Pausanias' description of Greece, Volume I.Pausanias, active approximately 150-175
History
Pausanias' description of Greece, Volume I.
Pausanias, active approximately 150-175
Greece -- Antiquities; Greece -- Description and travel -- Early works to 1800
subjects to revolt. In this war they say nothing very notable was done
on either side: and those of this family who succeeded one another as
kings, _viz._ Doryssus the son of Labotas and Agesilaus the son of
Doryssus, both died at no great interval after one another. And it was
when Agesilaus was king that Lycurgus legislated for the Lacedæmonians,
and some say that he derived his laws from Crete, others that he was
instructed by the Oracle at Delphi. And the Cretans say that their laws
come from Minos, who received divine assistance in codifying them. And
it seems to me that Homer has hinted as much in the following lines
about the legislation of Minos, “There too is Gnossus, the great city
where Minos reigned nine years, the bosom-friend of great Zeus.”[30]
But of Lycurgus I shall have more to say hereafter. And the son of
Agesilaus was Archelaus. In his reign the Lacedæmonians conquered in
war and enslaved one of the neighbouring cities called Ægys, suspecting
that the people of it had an understanding with the Arcadians. And
Charillus, the king of the other family, assisted Archelaus against
Ægys, and his own separate doings as leader of the Lacedæmonians I
shall relate later on when I come to the so-called Eurypontidæ. And
the son of Archelaus was Teleclus. In his reign the Lacedæmonians took
in war the neighbouring cities of Amyclæ and Pharis and Geranthræ,
which were then in the possession of the Achæans, and razed them to
the ground. The inhabitants however of Pharis and Geranthræ, being
terrified at the approach of the Dorians, agreed to evacuate the
Peloponnese upon conditions: but the people of Amyclæ they could
not drive out at first assault, but only after a long siege and the
greatest exhibition of valour. And the Dorians themselves shewed this
by erecting a trophy after the conquest of Amyclæ, as thinking that
conquest no small feather in their cap. And not long after all this
Teleclus was killed by the Messenians in the temple of Artemis in the
town of Limnæ, on the borders between Laconia and Messenia. And after
the death of Teleclus Alcamenes his son succeeded him, and during his
reign the Lacedæmonians sent to Crete Charmidas the son of Euthys,
one of the most famous men in Sparta, who put down the insurrection
at Crete, and persuaded the Cretans to abandon the cities which were
inland and in other respects weak, and to inhabit instead those which
were conveniently situated on the coast. The Lacedæmonians also
depopulated Helos, a city by the sea in the possession of the Achæans,
and defeated the Argives who came to the help of the people of Helos.
CHAPTER III.
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