved, amid
the advancing civilization and refinement of her neighbours, the stern
and awing likeness of the heroic age:--In the mountains of the
Peloponnesus, the polished and luxurious Greeks beheld, retained from
change as by a spell, the iron images of their Homeric ancestry!

CHAPTER VII.

Governments in Greece.

I. The return of the Heraclidae occasioned consequences of which the
most important were the least immediate. Whenever the Dorians forced
a settlement, they dislodged such of the previous inhabitants as
refused to succumb. Driven elsewhere to seek a home, the exiles found
it often in yet fairer climes, and along more fertile soils. The
example of these involuntary migrators became imitated wherever
discontent prevailed or population was redundant: and hence, as I have
already recorded, first arose those nu