The Lacedæmonians also had an oracular answer from Delphi, that an Athenian would give them good advice. They sent therefore envoys to the Athenians to report the oracle, and to ask for the man who was to give them this good advice. And the Athenians neither wishing that the Lacedæmonians should get the best part of the Peloponnese without great danger, nor to disobey the god, took counsel accordingly, and sent to Sparta one Tyrtæus a schoolmaster, who was thought to have very little intelligence and was lame in one foot. And he on his arrival there recited his elegiac verses and his anapæsts privately to the authorities, and publicly to all whom he could collect together. And a year after the battle of Deræ, when both nations had now allies, they prepared for battle in a village called _Boar’s Memorial_. The Messenians had the men of Elis and Arcadia as their allies in the action, and had moreover help from Argos and Sicyon. There were also present all the Messenians that had fled voluntarily, both those from Eleusis who were the hereditary priests of the mysteries of the Great Goddesses, and the descendants of Androcles: for these too hastened to their assistance. And to the help of the Lacedæmonians came the Corinthians, and some of the people of Lepreum from hatred to the men of Elis. The Asinæi were neutral. _Boar’s Memorial_ is near Stenyclerus in Messenia, and was so called because they say Hercules had a mutual covenant there with the sons of Neleus over a boar’s entrails. CHAPTER XVI.