Note 728 — Chapter VII · FIRST AND SECOND MESSENIAN WARS.

See Diodor. Fragm. lib. viii. vol. iv. p. 30: in his brief summary of Messenian events (xv. 66), he represents it as a matter on which authors differed, whether Aristomenes belonged to the first or second war. Clemens Alexand. (Prot. p. 36) places him in the first, the same as Myrôn, by mentioning him as having killed Theopompus.

Wesseling observes (ad Diod. l. c.), “Duo fuerunt Aristomenes, uterque in Messeniorum contra Spartanos bello illustrissimus, alter posteriore, priore alter bello.”

Unless this duplication of homonymous persons can be shown to be probable, by some collateral evidence, I consider it only as tantamount to a confession, that the difficulty is insoluble.

Pausanias is reserved in his manner of giving judgment,—ὁ μέντοι Ἀριστομένης δόξῃ γε ἐμῇ γέγονεν ἐπὶ τοῦ πολέμου τοῦ ὑστέρου (iv. 6). Müller (Dorians, i. 7, 9) goes much too far when he affirms that the statement of Myrôn was “in the teeth of all tradition.” Müller states incorrectly the citation from Plutarch, Agis, c. 21 (see his Note h). Plutarch there says nothing about Tyrtæus: he says that the Messenians affirmed that their hero Aristomenês had killed the Spartan king Theopompus, whereas the Lacedæmonians said, that he had only wounded the king. According to both accounts, then, it would appear that Aristomenês belonged to the first Messenian war, not to the second.