Another adventure terminated less happily, in which he attacked a quantity of matrons employed in celebrating the rites of Ceres, with similar views, but with a very different result. Armed only with spits and the implements of sacrifice, they showed the value of their Spartan breeding, animated by religious enthusiasm, in the entire defeat of the marauding party. Aristomenes, beaten down with their torches, was taken prisoner. This might have been an awkward and ill–sounding termination to a life of lofty adventure: many a hero has fallen victim to female wiles; but to be overcome and captured in open war by women armed with spits and staves, is an event not to be matched since the days of the Amazons, either in history or romance. The usual course of events, indeed, was inverted; for love was his deliverer from the dangers in which valour had involved him. Archidamia, the priestess of the goddess, who had been previously enamoured of him, forgot her patriotism, and set him free. The Arcadians were zealous in the Messenian cause. Unhappily their prince, Aristocrates, proved treacherous, and took bribes from Sparta to betray his trust. “For the Lacedæmonians gave the first example of setting warlike prowess up to sale: prior to the transgression of Lacedæmon, and the treason of Aristocrates, combatants referred their cause to the arbitration of valour, and the fortune which Providence should allot to them. So also did they bribe the Athenian generals at Ægos–Potami:[35] but in the end the poisoned shaft recoiled upon themselves. It was through Persian gold, distributed at Corinth, Argos, Athens, Thebes, that the victorious career of Lacedæmon was stopped at its height, when, the Athenian fleet being destroyed, and a large part of Asia delivered, Agesilaus was compelled by the disturbances of Greece to lead home his victorious army. Thus did the gods turn to their own ruin the fraud which the Lacedæmonians had devised.”[36] Aristocrates kept his own counsel, until the eve of the battle of Megaletaphrus (the great ditch), and then disseminated an opinion among his countrymen that their position was bad, and offered no means of retreat if they were worsted; and, moreover, that the omens were unfavourable: finally, he advised all to betake themselves to flight, so soon as he should give the word. The Arcadians were steady friends to the Messenians, yet, strange to say, they became the abettors of their prince’s baseness, without sharing his reward. They formed the centre and left wing, and the consternation of the Messenians may be imagined, when two–thirds of their army at once deserted them. To complete his treachery, Aristocrates led the flying troops through the Messenians, and threw them into irretrievable confusion; forgetful of the battle, they betook themselves to expostulation and upbraiding of their treacherous allies; and the Lacedæmonians readily surrounded and defeated them with such slaughter, that from the hope of becoming lords