SECOND MESSENIAN WAR. 429 aid' *at> not withheld from Mm. While the fifty Messenians who shared his punishment, were all killed by the shock, he alone was both supported by the gods so as to reach the bottom unhurt, and enabled to find an unexpected means of escape. For when, abandoning all hope, he had wrapped himself up in his cloak to die, he perceived a fox creeping about among the dead bodies : waiting until the animal approached him, he grasped its tail, defending himself from its bites as well as he could by means of his cloak ; and being thus enabled to find the aperture by which the fox had entered, enlarged it sufficiently for crawl- ing out himself. To the surprise both of friends and enemies, he again appeared, alive and vigorous, at Eira. That fortified mountain on the banks of the river Nedon, and near the Ionian sea, had been occupied by the Messenians, after the battle in which they had been betrayed by Aristokrates, the Arcadian ; it was there that they had concentrated their whole force, as in the former war at Ithome, abandoning the rest of the country. Under the conduct of Aristomenes, assisted by the prophet Theo- klus, they maintained this strong position for eleven years. At length, they were compelled to abandon it ; but, as in the case of Ithome, the final determining circumstances are represented to have been, not any superiority of bravery or organization on the part of the Lacedaemonians, but treacherous betrayal and strata- gem, seconding the fatal decree of the gods. Unable to main- tain Eira longer, Aristomenes, with his sons, and a body of his countrymen, forced his way through the assailants, and quitted the country, some of them retiring to Arcadia and Elis, and finally migrating to Rhegium. He himself passed the remain- der of his days in Rhodes, where he dwelt along Avith his son-in- law, Damagetus, the ancestor of the noble Rhodian family, called the Diagorids, cekbrafed for its numerous Olympic victories. 1 Pausan. iv. 18, 4. 'ApiffrouevTjV A* ef re T& a/J<.a -^euv Ti, tcai dr/ Kal rare Plutarch (De Herortot. MaJi^niUi. p. 856) states that Herodotus had men- tioned Aristomenes as having teen made prisoner by the Lacedaemonians . but Plutarch iww?t hero have ben deceived by his memory, for HerodotM does cot mevWwa Avistcmaes.
