tending ; but the final event which placed it beyond dispute, and which humbled for the time her ancient and only rival—Argo —is now to be noticed.
It was about three or four years before the arrival of these Persian heralds in Greece, and nearly at the time when Miletus was besieged by the Persian generals, that a war broke out be- tween Sparta and Argos,[1]—on what grounds Herodotus does not inform us. Kleomenes, encouraged by a promise of the oracle that he should take Argos, led the Lacedaemonian troops to the banks of the Erasinus, the border river of the Argeian ter- ritory. But the sacrifices, without which no river could be crossed, were so unfavorable, that he altered his course, extorted some vessels from Ægina and Sikyon,[2] and carried his troops by sea to Nauplia, the seaport belonging to Argos, and to the terri- tory of Tiryns. The Argeians having marched their forces down to resist him, the two armies joined battle at Sêpeia, near Tiryns : Kleomenes, by a piece of simplicity on the part of his enemies, which we find it difficult to credit in Hen>lotus, was enabled to attack them unprepared, and obtained a decisive vic- tory. For the Argeians, it is stated, were so afraid of being overreached by stratagem, in the post which their army occupied over against the enemy, that they listened for the commands pro- claimed aloud by the Lacedaemonian herald, and performed with their own army the same order which they thus heard given.
- ↑ That which marks the siege of Milêtus, and the defeat of the Argeians
by Kleomenês, as contemporaneous, or nearly so, is, the common oracu
lar dictum delivered in reference to both: in the same prophecy of the
Pythia, one half alludes to the sufferings of Miletus, the other half to those
of Argos (Herodot. vi, 1977).
Χρεωμένοισι γὰρ Ἀργείοισι ἐν Δελφοῖσι περὶ σωτηρίης τῆς πόλιος τῆς σφετέρης ἐχρήσθη ἐπίκοινον χρηστήριον, τὸ μὲν ἐς αὐτοὺς τοὺς Ἀργείους φέρον, τὴν δὲ παρενθήκην ἔχρησε ἐς Μιλησίους.
I consider this evidence of date to be better than the statement of Pan- sanias. That author places the enterprise against Argos immediately (αὔτικα—Pans, iii, 4, 1) after the accession of Kleomenês, who, as he was king when Moeandrius came from Samos (Herodot. iii, 148). must hare come to the throne not later than 518 or 517 B.C. This would be thirty- seven years prior to 480 B.C. ; a date much too early for the war between Kleomenês and the Argeians, as we may see by Herodotus (vii, 149).
- ↑ Herodot. vi. 92.
