culated to interest the fancy, to vivify the patriotism, and
to inflame the anti-Spartan antipathies, of the new in-
habitants — there can be little doubt. And the Messenian
maidens of that day may well have song in their pnblic

Srocessional sacrifices, ^ how ''Aristomen^ pursuM the
ying Lacedaemonians down to the mid-plam of Steny-
klerus and up to the very summit of the mountain." From
such stories (traditions they ought not to be denominated)
Ithianus may doubtless have borrowed; but if proof were
wanting to show how completely he looked at his materials
from the point of view of the poet and not from that of
the historian, we should find it in the remarkable fact
noticed by Pausanias. Bhianus represented Leotychides
as having been king of Sparta during the second Messenian
war: now Leotycmdes (as Pausamas observes) did not
reign until near a century and a half afterwards, dnring
the Persian invasion, ^

To the great champion of Messenia, during this war,
we may oppose on the side of Spai^ another
remarkable person, less striking as a character
of romance, but more interesting in many ways
to the historian — ^I mean the poet Tyrtssus, a
native of Aphidns in Attica, an inestimable ally
of the Lacedffimonians during most part of this
second struggle. According to a story — which
however has the air partly of a boast of the later Attic



The poet
Tyrtaeus,
the ally of
Sparta— his
great eifi-
ciency and
influ nee
oyer the
Spartan
mind.
iitl tal« aicov5ol« •ApiaTO(iivr)v Nixo-
fxigSouc xaXoovtac (Pausan. ii. 14,
6). The practice still continued
in his time.
Compare also Paaean. It. 27, 8 ;
iy. 82, 8^.
