228 HISTORY OF GREECE. In the spring of 425 B. c., when Demosthenes landed ^t Pylus, Thucydides considers it a valuable acquisition for Athens, and a serious injurj to Sparta, to have lodged a small garrison of Messe- niaLS in that insignificant post, as plunderers of Spartan territory and instigators of Helots to desertion, 1 especially as their dialect could not be distinguished from that of the Spartans themselves. How prodigious must have been the impression throughout Greece, when Epaminondas, by planting the Messenian exiles and others qj the strong frontier city and position of Ithome, deprived Sparta in a short time of all th? wide space between that mountain and the western sea, enfranchising the Perioeki and Helots contained in it ! We must recollect that the name Messene had been from old times applied generally to this region, and that it was never bestowed upon any city before the time of Epaminondas. When therefore the Spartans complained of " the liberation of Messene," " the loss of Messene," they included in the word, not simply the city on Mount Ithome, but all this territory besides ; though it was not all comprised in the domain of the new city. They complained yet more indignantly, that along with the genu- ine Messenians, now brought back from exile, a rabble of their own emancipated Perioeki and Helots had been domiciled on their border. 2 Herein were included, not only such of these two classes not to have conceived at all the south-western projection, whereof Cape Ak- ritas forms the extremity. He recognizes Messene, but he pursues the Pa- raplus of the Messenian coast from the mouth of the river Neda to the coast of the Messenian Gulf south of Ithome without interruption. Then after that, he mentions Asine, Mothone, Achilleios Limen, and Psamathus, with Cape Taenarus between them. Besides, he introduces in Messenia two dif- ferent cities, one called Mess6ne, the other called Ithome ; whereas there was only one Messene situated on Mount Ithome. I cannot agree with Niebuhr, who, resting mainly upon this account of Skylax, considers that the south-western corner of Peloponnesus remained a portion of Laconia and belonging to Sparta, long after the establishment of the city of Messene. See the Dissertation of Niebuhr on the age of Sky- lax of Karyanda, in his Kleine Schriften, p. 119. 1 Thucyd. iv, 3, 42.
- The Oration (vi,) called Archidanns, by Isokrates, exhibits powerfully
the Spartan feeling of the time, respecting this abstraction of territory, and emancipation of serfs, for the purpose of restoring Messene, s. 30. Kai ei uev Tot)f uf uhrr&us M.eaaTjviovf Karfj-yov (the Thebans), 7]6iKOW UEV uv, 6' ctiXoywreowf av et'f #//f ef vfJ-upravov vvv 6e roiic E/Awror
