and many, to magnify the wonder, asserted that an eagle interposed itself in the fall, and bore him down secure from all harm. The whole event was considered marvellous: first, such was his lofty spirit, and renown in arms, that none believed Aristomenes would be taken alive; but his return from the bowels of the earth was still more amazing, and was held to be a manifest interposition of the Deity. The Lacedæmonians, indeed, refused to believe it, until the total destruction of a body of Corinthians marching to assist in the siege of Eira, “convinced them that Aristomenes, and no other of the Messenians, had done this.” After this occurrence he performed a second time a rite peculiar to the Messenians, called Hecatomphonia; a sacrifice offered to the Ithomæan[37] Jupiter, by such as had slain a hundred men in battle. He had celebrated it for the first time after the battle at the Boar’s Tomb; the slaughter of the Corinthians gave him a second opportunity; and he is said to have offered it yet a third time. The Lacedæmonians now concluded a truce for forty days, that they might go home, to celebrate one of their great annual festivals. Aristomenes wandering abroad without suspicion during its continuance, was seized by seven Cretan bowmen, who, while the Spartans were feasting, amused themselves by traversing the country. Two of them set off to bear the news to Sparta: the others carried him to a neighbouring village, in which a girl dwelt, who, in a dream in the preceding night, had seen a lion brought thither in bonds, and deprived of claws, by wolves. She loosed it, the claws returned, and it destroyed its captors. When Aristomenes was brought in, and she heard his name, the interpretation of the dream flashed across her mind. She intoxicated the soldiers, and set him free; the treacherous Cretans fell an easy prey. In recompence for his life, he gave his preserver in marriage to his son Gorgus. Such was the fortune of the war for ten years. After the destructive battle at Megaletaphrus, in the third year, when their cause was ruined by the defection of the Arcadians, Aristomenes and the seer Theoclus consulted the Delphic oracle concerning the fate of their country. The answer ran thus— When the he–goat shall bend to drink where dimpling Neda flows, Messene’s fate draws nigh; no more can I avert her woes.