Note 93 — Chapter IV

Tyrtæus, Fragment 4. As the conquest of Messenia is a rare if not a unique example in Greece after the purely legendary age of a permanent conquest effected in spite of the obstacles interposed by a mountain range, it is worth while to take notice of the geography. The Spartans certainly did not cross Taygetus, whose lowest pass, now known as the Langada Pass, is about five thousand feet above the sea (Neuman und Partsch, Physikalische Geographie von Griechenland, p. 181 note): to the north of Taygetus they could cross without any trouble from the valley of the Eurotas to the valley of the Alpheius (see the page just referred to): but before they could reach Messenia they still had to march three or four miles up a valley with mountains on either side of it and then to cross a barren sparsely wooded ridge which unites Taygetus with Mount Lycæus. The ascent of the ridge takes an ordinary traveller half an hour, so that the height of it will be about five or six hundred feet. See Bædeker's Greece, p. 283.